Administering Medication
Administering Medication
Administering medication is an essential task. Healthcare professionals should be careful when administering drugs to avoid making mistakes. Medication errors have increased greatly for the past decades and affected patients’ health and life. Medication errors have resulted to drug interaction and deaths in some cases. Healthcare professionals might make mistakes when administering drugs to patients. They can make the wrong prescription or give patients the wrong medication. Medication errors have affected the quality of care and safety of care as patients get substandard treatment. Medication errors have affected the health of the patients and life by causing complications and worsening their conditions. This is evidenced in the scenario.
The main issue identified in the scenario is medication error. The scenario shows how health professionals including medical assistants make mistakes when administering drugs. The medical assistant gives the wrong medication to Mrs. Smith. Mr. Smith and Mrs. Smith both suffer from hypertension, but they do not take the same medication. This is because Mr. Smith’s blood pressure is high. The medication might have a negative effect on Mrs. Smith as she uses a different drug from Mr. Smith. It can cause drug interaction or complication. Lots of work and inattention results to medical errors. The medical assistant gives Mrs. Smith the drug instead of Mr. Smith as he is in an early. Workload and limited staff have led to medical errors as the medical workers have to serve many patients. The medical assistant does not have time to confirm the medication she is giving the patients and thus administers the wrong medication to Mrs. Smith. The medical assistant could have noticed the mistake if she had time to confirm whether the medication suggested by the physician is the medicine given to Mrs. and Mr. Smith. Also, the medical assistant could have been more attentive if she was not in a hurry (Naylor, 2002).
Reference
Naylor, R. (2002). Medication Errors. Radcliffe publishing
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