A Threat To Patient Safety: Medication Errors, Reporting Of Medication Errors And The Concerns With Regard To Nurses
Abstract
The World Health Organization reports that approximately ten million people become permanently disabled or die each year due to medical errors. For this reason, WHO calls for a worldwide research on patient safety. Medication errors are among the most common incidents encountered in hospitals and pose a threat to patient safety. Nurses assume significant roles in preventing or reducing the errors experienced as they are the people who most frequently come into contact with the patients. Focusing on the underlying causes of medication errors, raising awareness about incident reporting and developing solutions for the root causes of errors are the main factors in ensuring patient safety. This review focuses on identifying the medication errors encountered in health care institutions, ensuring learning from mistakes by duly reporting incidents and thus improving patient safety.
Keywords
Medical error, Medication error, Medical error in nursing, Patient safety
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