Barcoding and medication administration is an inventory control system meant to prevent human errors in distributing prescription medications to patients (McLeod & Dolezel, 2018). Medication errors are a serious patient safety concern that occurs in health facilities. Medication errors refer to the prescription of the wrong medication to the patients (McLeod & Dolezel, 2018). Medication errors usually lead to the patients being given medicine after an important dosage has been omitted. It also refers to giving medication to patients at the wrong time. That is a major issue that is likely to affect the outcome of the medication process negatively. Improper dosage will also lead to the sick party taking longer before they heal. Medication errors usually occur as a result of human errors. It occurs in hospitals where there are many patients. Thus, cases of medication being exchanged will be very high. Medication errors also result in administration errors (McLeod & Dolezel, 2018). It leads to an incorrect route of administration being used to administer drugs to the patients. It also leads to wrong dates and extra dosages being given to the patients. There is a high need for hospitals and other health facility to make sure of barcoding in medical administration. Barcoding in medical administration will help do away with medication errors.
Nursing research on medication errors in clinical facilities will be of great significance. Nursing research will help come up with new knowledge concerning the issue (Chien, 2019). That is the reason why there exist cases of medical errors in hospitals. The nursing research will employ both qualitative and quantitative devices to understand the issue. Evidence-based practice will be utilized to change the practice that is going on in health facilities. That includes changing the ways medication is being administered. Coming up with new ways of administering medication will be of great significance. It will help do away with the administrative ways leading to wrong prescriptions. Performance improvement will entail reliance on barcoding (Chien, 2019). Barcoding is the most effective way that the operations relating to medication can be improved. Barcoding will help provide the least costly way of administering drugs to patients. That will also enable the administration process to take place more efficiently. Trying to avoid cases of wrong prescriptions will improve the performance of the hospitals.
The quality improvement process that will be used in the case of medication errors is decreasing medication administration errors. That will involve coming up with ways through which the quality of administration will be improved. Decreasing medical administration errors is an effective way of ensuring that quality is maintained in the facilities (Zhou et al., 2018). That will involve improvement in the type of technology that the facility is using. Decreased medication administration errors cannot be achieved if technology is not brought to use. Technology is the main means through which automated means will be used. Technology will also give room for good follow-ups to be made. That will prevent the cases of confusing the drugs that are supposed to be administered. The quality improvement will make use of data-driven approaches that will help do away with medication errors. The data-driven approach uses statistics on the number of wrongly administered drugs to check on the number of patients that suffer from it (Zhou et al., 2018). That will then involve the proposal of a means that will help in doing away with such instances. Taking patient data and then using the data to bring value to the patients will help ensure that cases of medical errors are done away with.
Some data sources that will be significant in identifying medication errors include direct observation and claims data. Claims data refers to data collected from customers where they indicate the instances where they were victims of medication error. Administrative databases and reviews can also be used as important data sources. Having a clear look at such records will bring plenty of information about medication errors. The outcome from the records can be analyzed using automated classifications for error reports (Chien, 2019). Using an automated pipeline will bring machine learning content that will help bring the best out of the recorded data. An automated pipeline will comfortably identify the error-originated stages, the type of errors, and the causes. Such data will help understand how barcoding will be positioned in helping do away with the errors. The automated pipeline will classify the errors with the dates on which they happened and analyze some of the reasons that led to them occurring (Chien, 2019). Applying the error-originated stage will provide a more innovative way of solving such medication errors. The automated pipeline will also help calculate the similarity scores between the errors. Using similarity scores will provide a practical way of solving the issue. That will help in accurate measures being taken.
Machine learning classifiers will help the process data to bring more benefits. The already processed data will help come up with the ways in which barcoding will help in doing away with the medication errors. Machine learning technologies such as the support vector machine and multiplayer perceptron will help position barcoding in the right way to help curb medication errors (Hong et al., 2021). The barcode printer and the barcode reader will help capture the right information concerning the medication that has been diagnosed in the patients. The computer server will help create the memory that will help capture the right details. That will make it hard for the doctors to give the wrong prescriptions to the patients. In case of wrong prescriptions, the visual system will go off to signal that the wrong medication has been administered (Hong et al., 2021). That will be an effective way of ensuring that correct care is given to the patients. An analysis of the causes of medication administration errors will point out the need to use barcoding as an effective way of administering drugs to patients.
The doctors will capture data on the bar codes and put them in an electronic format. The hospital will ensure that each drug is labeled by a unique code (McLeod & Dolezel, 2018). That code must tally with what the doctor will indicate in the patient’s details. The patient medication will also be faxed and sent electronically to the hospital pharmacy. The same copy will also be given to the patient in the form of a wristband. The pharmacist will be required to supply the drugs that tally with what has been indicated in the wristband of the patients (Hong et al., 2021). The moment the information does not tally, a visual alarm will sound, which will help the pharmacist know that the wrong medication has been given out. Following that rationale will help in doing away with cases of medication errors in the hospitals.
The organizational culture considerations vital for barcoding success include the company values, policies, and work ambiance. The company values are of great significance because they help define the work environment. It is good for the organization’s values to capture patient welfare. That needs to consider providing value to the patients. The policies should also be in such a manner that they cater to good medication (Zhou et al., 2018). That should be the medication that will not see the patients to suffer any harm. The moment the hospital goes to the extent of including barcoding in medical administration, good care will be experienced among the patients. Work ambiance is also needed in the implementation of barcoding in the facilities. The work done by the clinicians and pharmacists should involve more data being captured to help the research purpose. The policies also need to be positioned in such a manner that they will pave the way for innovation to be realized in the facilities.
Conclusion
Medication error is a serious health issue in most facilities. Medication errors occur in cases where wrong prescriptions are given out. Medication errors are what lead to administration errors. Medication errors in health facilities are caused by the manual medical administration that is normally used. The congestion that is realized in the facilities also makes medication errors to be realized. Implementing barcoding is necessary to ensure that medication errors are made away with. Barcoding will help medical facilities to have controlled medical administration. That needs to be facilitated by aligning the hospital policies and values to be innovation-friendly. Making the hospitals innovation-friendly will help implement more technologies that will be vital in making a difference.
References
Chien, L. Y. (2019). Evidence-based practice and nursing research. The Journal of Nursing Research, 27(4), e29.
Hong, J. Y., Ivory, C. H., VanHouten, C. B., Simpson, C. L., & Novak, L. L. (2021). Disappearing expertise in clinical automation: barcode medication administration and nurse autonomy. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 28(2), 232–238.
McLeod, A., & Dolezel, D. (2018). Cyber-analytics: Modeling factors associated with healthcare data breaches. Decision Support Systems, 108, 57-68.
Zhou, S., Kang, H., Yao, B., & Gong, Y. (2018). Analyzing medication error reports in clinical settings: an automated pipeline approach. In AMIA Annual Symposium Proceedings (Vol. 2018, p. 1611). American Medical Informatics Association.
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