8 ways to avoid medication errors in Nursing

Prescribing or administering the wrong medication is one of the most common mistakes made in the nursing profession.

From incorrect dosages to the wrong drugs administered, too much or too little strength, the wrong frequency, or the failure to administer medication entirely, The BMJ states that there are 237,000,000 (237 million) medication errors made every year.

Sometimes, these have dire consequences for the people being cared for, so the need for proper documentation and the eradication of medication errors is imperative.

8 ways to avoid medication errors by Search Health and Social Care

1. Ensure the five rights of medication administration are followed

It isn’t adequate to simply transcribe the medication as prescribed. Always take into account the five R’s before you do anything:

1. Right patient.
2. Right drug.
3. Right dosage.
4. Right time.
5. Right route.

2. Repeat orders and get a second opinion

It’s good practice to double-check an order by reading it back to the prescribing physician to ensure the medication is transcribed correctly.

You can also get a second opinion from another nurse to ensure accuracy, but avoid checking medicines and reeling off dosages at the same time as staff members. This may lead to both of you making the same mistake, so do it separately and get a second opinion later.

3. Be clear from the start

Mis-transcribed information is one of the primary causes of medication errors, but clear communication can prevent it from happening.

Consider using name alerts to clear up commonly confused errors such as Whyte and White, for example, and you could place zeroes in front of decimal points to avoid situations like mixing up 0.25mg with 25mg.

4. Turn medication administration into protected time and learn your organisation’s procedures

Another top tip is ensuring that the time you take to prescribe or administer medication is protected and not compromised by other commitments or pressure.

This way, you can make sure that your full attention is focused on correctly ordering or administering medication that has been prescribed. Also, for you to follow an institution’s medication policy, you must become familiar with its content, so learn as much as possible from the institution’s education/training department.

These policies often contain vital information regarding the institution’s practices on medication ordering, transcription, administration and documentation, and can help you prevent mistakes.

Hospitals have also introduced red tabards with "Do Not Disturb, Drug Round in Progress" written on the front and back, so patients and staff know not to interrupt these healthcare professionals. This has led to a significant fall in medication errors recorded.

5. Only complete the process with your full attention

In the high-pressure environment of nursing, stress, tiredness from night shifts, and diverted attention are commonplace but often, problematic.

As with anything in this industry, a rushed process can be life-threatening, so don’t view the drug administration or prescription process as a less important task.

If you feel that your full attention is slipping, step away and come back to it when your concentration is at 100%.

6. Ensure proper storage of medications

You don’t need to add to the risk of administrative errors by ordering from a disorganised drug storage unit.

Instead, keep medications in the correct storage facilities and adhere to the temperature guides that all drugs should display. And if a multi-dose vial is used, it must be labelled with an expiration date and open date.

This approach gives you more time to transcribe and administer the correct medicine rather than worrying about drug quality.

7. Ask if you’re not sure

A junior or newly qualified nurse might feel uncomfortable asking whether a prescription is right for their patient due to shyness or a lack of confidence. Ultimately, however, patient care should be your number one priority, and it’s in the interests of patient safety to confirm whether the medication provided is correct.

8. Record more ‘near miss’ medication errors

Whilst ‘adverse errors’ are far more serious by their nature, ‘near misses’ cause no harm to the patient but are usually caused by the same procedural mistakes. Unlike adverse errors, however, which are consistently documented, many ‘near misses’ go unreported as staff often don’t realise a fault has occurred.

These kinds of mistakes are often considered as ‘free passes’ to learn from, but because of a fear of reprisal, organisations do not report them enough. Unfortunately, if errors aren’t reported, patients won’t receive the additional treatment they might need, and the danger of the same error occurring again increases because the cause hasn’t been addressed.

How Search can help

Search Medical is a specialist nursing job provider and our team guides workers through the most important issues in nursing.

If you have any questions regarding medication errors, please contact a member of the Search Medical team at your nearest office.