Nursing & Medication Error Assignment

Medication errors have become a crucial issue for policymakers and healthcare consumers alike. Nurses are intimately involved in the delivery of medications and primarily responsible for the medication administration phase. Salas (2005) described medication administration best as a complex relationship of a great number of decisions and actions, often performed under less than ideal conditions. Due to the complexity of the task, medication errors occur and can have harm patients. Understanding factors which contribute to medication error incidence is important for the nursing profession. Prior research suggests the majority of medication errors are due to healthcare system deficits and not necessarily individual incompetence (Salas 2005). Literature proposes committed, competent, careful healthcare personnel make mistakes intermittently and the rate increases when faced with difficult circumstances. According to human performance experts, working in complex environments is influenced by human and environmental factors, such as the types of information available, employee experience, conflicting work group goals, and time pressures. Rex (2000) postulate medical errors are a result of the interaction of multiple factors within a complex system. In order to gain insight into medication error incidence, pertinent contextual factors and their relationship to medication error incidence must be expanded. (Pozgar 2004)Nursing & Medication Error Assignment