Patient Safety

Words: 653
Pages: 3

Patient safety should always be the number one concern in all clinical settings. There have been so many errors when prescribing and administering medication that this adversely affects patient safety. Medication management is where patients make clinicians aware of all the prescribed and over the counter drugs they are taking. The patient is not just asked to list their medications but to physically bring in all of their medications so that the dose and quantity is accurately noted in the patients chart. After this, there should be an accurate and complete medication list for the patient. When patients neglect to tell their clinician what drugs they are taking this leads to major safety issues including prescribing errors, medication contraindications, overprescribing, under prescribing and patient adherence. …show more content…
Clinicians sometimes work 12 hours shifts which leads to being tired which leads to fatigue which leads to errors being made during the work shift. Another environmental stress is personal stress, it is hard not to bring a person’s home life into their work day, and this will serve as a distraction during the day, which can lead to medication errors. Hunger is a big stress for clinicians, sometimes they are so busy that they do not take the time needed to eat which leaves them with less energy to perform normal tasks which can lead to medication errors. A big environmental stress is staff shortages which puts an extra burden on the current staff. Current staff has to work to make up for the missing staff therefore clinicians have to take on more patients than they would have if the facility was staffed