Essay NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 1 Enhancing Quality and Safety NB

NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 1 Enhancing Quality and Safety NB

NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 1 Enhancing Quality and Safety NB

NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 1 Enhancing Quality and Safety NB

 Assessment 1: Enhancing Quality and Safety

Factors Leading to a Specific Patient-Safety Risk

In clinical practices, medication administration safety risks can be dangerous to threaten lives and wellbeing of many patients. In this scenario, baccalaureate-prepared nurses are responsible for ensuring the safety of medication administration to allow the best care outcomes. Improving safety arrangements is vital for nurses in Prime Health Clinic who need to know the factors contributing to particular patient care risks related to medication administration. Many past incidents reveal that nurses were falling short of medication provision quality that results in patient harm in Prime Health Clinic. Nurses failed to understand the type of medicines that were erroneously given to heart patients. Only knowing the names of medicines is not enough to allow nurses prescribe and provide the best medicines to heart patients; the analysis of the situation revealed that most nurses failed to follow the best standards and guidelines of the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) quality and made some human errors that became a significant cause of increasing heart disease risks in patients (Verspuy, 2018). 

Medication includes providing any type of drug to patients approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FD). Several factors contributed to human-related medication errors in the clinical settings that harmed the professional practices of nurses. For example, the foremost factors included not understanding medications’ use with similar names, medications that are rarely prescribed to heart patients and common medications that cause allergies in heart patients. These factors posed health risks to patients that require interventions to reduce these risks in the future practices.

NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 1 Enhancing Quality and Safety NB

Evidence-Based Practice Solutions to Improve Patient Safety 

Medication administration is mostly performed by nurses in Prime Health Clinic. Moreover, technicians and physicians also manage medication issues in the clinic. There is a need for research to clearly identify and reduce such issues. A research published by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing showed common attributes of nurses involved in medication errors and provided solutions for reducing patient safety risks. The guidelines suggest nurses to give the right medication to the right patient and the right time (Schullo-Feulner, 2019).  Nurses should use their right to access appropriate drug information and also create policies with physicians for safe administration of drugs. Moreover, the findings of the study and the literature review suggest that heavy workloads are adverse for nurses for ensuring smooth drug administration that leads to low patient safety. This means that staffing ratio must be adequate to administer large number of medicines in the clinic. Moreover, favourable organization climate should be provided to nurses with technology tools to enable safe care practices. This means that a higher safety-oreinted environment leads to lower medication errors in the clinic. 

How Nurses Can Help Coordinate Care to Increase Patient Safety with Medication Administration

Reducing Costs 

Since increase in medication errors was due to ineffective nurse supervision and training, policies and procedures should be developed to reduce the cost of medication errors and help the clinic save money on wasted medication. This means that paediatric nurses should triple check the dozes they provide to patients. The literature review by  Manias  (2018) also supports that argument or claim associated with the reduction of drugs costs. 

NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 1 Enhancing Quality and Safety NB

Many evidence-based researches state that nurses can help to reduce medication administration flaws. Firstly, nurses should identify certain work atmosphere issues such a poorly designed procedures and lack of technology affecting medication safety (). They should determine whether the workplace is designed to reduce distractions that result in choosing wrong medicines for heart patients. Moreover, nurses can also play a role by using technologies like smart infusion pumps to reduce human errors and improve technological intervention (Irajpour, 2019). Knowledge and training is a vital responsibility of nurses in clinical settings; which is why educating caregivers and patients is vital for nurses to help them take medicines at homes. They should provide them medicines in writing and also get support from social workers and students from time to time to ensure correct delivery of medicines. These are the specific examples of nurses’ role in improving the overall culture and policy and procedures of Prime Health Clinic to minimize medication errors.  Moreover, nurses can also pay attention to poor labelling (labels not present) and should read labels carefully with full attention to avoid any misunderstandings or human mistakes (Fazzi, 2017). 

NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 1 Enhancing Quality and Safety NB

Identifies Stakeholders for Nurses to Coordinate to Drive Quality and Safety

Nurses cannot alone achieve all the goals of patient care and safety when it comes to drug administration in the clinical settings. This is the reason why collaborative efforts with several different stakeholders and partners can help professionals at Prime Health Clinic to streamline its drug administration department and roles. The importance of communication with stakeholders is utmost; stakeholders’ collaboration can give rise to teamwork that can overcome lack of responsivworeness to improve the procedures. Working with stakeholders would means bringing together industry representatives, healthcare professionals, students, internees, and academia personalities to focus on human error issues and provide a comprehensive discussion on reducing such issues in the healthcare settings to enhance the patient care and safety outcomes. These stakeholders are vital to contact and collaborate with to establish and use the best standards of medication selection. Information technology specialist must also be consulted to provide vital guidance related to the software use to help nurses ensure smooth medication selection procedures (Brown, 2017). 

References

Brown, J. N., Britnell, S. R., Stivers, A. P., & Cruz, J. L. (2017). Focus: drug development: medication safety in clinical trials: role of the pharmacist in optimizing practice, collaboration, and education to reduce errors. The Yale journal of biology and medicine, 90(1), 125.

Farzi, S., Irajpour, A., Saghaei, M., & Ravaghi, H. (2017). Causes of medication errors in intensive care units from the perspective of healthcare professionals. Journal of research in pharmacy practice, 6(3), 158.

Irajpour, A., Farzi, S., Saghaei, M., & Ravaghi, H. (2019). Effect of interprofessional education of medication safety program on the medication error of physicians and nurses in the intensive care units. Journal of education and health promotion, 8.

NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 1 Enhancing Quality and Safety NB

Manias, E. (2018). Effects of interdisciplinary collaboration in hospitals on medication errors: an integrative review. Expert opinion on drug safety, 17(3), 259-275.

Schullo-Feulner, A., Krohn, L., & Knutson, A. (2019). Reducing medication therapy problems in the transition from hospital to home: a pre-& post-discharge pharmacist collaboration. Pharmacy, 7(3), 86.

Verspuy, M., & Van Bogaert, P. (2018). Interprofessional collaboration and communication. In The Organizational Context of Nursing Practice (pp. 259-278). Springer, Cham.