Question

During handover, you find that one of your clients is having high doses of IV Antibiotics administered as an infusion in 50ml Normal Saline over 30 minutes. Client is complaining of severe pain at the IV site, nausea, dizziness and increased fatigue. Drug administration guidelines state the medication should be given in 250ml Normal Saline over two hours.

Q:1.1) After identifying this drug error, explain your actions.

1.2) What recording and reporting should be done with medication errors?

Answer 1

1.1)The first action to be initiated is to assess the patient conditions already the patient is exhibiting symptoms.So the in charge has to be informed first followed by the resident doctors who could treart the patient symptomatically and will inform the status to the primary physician to start orders for the incident covered.

Meanwhile check patient's vital signs,saturation, blood glucose level ,disconnect any IV infusion ,ice applications on the painful site.

1.2) A incident report has to be filled in by the concerned nurse who is responsible for it.This has to be signed by the Nurse,Nursing Supervisor and by Nursing Director or Nursing Superintendent and one copy submitted to Management and other will be in the ward where the incident occured.

The nurse who did the mistake has to be made aware if she is not aware of the procedure then a training has to be conducted where every nurse should participate to avoid any error in future and provide quality service to patient.

A clear documentation should be done regarding the drug,order,time,reaction, action taken and patient outcome in the nursing documentation