Clinical Integration Paper

Safety and Medical Errors
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Safety and Medical Errors
        Safety is always the highest concern for health care professionals when administering care. While hospitalized, a patient’s physiology becomes more vulnerable to dangerous interventions. Patients face harm from sources of interventions intended to save their lives. According to the Institute of Medicine’s study, preventable medical errors kill 98,000 people every year. Health care staff should be familiar with patient safety principles and concepts in unsecured situations beyond a patient’s awareness. Particularly, it is significant for nurses to recognize situations where medication errors may occur so mistakes can be prevented in regards to a close patient-nurse relationship. The Quality and Safety Education for Nurse goals include safety, which continuously maximizes quality and safety through five main competencies that guide nurses through challenges while performing their professional skills. It is imperative to explore the issue to reduce future mistakes, ensure safe practice, and have proper interventions.
Identified Nursing problems
      Stetina and colleagues state “A medication error can occur at any point during medication delivery process: prescription, transcription, dispensing or administration” (as cited in Hewitt, 2010, p. 159). The errors involve health care practices to prepare medication before patient can have the pills. The following are examples of errors commonly found in the medical field.
Physician errors
        Two of the top three perceived causes of medication errors by a nurse are unclear physician handwriting and professional attitudes (Hewitt, 2010). Unclear writing may result in medication error because the nurse cannot understand the doctor’s writing. Disruptive behavior concerning patient safety is attributed to a doctor’s professional attitude. Most doctors demonstrate a standard practice but...