Medication Error: Use of Warfarin

Abstract or Introduction

Medication errors remain life threatening mistakes affecting the delivery of health care. Medical errors are considered as a global problem capable of increasing the length of hospitals stay, mortality rate and other related costs. Though medication errors can be caused by any healthcare professional, a high percentage of such mistakes are made by nurses especially during drug administration. The current research indicates that thousands of Americans die on an annual basis owing to medication errors. Nurses commit majority of errors during intravenous injection of drugs while poor hand writing witnessed among primary care givers often results to dosing errors. Other primary care givers use abbreviations during prescriptions making it hard for pharmacists to interpret hence rising the risk of medication errors. Medication errors can also be attributed to inadequate pharmacological knowledge and lack of awareness of the route of the administration. Further, Medication errors are also attributed to complexities within the healthcare environment particularly multiple processes involved in the medication process ranging from packaging to the actual administration of the drug (Health Services Support Agency, 2012). This research paper discusses medication error with warfarin and its consequences.