It is everyday in medicine that medical errors occur, and some worse than others. Nurses are more vulnerable to making these errors because of the fat that they may have the most patient contact. Many of the errors made can be prevented with the nursing process. The nursing process is a series of five steps that a registered nurse takes to ensure the quality of patient care (ANA, 2016). The five steps of the nursing process are assessment, analysis and/or diagnosing, planning, implementation, and evaluation.
• Assessment is the first step and involves the collection of data, such as physiological, psychological, sociocultural, spiritual, economic, and life style factors, about the patient (ANA, 2016).
• Analysis and/or diagnosis “are the nurse’s …show more content…
After doing some research on examples where this has happened, a common example was brought up. The example in the article was about a man who was hospitalized for a hip replacement. After the RN responded to his request for pain medication she administered 10 mg of morphine intravenously, which was two times the amount prescribed. The RN had mistaken the available supplied does, which was 10mg/mL with the prescribed dosage of 5mg (Harding, Lorill, & Petrick, 2008).
When applying the nursing process to the example previously mentioned the specific steps that could have helped in preventing this error is assessment. According to Alfaro-Lefevre some of the questions to ask oneself during the assessment step are “How complete is data collection? “and “How accurate and reliable is my information?” (2012). If the RN would have asked herself these two questions it could have lead to her looking over the prescribed dosage one more time before administering it and would have realized that it was 5mg instead of 10mg. She would have realized that the information on the dosage was not accurate and she would have checked once again to make sure.
As seen in the example provided this is only one of the medical errors that the nursing process can prevent. Making sure that this is applied in every situation can prevent many more severe
• Assessment is the first step and involves the collection of data, such as physiological, psychological, sociocultural, spiritual, economic, and life style factors, about the patient (ANA, 2016).
• Analysis and/or diagnosis “are the nurse’s …show more content…
After doing some research on examples where this has happened, a common example was brought up. The example in the article was about a man who was hospitalized for a hip replacement. After the RN responded to his request for pain medication she administered 10 mg of morphine intravenously, which was two times the amount prescribed. The RN had mistaken the available supplied does, which was 10mg/mL with the prescribed dosage of 5mg (Harding, Lorill, & Petrick, 2008).
When applying the nursing process to the example previously mentioned the specific steps that could have helped in preventing this error is assessment. According to Alfaro-Lefevre some of the questions to ask oneself during the assessment step are “How complete is data collection? “and “How accurate and reliable is my information?” (2012). If the RN would have asked herself these two questions it could have lead to her looking over the prescribed dosage one more time before administering it and would have realized that it was 5mg instead of 10mg. She would have realized that the information on the dosage was not accurate and she would have checked once again to make sure.
As seen in the example provided this is only one of the medical errors that the nursing process can prevent. Making sure that this is applied in every situation can prevent many more severe