Impact of Electronic Medical Administration Records on Quality and Safety of Patients

To improve technology in clinical environment is not an easy task. It needs a lot of care ad capitals. However, technology requires a well-organized strategy and long term plan. This report will synthesize and criticize the existing literature addressing the electronic medical administration records (eMAR) as it relates to patient safety. There is increased need for nurses and medical practitioners to apply information technology in every day operations with the objective of improving healthcare quality and patient safety. In the UK 193 of 1000 individuals involved in a research conducted by the Medical Protection Society were reported to have been prescribed with wrong medicines. Medicine administration errors are expensive to health care facilities, medical practitioner, patients and the society at large (Jha, Doolan, Grandt, Scott, & Bates, 2008).

International healthcare systems are trying to improve patient safety through safe medicines administration since the existing drug administration processes are not safe and have been affected by several number of errors. Häyrinen, Saranto, and Nykänen, (2008), indicated that the existing information about medicine administration record is an incompetent progression without significant workflow, which has stressed medical practitioners and has resulted into scrawled admissions which results into medicine administration errors. For that reason, to maintain dosage quality and prevent medicine administration errors, the electronic medicines administration record (eMAR) has been discovered to be important. In addition, they stated that eMAR has played an important role in improving patient health safety and also eased the work of nurses in record keeping and drug administration.

eMAR prevents medical records from being incomplete, misread, or lost. The study indicated that up to 38 percent of patient drug errors happen at the administration phase (Ahmad, et al. Theoretical Frameworks Essential in eMAR Implementation For this study, the researcher will use the framework in Fig. 1 below based on the IS system quality framework and success model conceptualized and developed by Hameed, Mustapha, Aina-Mardhiyah, and Miho (2008). These measures are well-documented in existing literature on implementation of an eMAR as an effective measure to reduce medical records errors. Medicine administration is a long and tiresome process which need accurate documentation. According to Jylha and Saranto, the complication of the medicine management process makes it prone to human errors that can happen at any given point of the prescription management process.

Their survey in a Finnish clinic indicated that 66 percent of the adverse events testified were due to drug errors where 33. 6 percent was related to recording errors (Jylhä, & Saranto, 2008). However, medical errors were reported in the two cases. It was noted that the frequent medicine error was administration of drugs at the mistaken time (before medicine 32% and after medicine 30%) (Herrett, Gallagher, Bhaskaran, Forbes, Mathur, van Staa, and Smeeth, 2015). The researchers suggested that the presence of medicine error was due to failure of nurse to document patient information. They concluded that the when eMAR is implemented, medicine errors will decrease considerably in future and the adverse events due to medication errors will reduce significantly. Bar-code medicine administration (BCMA) methods necessitate that the medical practitioner who prescribes the drug at the bedside ought to scan the identification band of the patient and the unit dose of the prescribed medicine (Agrawal, 2009).

Hospital unintentional adverse impacts as a result of CPOE can be stated as follows. Unfavorable workflow, challenges related to paper perseverance, new or additional work for medical staff, negative emotions, continuous system upgrade demands, unpredicted changes in the administration structure, overreliance on the IT, and emergence of new forms of medical errors. New medicine errors might occur when the nurse pick from a medicine menu or when filling free-text field in the computer prescription. However, this can be reduced by minimizing the size of drop-down lists, reducing free-text administration, and constructing well-designed, well-defined order statements and care sets in the program. Order statement can be defined as a complete previously written medicine order that includes dosage, form of drug, or frequency of administration, administration route, reason of administration and a PRN standard.

Secondly, the hospital was experiencing high staff turnover associated with burnout, which was linked to increasing cases of errors. As a result, the hospital lost loyal customers and brand reputation resulting to financial constraints on its ability to meet its financial obligations (Elsevier, 2010). Therefore, the hospital management is revamping its performance that was challenging. Lack of effective healthcare records management systems resulted in inefficiencies as nurses’ search for patient data from huge files did not only waste time, but also affected emergency service delivery (Lele, 2005). These inefficiencies resulted in increased cases of medication errors, poor quality services, and ineffective operations. Furthermore, interoperability might also help observe strategies both nationally and locally and provide secondary data usage for review and response which might lead to increased patient care (Seibert, Maddox, Flynn, & Williams, 2014).

It is progressively more recognized that it is important to involve patients with their medicine. Recognition of patient involvement in their medication has improved patient safety significantly reducing medication errors. Patient involvement is associated with improved health results, increased satisfaction and the prospect of avoidable risk. Patient safety actions related to inpatient prescription include, but then again are not restricted to, viewing the inpatient medicine records, warning nurses to avoid dosage omissions, giving the appropriate data to help handover between professional groups and shifts, and asking questions to nurses, prescribers, or pharmacists (Jha, Doolan, Grandt, Scott, & Bates, 2008). Conclusion Patient safety in health care facilities can be increased the implementation of electronic medicine administration records. The application of eMAR has significantly minimized the rates of medicine administration errors and also the possible adverse drug effects but it has not completely eliminated medicine errors.

In addition, advantages are expected to be reliant on how the systems are effected and practically applied. Additional analysis on the impacts of eMAR on patient safety of the medications administration in the United States hospitals are needed to involve both end users (patients) and policymakers. The literature reviewed above suggests that there are high chances of improving patient safety and health care quality through the implementation of the eMAR systems in the US hospitals. , Kuehn, L. , Kumar, R. R. , Thomas, A. , & Mekhjian, H. Doi:10. 1016/j. cnur. 012 Boonstra. A. Fortenberry Jr, J. L. , & McGoldrick, P. J. Internal marketing: A pathway for healthcare facilities to improve the patient experience.  International journal of medical informatics, 77(5), 291-304. Herrett, E. , Gallagher, A. M. , Bhaskaran, K.