Medication addministration and distribution errors

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  1. Is a zero % med error rate a reasonable expectation?

    • 3
      yes
    • 11
      no

14 members have participated

I work in a facility where the people in command believe there should be zero medication errrors. As the Medication Nurse Supervisor, it is my responsibility to oversee all the nurse's administering and distributing medications to inmates. We have over 600 inmates and 4 medication passes daily. We average over 1,000 doses of medication daily. Can anyone give me any info on their average percentage rate of medication errors? I have to convince my command that a zero percent rate is an unrealistic expectation. Thanks

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Touting the need for a zero percent med error rate only makes people hide their errors, patients could be at risk and systemic problems don't get fixed. Hopefully the error rate won't be high, but their shouldn't be a punitive response if someone makes a mistake. Maybe it would be better if they set up a non-punitive reporting of med errors system and then evaluate what their error rate actually is and take it from there if changes need to be made. It would be useful to see why people are making the errors.

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If you're provided with the right equipment, I think medication errors can be decreased significantly -- I'm not saying 0% is totally realistic, but when provided with eMAR and barcode scanning capabilities, studies have shown that errors can be decreased significantly. I don't have any of the stats / numbers, but I do know it helps.

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I did a very accurate average of the medication doses we give in on year and it was over 400,000. In one year we had 25 knon errors. That is a very small percentage rate. We do everything on paper and by hand. I truly feel we are doing a great job with the circumstances we are given. MissIt and Amanda. RN, thank you for your advise.

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