Preventing Medication Errors

“Code blue! Code blue! Code blue! We need a crash cart in here!” One does not want this said about them. Imagine going to the doctor for a simple procedure, one that is supposed to be an in and out. However, after the surgery the nurse administers too much pain medication. With too much pain medication one can go into respiratory arrest. This mistake puts ones life in danger and adds days to the hospital stay. To prevent medication errors nurses need to be very mindful when administering medication. Medication errors happen all the time, affecting many different people in many different ways, with extra precaution medication errors can be eliminated. Medication errors affect a lot of different people, all the time. Out of the 1.5 million people that are harmed by medication errors 45% occur in the emergency department. Drug overdoses affect people in many different ways, depending on the type of drug overdose. This problem has been around for a while and many good ideas are being thought up to prevent medication …show more content…
Medication errors can range from giving to much medicine, not enough medication, or even the wrong kind of medication. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) reported that 1.5 million patients are harmed each year because of medication errors. Let that sink in. Around 1.5 million people’s lives are being affected each year because mistakes are being made. Mistakes that are preventable. According to Medication Errors from an Emergency Room Setting: Safety Solutions for Nurses: medication errors cause more than 7,000 deaths per year in the United States. That is approximately 19 deaths per day. Incorrect dosage causes a lot of the medication errors that are seen. A sentinel evert alert stated that “47% of opioid-related adverse events in the hospitals… resulted from incorrect dosages” (Myers-Glower, M.). But hospitals are not the only place that medication errors are