Fowler_MSJ209_MSJ Imposition Single pgs

Administration of medications takes up to 40% of nurses’ time in providing patient care (Armitage & Knapman, 2003). Multiple stages to the medication process include order entry, transcription and verification, dispensing, medication administration, and consumption by the patient. Inherent in all these stages are the five rights: the right patient, right medication, right dose, right route, and right time (Perry & Potter, 2004). In addition, numerous members of the health care team, such as physicians, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, unit clerks, registered nurses, and patients, work collaboratively to ensure safe and accurate drug administration. A medication error is any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the health care professional or consumer (National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention [NCC MERP], 2006). Of the various types of medication errors, Category C errors happen when an actual error has occurred and reached the patient, but the patient has not been harmed by the error. In 1995, the NCC MERP was formed by 15 interdisciplinary organizations to promote actively the reporting, understanding, and prevention of medication errors through the coordinated efforts of its member associations and agencies, and to focus on ways to enhance patient safety through a coordinated approach and a systems-based perspective (NCC MERP, 2005). In 2001, the council developed an Index for Categorizing Medication Errors (see Figure 1; Table 1) and Algorithm (see Figure 2) which has been adopted by many health care institutions. This approach allows a facility to apply a uniform taxonomy to medication errors according to the severity of outcome. Over the last 3 years, the authors’ institution has seen a decrease in the Category E-I errors and an increase in Category A and B error reporting based on use of the taxonomy. The Institute of Medicine (1999) suggested that preventable adverse drug events or harmful medication errors occur in 1%-10% of hospital admissions. Information technology such as bar codes can reduce errors throughout the medication process (Poon et al., 2006). Point-of-care administration of medications with bar-code scanning allows verification of the A barcode administration system provides a safe mechanism for the delivery of medications throughout the entire process, but factors that negatively impact nurse satisfaction need to be addressed. The impact of a barcode medication administration system on nurse satisfaction and Category C medication errors was investigated in this longitudinal, descriptive study.