Wrong‐patient incidents during medication administrations

Abstract

Active patient identification procedures, double-checking and verification at each stage of the medication process should be implemented. More attention should also be paid to organisational factors, such as division of work, rushing and workload, as well as to correct communication. The active participation of nurses in handling incidents could increase risk awareness and facilitate useful protection actions.

The relationship between nurse manager's transformational leadership style and medication safety

“…In this study, nurses answered that they identify patients before medication administration. This result is contradictory to previous findings that showed that patients are not usually identified in a Finnish hospital before medication administration , and therefore, it is quite common for wrong‐patient incidents .…”

“…Fatigue can have many causes, including excessive workloads, which have been shown to increase MEs ; overtime shifts have also been identified as a threat to patient safety . It has been shown that nursing staff fatigue and workload have caused MEs such as a drug being administered to the wrong patient . Nevertheless, it is difficult to judge nurses based on these results since it is not always possible to refuse working tasks.…”

Barriers to medication error reporting among hospital nurses

“…Creative ways to enhance feedback are needed; these should encourage individual reporting back to nurse reporters along with unit reports about MEs and organisational changes made due to MER. For example, a recent study from Finland (Härkänen, Tiainen, & Haatainen, ) found that 10% of medication incidents reported over a 2‐year period related to improper patient identification; root causes of the errors ranged from patient not in his/her routine location to name confusion. Having nurses read and discuss this article or reporting these findings to nurses might enhance nurse awareness of problematic practices and lead to rich discussions of how to prevent future errors.…”

Patient Safety Goals’ Level of Attainment in Selected Tertiary Hospitals in Manila, Philippines: A Preliminary Study

“…However, Lemos and da Silva Cunha (2017) observed that the protocol of identification of patients is practiced with failures among nurses and an institutional challenge. Another issue that concerns patient safety is incidents during medications associated with misidentifications occur, and wrong-patient (Härkänen, Tiainen, & Haatainen, 2018) Medication errors are most likely prevented when all other rights of medication administration are observed (Chinn, 2014;Marquard et al, 2011). Apart from this, nurses need to follow the standard of counterchecking the blood component with another qualified individual before administration (Alter & Klein, 2008;Chan et al, 2004;Chinn, 2014).…”