Question

Provide your answers to the following questions/statements in a 3-5 sentence answer for each.

1. What should the "culture and environment of safety" look like when preparing and administering medications? (in a 3-5 sentence)

2. Discuss a common breach of medication administration. (in a 3-5 sentence)

3. Identify three (3) factors that lead to errors in documentation related to medication administration.(in a 3-5 sentence)

4. What can I do to prevent medication errors?(in a 3-5 sentence)

Answer 1

Ans) Cultural and environment of safety when preparing and administering medications:

Cultural safety example: If patient is vegetarian then some of the drugs do have non veg in it, care should be taken before administration to notify Doctor.

Envoronmental: While preparing medication, nurses need to have calm patient and use non-pharmacologic mechanisms (relaxation, massage) vs. kids in room and craziness.

- A common breach of medication administration is often a patient gets a medication either too early or too late. The timing of medications such as PRN medications are set to be given a certain amount of time apart for a reason by the doctor.

- If medications are given too close together they often end up possibly causing an over dose or over medications of the patient.

- Also if the medications are not given soon enough the patient could be in more pain or having anxiety depending on what the medications are for. There are many factors that can lead to errors in medication administration.

- An environment that has many distractions can often cause a nurse to make errors.

Documentation errors related to Medication administration:

- Documentation should occur in a factual manner
- Avoid blaming or making judgements
- Documentation in medical record must include specific nursing interventions that were implemented following error in order to protect the client (such as monitoring vital signs and assessing the patient for possible complications)
- Document all individuals who were notified of the error

To prevent medication errors, we nurses should carefully do the following:

- Assessment, plan, implementation, learning the culture.

- Follow 10 rights of medication administration:

Right:

• Patient, drug, dose, route, time, assessment, education, evaluation, refuse, documentation

- Follow 3 checks:

• check medication before.
• check medication after drawing it up or pouring it.
• Check at the bedside before administration.