NUR 648 Discussion

NUR 648 Discussion

Quality improvement is crucial in healthcare, as it helps ensure efficient, timely, cost-effective, and safe delivery by addressing the various factors that may hinder optimal care delivery (Mannion & Davies, 2018). The topic I would like to explore for my quality improvement project is preventing medication errors by creating a suitable reporting system. This is a topic of interest, given the high incidences of medication errors across various facilities despite various measures to address them. These errors have adverse impacts, for instance, increased patient complications, which can result in prolonged hospital stay, increased healthcare costs, reduced patient satisfaction, and in some serious instances, even patient death (Donaldson et al., 2017). Such errors also impact the mental well-being of the healthcare providers involved, as t can result in reduced job confidence, stress, and anxiety due to fear of committing similar errors, reducing job satisfaction and increasing turnover rates. The errors do not spare the facilities, as it damages the reputations of the facilities implicated, which can affect their operations and competitiveness (Donaldson et al., 2017). 

The various devastating impacts emphasize the need to strengthen further and develop new measures to prevent these errors from occurring. One of the essential steps in addressing medication errors is to create a good reporting system, where all incidences of near misses and medication errors are reported whenever they occur. This can facilitate the development of interventions that will help address the causative factors and prevent future occurrences of similar errors (Donaldson et al., 2017). However, most healthcare providers who get involved in such errors fail to report such incidences due to fear of the associated repercussions. Developing a good reporting system by creating a favorable environment and encouraging the nurses to report such errors without fear can help identify the causes of these errors, which can help guide the development of interventions to address the causes and prevent future occurrences of similar errors. 

References

Donaldson, L. J., Kelley, E. T., Dhingra-Kumar, N., Kieny, M. P., & Sheikh, A. (2017). Medication without harm: WHO's third global patient safety challenge. The Lancet, 389(10080), 1680–1681. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)31047-4/fulltext 

Mannion, R., & Davies, H. (2018). Understanding organizational culture for healthcare quality improvement. Bmj, 363. https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4907.long