Medication Error Essay

Medication error can occur due to various reasons, some of these factors are a team, task, environmental, individual and system/organisational. Being that nurses works in teams and with many other people this can increase the likelihood of medication errors occurring as everybody has to rely on the others to perform their jobs correctly, for example if previous medication had already been administered and not documented this team error could lead to giving a patient a double dose of their medication (Berman, Kozier & Erb, 2015). When it comes to completing your task of administering if you are not diligent in completing your ten ‘rights’ you could possibly give the wrong drug, wrong dose, incorrect timing, incorrect route or to the wrong person …show more content…
Something else to consider when administering medication is how the environment could affect the medication itself, for an example, some medication needs to be kept out of the sunlight/heat or avoid freezing and exposing these medications to these environments can render this medication ineffective (Konrad, 2011). You need to take care of yourself a individual factor that could contribute to medication error is lack of sleep Night nurse nation says that ‘Nurses who work shifts of 12.5 hours or more are 3 times more likely to make an error than those who work 8-hour shifts’. When you are tired you pay less attention to detail have a reduced reaction time and have less focus (Nightnursenation.com, 2016). This could contribute to medication error by the nurse mishearing or paying less attention then she should whilst administering