Patient safaty: prevention of the main causes with medications error in a hospital area

Abstract

The use of medicines in the hospital context is a very complex system, with many interconnected processes, made up of professionals from different areas of medical knowledge, nursing teams and pharmacy. Errors with medications can be related to professional practice, including failures in prescription, calculation, preparation, dispensing and route of medication administration. Medications administered in the wrong way can affect patients, and their consequences can cause various damages, adverse reactions, temporary injuries, among others, taking into consideration the severity type can vary a lot. The objective of this work
is to identify the main types of errors with medicines in the hospital area and to propose strategic methods in order to avoid such errors. It is a work with analysis in bibliographic review with scientific articles. Social changes, scientific and technological advances, nowadays are increasingly demanding from health professionals the challenge of seeking quality in the services provided to patients. Excellence in patient care with reduced risks associated with care is essential to promote patient safety. The need to incorporate safe practices in assistance in the hospital environment is understood as an individual and organizational behavior, aiming at the continuous search for minimizing risks with medication errors. The responsibility of evaluating processes to reduce
preventable errors with medications is a major challenge for pharmacists who must constantly work with training, staff awareness, introduce barriers that can minimize the possibility of errors occurring, adopt protocols and standardize communication, reduce the number of therapeutic alternatives, centralize the processes considered to be at the highest risk of errors, use double-check procedures for medications, monitor the performance of error prevention strategies through audits and measure results using performance indicators.