Question

a. With the major emphasis on downsizing and restructuring health care to be financially successful, issues of quality nursing care come up frequently. One common issue related to quality nursing care is medication errors.

b. In a downsized work environment, medication errors may increase due to limited staffing with licensed nursing personnel. Often staffing is just enough to be adequate or slightly below what is necessary for safe and quality patient care.

c. You are a nursing supervisor, and you want to research a medication that was omitted during a change of shift period. What questions are you going to ask? Who will you look to for information? How will I know if a medication error is a result of a nursing colleague’s mistake or a result of an understaffed nursing unit?

Answer 1

1. To research a medication that was omitted during a change of shift period, the questions to be asked will be the following:

• a) Who was the nursing professional in charge of the patient's medication administration?
• b) What is the reason? Why did you commit such a grave error?
• c) Did you finish caregiving and medication administration before leaving the patient and winding up?
• d) If you didn't finish the duty and had to leave urgently during the shift change, did you inform the next shift professional in charge of the patient about medication administration?

2. For information, I will look to the reporting personnel in charge of the nursing professional who committed medication omission error. Then the responsible person will be asked about the error. Then it will be cross-checked with the patient.

3. By checking the nursing caregivers to patient ratio, it is quite easy to understand if the nursing unit is understaffed or not and by verifying the facts obtained from the patient as well as the responsible nursing professionals and other staff it can be found out whether it was a colleague's mistake or not.