Patient safety is one of the indicators to assess the quality of medical services. However, a common phenomenon is the occurrence of medical errors when threatening the elderly. During this process there are a large number of interruptions in the work, which leads to errors, and puts the health of patients at risk. Although not all have a negative effect, they are considered to be the cause of most inaccuracies. Interruption causes additional strain, loss of concentration, and therefore is a serious problem.
PICO
In acute aged care how does interruptions compared to no interference influence the decrease of medical errors?
Justification of Research
The PICO provided for this topic has a quantitative approach to determine whether the results are statistically explained and valuable. Thus, the analysis based on direct observations provides the ability to draw conclusions about at least one result (error or interruption). Therefore, the probability of an accidental outcome decreases accordingly. The theme was chosen because of the general interest in the problem of interruptions or no interruptions. As research on this matter will assist improve the quality of treatment.
Articles
The article conducts a study aimed at identifying the reasons that lead to errors in the provision of emergency care for the elderly. For this aim, nursing databases were used, however, the research did not involve an investigation of the gray reports. The conclusions were inspected using an inductive content review. The failures were organized by content: those related to nursing competence, prescription and patient factors, medication management, and safety culture (Metsälä& Vaherkoski, 2014). A considerable proportion of remedy imprecision was due to a deficiency of awareness or knowledge in prescribing and technology usage. Disruptions or interruptions were also decisive for the number of mistakes. The conclusions of this study prove that doctors should interact more to limit misadministration. They are responsible for patients’ lives, and therefore they should spend more time on their education. It is also essential to record that ordering medicines should only be done in a peaceful state, with full attention and without disturbances from other things.
The next study represents ten analyses carried out in the United States of America and Europe, according to which it is described how interruptions affect the general health of the sufferer. Although, there is no holistic conclusion that would provide indicators of clustering is the gap in the research. The problem with the research is that they used only the direct observation method. However, due to absence of sufficient control it is not clear the mistakes of doctors or nurses lead to deterioration of the patient’s condition (Raban, & Westbrook 2014). Moreover, it is not obvious which origins of delays and phases of drug treatment have an impact on the productivity of the cure. The outcome of the article is based on materials that there is still proof of the advantage of interventions to essentially decrease the rate of interruptions. However, this does not guarantee the effectiveness of decreasing mistakes in the introduction of drugs.
References
Metsälä, E., & Vaherkoski, U. (2014). Medication errors in elderly acute care–a systematic review. Scandinavian journal of caring sciences, 28(1), 12-28.
Raban, M. Z., & Westbrook, J. I. (2014). Are interventions to reduce interruptions and errors during medication administration effective?: A systematic review. BMJ quality & safety, 23(5), 414-421.