Reference no: EM133009223 , Length: word count: 300

Decreasing medication errors. Medication errors refer to any mistake occurring during the mediation process such as prescribing, transcription, dispensing, administration or monitoring regardless of whether or not the injury occurred or whether the potential for injury was present. Quality Improvement Initiative involves systematic activities that are organized and implemented by an organization to monitor, assess, and improve its quality of health care.

• Purpose of quality improvement initiative: To eliminate medication error, reduce waste, increase efficiency, strengthen internal (nurses) and external (patient) satisfaction.
• Target population: Since most medication error occurs during administration, nurses are the target populations.
• The benefit of the quality improvement initiatives in decreasing medication error: To enhance patient safety. Reduce cost associated with a medication error. Prevent adverse effects, morbidity, and mortality associated with a medication error. Prevent legal action, disciplinary action like dismissal from Job that might befall a nurse who commits medication error.
• The Interprofessional collaboration that would be required to implement quality improvement initiatives to decrease medication error: Interprofessional collaboration is defined as when multiple healthcare workers from different professional backgrounds work together with patients, families, carers (Caregiver), and communities to deliver the highest quality of care. It is based on the concept that when providers consider each other's perspectives including that of the patient they can deliver better care. All individuals in the healthcare team must play a role in implementing the quality improvement initiative to decrease medication error like the physicians, pharmacists, and nurses. There should be adequate communication and collaboration between the nurse, the physician, and the pharmacist. When the prescription is not clear or there is look-alike medications are placed together the nurse should communicate with the physician and the pharmacist for clarification thus preventing medication error. If the professional teams do not communicate and collaborate their performance suffers. In the healthcare field, poor communication is often cited as a root cause of medication error (Vega, 2016). The healthcare professionals should work together to achieve a common goal which is to reduce medication error and maintain patient safety.
• Cost or Justification: Medication errors cause at least one death every day and injure approximately 1.3 million people annually in the United States of America alone. Globally, the cost associated with medication errors has been estimated at US$ 42 billion annually, or almost 1% of total global health expenditure. But all medication errors are potentially avoidable. Preventing errors and the harm that results requires putting systems and procedures in place to ensure the right patient receives the right medication at the right dose via the right route at the right time (WHO, 2017). Quality Improvement initiatives can reduce the cost associated with medication errors and save lives.

Question 1: The basis upon which the quality improvement initiative will be evaluated: Test the acceptance or adherence to new or revised practices. Examine how and how much the new practices are affecting the delivery of patient-centered care. Assess how much patient experience of care is improved (AHRG, 2020).