IOM medication report: Here is impact for ED
Medication errors harm at least 1.5 million patients every year, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine.
"One of the major implications for the ED is the recommendation to ensure that patients and their surrogates are empowered in your system to be full and active partners in the medication use process," says committee co-chair Linda Cronenwett, RN, dean and professor at the School of Nursing at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The report states that patients who cannot monitor the medication use process themselves have the right to have a surrogate present whenever and wherever medications are being administered.
As an ED nurse, do your part to remove any obstacles to the presence and empowerment of a designated surrogate, urges Cronenwett. "Many hospitals are opening their ED rooms to surrogate presence, even during codes, and finding that families and patients are grateful — and may sometimes prevent errors or improve care in other ways," she says.
Your ED may need to experiment with where the surrogate can sit, what instructions need to be provided and by whom, and what boundaries need to be clear at the start, says Cronenwett. "The most important part, however, is that clinicians recognize that the surrogate may have information about the patient and his or her condition that they could not obtain from the patient," she adds.
EDs are important "teaching places" to help families understand how important it is to bring accurate information about medications, says Cronenwett. "Because ED patients are often unable to participate in the medication use process themselves, we need to reach out to identified surrogates and be as inclusive as possible," she says.
The report also identified patient "handoffs" as high-risk for medication errors. "ED nurses are heavily involved in transitions in care, because they are constantly sending patients home or transferring them to a hospital unit," Cronenwett says. "ED nurses could be influential in developing safe systems for handoffs that promote medication use safety."
Source/Resource
For more information on medication errors in the ED, contact:
- Linda R. Cronenwett, PhD, RN, FAAN, Dean and Professor, School of Nursing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carrington Hall, CB No. 7460, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7460. Telephone: (919) 966-3731. Fax: (919) 966-1280. E-mail: [email protected].
Pre-publication copies of Preventing Medication Errors can be downloaded at no charge on the National Academies Press web site (www.nap.edu). Click on "Health and Medicine" and scroll down to report title.
Medication errors harm at least 1.5 million patients every year, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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