Wall of Silence Journal 1
Describe your level of awareness of the prevalence of medical errors before this course and reading part 1.
The healthcare field is one of the utmost respected fields one could work in. Nurses are the most trusted workers in the country and are expected to advocate and protect their patients. Nurses also spend most of their time at work administering medications which plays a key role in the reduction of medication errors. My idea of medical errors has been based off of the 5 rights of medications administration such as the right dosage, route, time, medication, and patient. Prior to beginning this course, I was under the assumption that the number of medical errors had declined in recent years due to better regulations, …show more content…
When he began showing symptoms of pain, the nurse and physician that were attending him should’ve done a more in depth assessment to see what was the true cause of the pain. They kept brushing it off as gas or constipation, but the pain persisted and worsened. Lewis’s symptoms did not correlate with those diagnoses. Early identification, timely treatment, support of respiratory system, fluid replacement, vasoactive medications, and nutritional support are all the interventions that should have taken place for Lewis. The labs that should’ve been drawn early on would include ABG’s, lactic acid, glucose, electrolytes, h/h, cultures, coagulations studies, cardiac enzymes and LFT’s. Diagnostic testing should’ve been ordered such as CT scan, echocardiogram, chest x-ray, etc. (Hinkle, J. L., & Cheever, K. H., 2014, p. …show more content…
Describe in detail your experiences in managing, correcting, and documenting medication errors and explain how they affect your practice? I have not yet experienced a medication error, nor have I witnessed the process of a nurse managing, correcting, and documenting one. I believe the moment the medication error is realized, the nurse would assess the patient and make sure they’re stable, advise their nurse manager, or charge nurse of the incident, then file the medication error on an incident report and hand it over to the nurse manager of the unit.
Do you believe quality improvement is really needed? Explain. Yes, I do believe quality improvement is needed in order to decrease the amount of medical errors. Quality in management is very important since it sets the tone for the floor. A nurse already has a stressful job, so when the healthcare team establishes a trusting relationship with one another and works together by communicating clearly with one another, the chances of errors decrease. Quality of technology is a crucial as well. Updating paper charting to electronic charting would make things more organized in the hospital and easier to access for the health care workers that are taking care of a patient. It also helps in implementing certain check points before administering or handling certain medications that
Describe your level of awareness of the prevalence of medical errors before this course and reading part 1.
The healthcare field is one of the utmost respected fields one could work in. Nurses are the most trusted workers in the country and are expected to advocate and protect their patients. Nurses also spend most of their time at work administering medications which plays a key role in the reduction of medication errors. My idea of medical errors has been based off of the 5 rights of medications administration such as the right dosage, route, time, medication, and patient. Prior to beginning this course, I was under the assumption that the number of medical errors had declined in recent years due to better regulations, …show more content…
When he began showing symptoms of pain, the nurse and physician that were attending him should’ve done a more in depth assessment to see what was the true cause of the pain. They kept brushing it off as gas or constipation, but the pain persisted and worsened. Lewis’s symptoms did not correlate with those diagnoses. Early identification, timely treatment, support of respiratory system, fluid replacement, vasoactive medications, and nutritional support are all the interventions that should have taken place for Lewis. The labs that should’ve been drawn early on would include ABG’s, lactic acid, glucose, electrolytes, h/h, cultures, coagulations studies, cardiac enzymes and LFT’s. Diagnostic testing should’ve been ordered such as CT scan, echocardiogram, chest x-ray, etc. (Hinkle, J. L., & Cheever, K. H., 2014, p. …show more content…
Describe in detail your experiences in managing, correcting, and documenting medication errors and explain how they affect your practice? I have not yet experienced a medication error, nor have I witnessed the process of a nurse managing, correcting, and documenting one. I believe the moment the medication error is realized, the nurse would assess the patient and make sure they’re stable, advise their nurse manager, or charge nurse of the incident, then file the medication error on an incident report and hand it over to the nurse manager of the unit.
Do you believe quality improvement is really needed? Explain. Yes, I do believe quality improvement is needed in order to decrease the amount of medical errors. Quality in management is very important since it sets the tone for the floor. A nurse already has a stressful job, so when the healthcare team establishes a trusting relationship with one another and works together by communicating clearly with one another, the chances of errors decrease. Quality of technology is a crucial as well. Updating paper charting to electronic charting would make things more organized in the hospital and easier to access for the health care workers that are taking care of a patient. It also helps in implementing certain check points before administering or handling certain medications that