NURS FPX6004 Assessment 3 Policy Proposal Presentation
Context
Assessment 3: Policy Proposal Presentation
Student Name
FPX6004: Health care Law and Policy
Capella University
Prof Name
Month Date, Year
Policy Proposal Presentation
Hello everyone, my name is [Student Name] and today the topic of my presentation is policy proposal for avoiding medication errors. This is to propose a policy and guidelines to encourage safe medication administration for health care facilities. This is extremely vital to improve the quality of care provided for the patients. I will also be analyzing the stakeholders of this policy and how this policy will have an impact on their work and outcome. The presentation will outline the ways to implement different strategies related to policy, determining its scope to preventing medication errors, and will also outline the importance of recognizing such errors as they cause severe consequences to patients yearly.
Proposed Organizational Policy & Practice Guidelines
Medication errors tend to be life-threatening for the patients, they increase the duration of the stay and even increase the cost. The health care workers are always under great stress due to the rising number of cases of medication errors. With proper communication, all of this can be avoided. The policies and the guidelines that will be followed should always comply with the laws. The policies will be following the ASHP guidelines that comply with the federal laws and have proven to be effective.
The new policy of the hospital would be to come up with a multidisciplinary medication safety team. Nurses need to act professionally while they comply with the policies. According to the ASHP guidelines, such teams should have a leader, that will most preferably be a pharmacist. All the past medication errors and gaps will be analyzed to point to the areas of risk so those can be improved. (Billstein-Leber et al.,2018). Medications with high risk would be identified and the nurses would be educated and trained on recognizing and using them. Nurses must take help from all the resources available.
All the drugs should be packaged and labeled correctly, even the syringes should be labeled. With such a multidisciplinary team the flow of communication will be smoother, and double-checking would become a mandatory behavior instead of voluntary. The analysis of the medications needs to be continued even after it has been prescribed. According to this new policy, technology should intervene for safe medication administration. When the patient is admitted, there would be a standardized procedure of reviewing the patient’s history from the system and entering all the new symptoms and current situation. The system help identify any allergies or problems that a patient has reported before so changes could be made, and the best medication can be prescribed. Prescriptions would be printed so no error occurs due to illegible writing.
According to the ASHP guidelines, automated dispensing cabinets (ADC), should be use after being configured for remote usage. All health professionals must be trained to use the ADC more effectively. ADCs should also be maintained and optimized for safer usage. There should be decisions to enhance, and make it safer, and more efficient for the future to improve ADC (Cello et al.,2021). ASHP also encourages the usage of bar-code-enabled medication administration. This would involve the pharmacists to design this system that would achieve patient safety by administering the right medication according to patients’ identifier that stores all the critical knowledge about them. The scanners would scan the identifier tags and then scan the medication to make sure that the medication fits the patient’s diagnosis and situation (ASHP,2009).
Relevant Benchmark That Illustrates the Need for a Policy
With thousands of prescriptions being made year after year, the United States alone reports the death of 7,000 to 9,000 people each year due to medication errors. There are thousands of other patients who experience medication errors, but these are often not reported. And the patients who face harm and are then made to stay in the hospital further, the cost of the stays and treatment exceeds $40 billion each year (Tariq et al.,2022). The dissatisfaction and the lack of trust that grows in patients put the health care facilities and the patient themselves at a disadvantage. Such increased costs and consequences emphasize the need for a changed policy and better implementation of that policy to avoid medication errors because even though such errors are deadly, they are never impossible to avoid.
These policies would help tackle medication errors properly that would not only ensure a better quality of care for the patients but will also reduce costs on a larger scale. The relevant stakeholders that are important for this policy of safe medication administration are physicians, nurses, patients and family members, health care lawyers, board members, managers, policymakers, and pharmacists. According to a study that involved analyzing stakeholder’s perspectives on medication administration, stakeholders seem to conclude that a policy would be the best way to progress but there needs to be a widespread implementation and full disclosure would be the best practice (Azam et al.,2017). This new policy would be relevant to all the hospital board members, pharmacists, and care staff. Their involvement will be highly beneficial.
Proposed Policy Affecting the Stakeholder’s Work
The formation of a multidisciplinary team that would encourage collaboration and cooperation between nurses and other professionals would reduce the burden on the health care staff and prove an improvement in the care provided. Skills would be best used between the team and there will be more unity and respect for each other. There will be more adherence to guidelines and treatment and medication recommendations will be more accurate (Rosell et al.,2018).
The use of ADC will be more helpful and less time-consuming. A study aimed to determine the impact of ADC at National Taiwan University evaluated and concluded that the nurses were satisfied after the implementation of the system (Wang et al.,2021). The attitude of the nurses will change and become better as there will be less work stress that would lead to fewer errors. Another study in Jordan concluded about the satisfaction of nurses with the barcode medication administration. They seemed to be more comfortable with the safety aspects of this system and greater understanding. However, the right skill training should be provided to the staff before the usage (Dara wad et al.,2019).
Proposed Policy Improving the Outcome of Stakeholders
The guidelines and the policy proposed will make it easier for the nurses to report errors as the policy will be based on the code of ethics and there would be accountability. This policy will also be able to allow anonymous reporting, so no medication error goes unreported. The reporting of these errors will be beneficial as it will allow analysis and areas of improvement to be focused on.
This policy will also increase awareness and knowledge amongst the nurses that would be beneficial for the patients too as they will be more satisfied and will not have prolonged stays due to any errors or time taking procedures. With better knowledge, the staff would be able to use the technology efficiently and recognize the best-fit medication.
The involvement of pharmacists would be highly useful as the errors would be identified and analyzed. The prescriptions will be double-checked, and the system of ADC and barcode would stay optimized with the help of pharmacists. The proposed policy would unite the nurses and other professionals coming from different backgrounds as they would be working under one framework. The standardized procedure of reviewing patient history would lead to no errors in the future avoiding the nurses to get under any scrutiny.
Strategies for Collaborating with Stakeholder Group to Implement Policy
The nurse managers are the most important stakeholders that need to be collaborated with to implement any new changes or policies. A study that explores barriers for the nurse managers concluded that nurse managers should be indulging in policy making and implementation and they should be informed of the policies so they can meet the demands efficiently (Hajizadeh et al.,2021). The strategies would be to provide nurses with an opportunity at every level so they can voice their concerns. With this they would be able to understand the policies better and implementing them efficiently. The nurses can be managed to analyze the policy regulations and provide feedback on their usefulness as they work closely with the patients.
This strategy to involve nurses would require training and education to build their leadership skills in them so they can make decisions that best shape the facilities, making the implementation more easy and more useful. Another important stakeholder would be pharmacists, if pharmacists and nurses collaborate with a continuous flow of information, the errors would be reduced and there will be no confusion for the nurses when prescribing. Nurses can also collaborate with patients and their families to keep them involved so a wise decision can be made about procedures that best fit the patient.
Conclusion
This policy proposed will be helpful in improving the quality of care that the patient requires. It would encourage collaboration and cooperation that would focus on patient-centered care. With the implementation of this policy, nurses would have guidelines to work under. And procedures through different automated systems will be introduced so the errors could be reduced which would then also reduce costs for the hospital.
References
ASHP Statement on Bar-Code-Enabled Medication Administration Technology. (2009). American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, 66(6), 588–590. https://doi.org/10.2146/ajhp080414
Billstein-Leber, M., Carrillo, C. J. D., Cassano, A. T., Moline, K., & Robertson, J. J. (2018). ASHP Guidelines on Preventing Medication Errors in Hospitals. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, 75(19), 1493–1517. https://doi.org/10.2146/ajhp170811
Cello, R., Conley, M., Cooley, T., de la Torre, C., Dorn, M., Ferer, D. S., Nickman, N. A., Thoi, D., Urbanski, C., & Volpe, G. (2021). ASHP Guidelines on the Safe Use of Automated Dispensing Cabinets. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, 79(1), e71–e82. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajhp/zxab325