CLINICAL PRACTICE
Mistakes are part of the human condition — they’re inevitable. On the job, some mistakes are little more than minor inconveniences while others are catastrophic. In the nursing profession, clinical mistakes can often lean towards the latter, putting a great deal of responsibility on nurses to avoid medication mistakes, infections, documentation errors, and fall accidents that can cost patients their health and in some cases, their lives. Here are four common clinical mistakes that nurses should avoid.
Medication errors are among the most common clinical mistakes that nurses — and their patients — face. When it comes to medicine, nurses have a lot of responsibility. They must interpret instructions and administer medicine correctly, often while managing a patient’s entire medication profile. Nurses should understand what causes medication errors and what can be done to prevent them.
There are many different mistakes that can occur during the process of prescribing, dispensing, and administering medication:
A doctor may prescribe the wrong medication, or they may misspell a drug. They may write a prescription for a higher or lower dosage than indicated, or they may prescribe a medicine that is contraindicated with other drugs the patient already takes.
A pharmacy may dispense the incorrect dosage of a medication, or they may fail to put the correct warning labels on the outside of the bottle.
Nurses can administer medication too fast or too slow, or they can administer too much or not enough. They may retrieve and administer the wrong medication, or they may improperly administer the medicine by giving it in the wrong place or using the wrong equipment.
The causes of medication errors within the nursing profession can be attributed to many things, including:
Healthcare workers rely heavily on a patient’s chart to gather the information they need to make critical decisions about a patient’s care. Mistakes occur when this documentation isn’t thorough or done in a timely fashion.
Nurses are also responsible for developing and implementing reasonable strategies to promote patient safety. For example, unstable patients may be given a walker to use, or a patient who has just had an epidural may not be allowed to get out of bed without a nurse present for a period after the last dose of medication.
Nurses are responsible for a great deal of a patient’s care, and it’s important to actively prevent common clinical mistakes whenever possible. Strategize ways to increase patient safety, maintain proper hygiene, and chart frequently and clearly.