Medication Errors

Throughout the literature, there are variable definitions and categories of the medication errors (O’Shea, 1999). According to O’Shea (1999), The American Society of Hospital Pharmacists defined medication errors as “a dose of medication that deviates from physician’s order as written in the patient’s chart or from standard hospital policy and procedure”.  In a broader definition by Wolf (1989), medication errors are described as “mistakes associated with drugs and I.V. solutions that are made during the prescription, transcription, dispense and administration phases of drug preparation and distribution” (Page & McKinney, 2006). This broader definition involves physicians, pharmacists, and nurses whom all have specific roles in this process.

Despite developing a variety of strategies to prevent medication errors, medication errors are still occurring and form a persistent problem associated with nursing practice (Kazaoka et al., 2007). For instance, Balas, Scott, & Rogers (2004) conducted a study to describe the nature and prevalence of medication errors and near errors reported by 393 full-time hospital staff nurses over a period of 28 days. In this study, 119 nurses (30%) reported making at least one error for a total of 199 errors. Furthermore, 45 nurses (38.7%) reported making between 2 and 5 errors and one nurse reported a total of 8 errors. In addition to this, 127 nurses (33 %) reported one near error at least, for a total of 213 near errors. According to Balas et al. (2004), “If these errors were extrapolated to 1-year period, errors and near errors for this sample of RNs would total nearly 5,000 incidents”.

Medication errors represent 57.7% of medical errors (Balas et al., 2004), and account for about one fifth of deaths due to all types of adverse events in hospitals (Page & McKinney, 2006). According to Mrayyan, Shishani, & Al-Faouri (2007), medication errors cause serious harm and even death to patients.  An Institute of Medicine report revealed that between 44,000 and 98,000 patients annually die secondary to preventable medical errors. Among these errors, medication errors found to be accountable for 7,000 deaths annually in the United States. These errors are accountable for additional $2 billion dollars annually in health care expenses (Wakefield M., 2000).

The previous figures are terrifying, and they bring to our attention how seriously prevalent and impacting medication errors are. Nurses can play a significant role in minimizing the numbers of these errors because the last stage of this process, medication administration, is part of their job. They can intercept potential errors that emerge from earlier stages (i.e. prescription and dispensing). This is supported by Balas et. al. (2004), who reported that registered nurses intercept the majority (85%) of potential medication errors. Even though, much efforts are still needed from all health care providers including nurses themselves. Physicians who prescribe medicines, pharmacists who dispense them, and nurses who administer them are prone to committing medication errors. On the other hand, they can intervene and intercept potential errors. Therefore, interdisciplinary efforts and collaboration are highly demanded to address this issue. In addition, currently operating strategies that aim to tackle these errors might need to be reevaluated; and new strategies probably need to be developed. We should always keep reminding ourselves that intercepting an error saves someone’s life.