Adverse Trend And Data Management Flow Chart: Term Paper Samples

Incorrect Medication and Dosage

Incorrect Medication and Dosage
The issue of patients taking wrong medication has become rampant in health facilities resulting in various complications, for instance, the case of Jessie Scott (2008) who went into a coma as a result of wrong dosage. When learning from common medication errors, the incidences of nurses giving wrong dosage or possibly incorrect medication is recognized as the widespread adverse nursing problem. Familiarization about the issue was through the internet especially by visiting the American Nursing Association website to search for more information about adverse trends in nursing. In addition, a number of websites present harsh discussions about the same issue and how it impact on patient care quality. Since the problem continuously occurs in nursing homes and different inpatient hospitals, there is the need to conduct further research to establish its cause and effect. Investigation to establish the cause and effect of this issue would help nurses, health facilities, patients, and other affected parties to minimize the adverse consequences resulting from medication errors.
Qualitative and quantitative analysis would be essential in obtaining relevant data so as to facilitate examining the problem of medication errors. The data inclusive in the analysis of this problem relate to errors that result in severe patient harm and meet the National Coordinating Council Medication Error Reporting Program, (Murphy, 2007). Data about time and frequency would be required to ascertain how often nurses make medication errors every 24 hrs. Data about the frequency is crucial in estimating the number of cases in each health care setting during the process of investigation. Equally, data about time is indispensable in determining the likely time between which nurses give wrong doses to patients. In addition, data about systems would be gathered through root cause analysis to scrutinize possible systems issues and make out mechanisms for future deterrence of this problem, (Kaushal, 2001). Organizational databases also would provide medical data that would be extracted using Microsoft Applications as well as collecting epidemiological data to facilitate analysis of trends or prospective vulnerabilities.

Data Collection Methods

The information would be obtained using four major methods used most frequently by nurse researchers. These approaches include self-reports, observation, and biophysiologic procedures, which collectively determine the study design and the type of data. The methods are able to engage existing or original data fashioned for the purposes of research.

Self-Reports

This method involves asking people questions regarding the issues under study in order to obtain their perception and understanding of the problem. Interviews help to gather massive information that can be analyzed independently to reach various conclusions. The method gives respondents freedom to express their feelings and answer in their words when asked questions about how does stress impact issuing dosage, familiarity of prescriptions and proper dosage, and cognizance of dispensing systems. Self-report method is reliable and versatile with the ability to collect retrospective data about events that took place in the past or find out predictions about people’s possible future behaviors, (Polit & Beck, 2004). Furthermore, this method enhances availability of data concerning psychological aspects through direct interaction with participants.

Observation

This is an alternative method to self-report that focus on individual’s behavior. Direct observation method aid nurse researchers in collecting information about nursing effectiveness, (Polit & Beck, 2004). Observation method would help in gathering a variety of information including verbal communication, facial expressions, and state of their surrounding when prescribing or giving dosage to patients.

Biophysiologic measures

Specialized technical instruments and equipments aid to measure certain features such as physiologic and physical elements. This method usually requires specialized training and interpretation of findings. The type of equipments required here are very expensive, but most health facilities have the equipments hence, it reducing cost of obtaining data through this method, (Polit & Beck, 2004). The equipment provides objective data that is usually similar when read by different nurse researcher especially in the event where the equipment fails to function. Information gathered through this method has a very high quality and could be used to minimize the influence of physiologic and physical features of medication and dosage.

Regulatory, Legal, and Ethical Issues

Health information about incorrect medication and dosage is often breached into, stolen, and accessed easily by unauthorized persons. A number of cases concerning data theft have been observed, and research shows that breaching of health records affect over 2.4 million (2009) patients. Theft has been identified as the common causes of data breaches. Also, data on adverse trends is vulnerable to fraud allegations. Despite the safe storage and exclusion, health organizations and medical practitioners risk legal consequences if agreements are not thoroughly craft. Privileging of information by health professionals hide facts regarding issues affecting health institutions for the purposes of ensuring quality assurance and improvement. Disclosure also presents ethical consideration to data safety such that health practitioners are compelled to disclose information to patients whenever an error in medication occurs.
Adverse Trend and data Management Flowchart

References

Brown, T., McCarthy, M., Kelen, G., & Levy, F. (2010). An Epidemiologic Study of Closed Emergency Department Malpractice Claims in a National Database of Physician Malpractice Insurers. Academic Emergency Medicine, 17(5), 553-560. doi:10.1111/j.1553-2712.2010.00729.x
Fahrenkopf, A., Sectish, T., Barger, L., Sharek, P., Lewin, D., & Chiang, V. et al. (2008). Rates of medication errors among depressed and burnt out residents: prospective cohort study. BMJ, 336(7642), 488-491. doi:10.1136/bmj.39469.763218.be
Gandhi, T. (2006). Missed and Delayed Diagnoses in the Ambulatory Setting: A Study of Closed Malpractice Claims. Annals Of Internal Medicine, 145(7), 488. doi:10.7326/0003-4819 145-7-200610030-00006
Graber, M., Franklin, N., & Gordon, R. (2005). Diagnostic Error in Internal Medicine. Archives Of Internal Medicine, 165(13), 1493. doi:10.1001/archinte.165.13.1493
Kaushal, R. (2001). Medication Errors and Adverse Drug Events in Pediatric Inpatients. JAMA, 285(16), 2114. doi:10.1001/jama.285.16.2114
Murphy, J. (2007). Journal Reporting of Medical Errors *. Chest, 131(3), 890. doi:10.1378/chest.06-2420
Polit, D., & Beck, C. (2004). Nursing research. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.