Introduction
Among the most significant causes of avoidable injury to patients in medical facilities across the world are unsafe drug treatment techniques and medication mistakes. The global volume of losses from drug errors is estimated at $42 billion annually. Errors of this kind are possible at various stages of the use of medicines. This paper aims to view the mentioned issue through the PDSA cycle and identify optimal outcomes.
Discussion
In many respects, errors in the drugs that patients take represent a concealed patient safety issue. This problem is relevant to the National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs) (2023), which state that secure care provision is a significant objective. Healthcare organizations worldwide have implemented medication reconciliation procedures and systems to help prevent these mistakes. In several institutes, the use of medical reconciliation has successfully decreased drug mistakes. Therefore, developing a plan aimed at eliminating errors is vital. This problem remains nurse-sensitive as these professionals are responsible for medication allocation. In case they make a mistake, they are liable for it.
PDSA cycle is the process approach to business management. It was developed by W. Shuhart in 1939 and then refined by E. Deming during the implementation of the Total Quality Management System (TQM) in Japanese companies (Bowie, 2020). The author formulated the formula for business success: to ensure quality and improve quality. This cycle is implementable in terms of eliminating medication errors. It consists of four stages – plan, do, study, and act.
Primarily, it is indispensable to plan the interventions and possible outcomes. It would be completed for all patients with an emphasis on mistake possibility. It entails gathering patient demographic information, information on their prescription omissions, documenting any drug allergies, and identifying patients using any identified pharmaceutical type. Testing would determine if the definitions of the high-risk medication class were acceptable for this or whether they were too sensitive or insensitive.
At the second stage, “do,” based on each test’s results, testing is anticipated to increase as the tool progressively improves. Frontline teams will gather data and provide input on how easy and time-consuming it is to collect data, for example (Bowie, 2020). Observations will also be made to comprehend the effects of issues better, such as the sequence of the questions about the simplicity of data collection.
Following analysis of the tests, a community subversion should be created that changes the first step to make it more applicable to community practice. A suitable denominator must be found to determine the percentage of high-risk medication omissions (Bowie, 2020). Finally, new indicators vital to investigating the issue will be added at the last stage. In addition, measures to fight medication errors will be introduced at this stage. As a result, it will be possible to reach the national goals of reducing the number of hospital admissions and increasing care quality.
Conclusion
In conclusion, medical errors are a tremendous problem in the healthcare sector that majorly affects nurses. The PDSA framework allows for establishing and predicting actions and outcomes needed to develop programs to fight the issue. National Patient Safety Goals noted that such faults lead to adverse health ramifications. Hence, using the cycle, it may be possible to identify the most common confused medications and develop measures to fight them.
References
National patient safety goals. (2023). The Joint Commission. Web.
Bowie, P. (2020). Safety and improvement in primary care: The essential guide. CRC Press.
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