Medication safety a key factor in patient safety goals

Medication safety is one of the key factors in patient safety goals and nurses play an important role in this regard, according to the Delhi Society for Promotion of Rational Use of Drugs (DSPRUD).
"Nurses, as the largest group of healthcare service providers, are vital members of this team and play an important role in achieving patient safety goals.
"Nurses need continuous training on medication safety issues such as prevention of medication errors, injection safety, right way of administration of drugs, drug-food and drug-drug interactions, adverse drug reactions and patient education," said R Parameswar, President of DSPRUD.
Referring to some recent reports, he said that even in developed countries like US, large number of deaths (1.8 million) occur due to medical errors, out of which 8.6 per cent deaths are due to medication errors.

Patients in ICU are even more vulnerable as 1 in 1.7 patients suffer from medication error.
As per WHO report 2011, Medication errors figure among the top 10 killers. World Health Organization reports that one in 10 hospital admissions lead to an adverse event and one in 300 admissions in death.

Dr Sangeeta Sharma, Secretary, DSPRUD said that after prescription errors, drug administration errors constitute large percentage of all medication errors.
"It is often seen that several medication errors occur during intravenous administration of drugs such as wrong infusion rate, wrong dilution and wrong method of administration. Nurses, if alert, can intercept errors and prevent harm reaching the patients," Sharma said.

Keeping this in view, the Society has designed a Training Programme exclusively for the nurses . It will will also organize an awareness programme designed for Nurses on 'Medication Safety and Rational Use of Medicines' on June 27-28 here.
This two-day course will provide an opportunity to nurses working in government and private hospitals to learn and get hands-on experience in handling each of these areas, said Dr Parameswar.