Scalability of Sustainable Business Models

Question: Discuss about the Scalability of Sustainable Business Models. Answer: Introduction: Medication errors are reported to be one of the many factors that are affecting the treatment of patients in hospitals and nursing homes. It is resulting in mortality of patients or severe adverse conditions of patients, which threatens their lives. Mistakes involving medication have resulted in the lengthening of the stay of the patients at the hospitals and increases expenses of patients. Data suggests that every year United States faces 7000 deaths, which are mainly due to different errors conducted by nurses while providing medicines to patients (Wahr et al., 2014). Researchers suggest that each of the medication error accompany a cost of about $2000 to $ 8750 and creates a pressure on the economical resources of the patient and the healthcare organizations as well (Kuo et al., 2013). Therefore, this report will mainly portray the different types of medication errors that occur in the healthcare settings and the contributing factors that result in such errors. It would also invol ve the policies that the healthcare sectors will publish in order to reduce the chances of medication error and the various strategies that they would uptake that would lessen such practice and provide safe healthcare service to patients. Discussion: With the advancement of healthcare in inventions of different strategies, interventions and medication for different diseases and disorders, rate of mortality in population of United States have decreased over the year. This had resulted in huge pressure on the healthcare organizations where patients get admitted due to disorders and illness that had no scope of treatment previously. This had in turn created a huge pressure on the healthcare professionals, as they have to attend more patients every hour. Often this pressure of handling huge number of patients leads to different types of errors out of which medication error is an important one (James, 2013). Present data shows that about 400000 Americans succumb to different medical errors annually. About 10,000 people are found to be suffering complication due to medical errors per day. It has also been found that a total cost of these errors tend to account for about $ 17 billion and may even extend to $ 29 billion every year (Parry , Barriball While, 2015) This consists of the lost income, productivity, disability and expense of additional care. They are not only harmful as it interrupts the economic stability of patients and healthcare sectors but also damage the reputation of the healthcare sectors. These result in loss of trust on the healthcare sector by the patient and his family members. They also reduce patient satisfaction and degrade the morale among the healthcare staffs. They also feel guilty and helpless in such situation, as they cannot change anything about it (Cho et al., 2014). Types of medication errors: Researchers have noted a large number of medication errors that may occur in a healthcare setting. This might be prescribing errors where a particular selection of the drug was not found to be appropriate based on the patients allergies or due to other indications. There may be also omission error, which occur when the nurse forgets to provide the medication to the patient at a fixed time before the next one is scheduled. Such errors may also include wrong time errors where the nurse had provided medication to the patient outside the predetermined interval instead of the scheduled time. Dosing errors have been reported by the researchers to be of the highest number and can include the prescription of the correct dose but administration of wrong dose (Hayes et al., 2015). Other than these, nurses are also found to practice improper administration techniques where the route of administering medication is not followed. Besides, nurses sometimes also make mistakes in drug preparation where the medicine gets wrongly formulated which means that they are either little or highly diluted. Besides, lack of communication is also found among prescribing physicians and other healthcare professionals that result in fragmented care errors (Latif et al., 2013). Contributors to medication errors: A large number of factors have been found that results in the occurrence of medication errors. Distraction is one of the factors that often result nurses to read improperly and lead to administration of wrong medication. This may be due to severe mental or physical pressure that the nurse may experience due to professional or personal reasons. Another factor that often leads to medication error is the nursing burnout. Often due to huge demands, nurses are forced to overwork. Such burdens affect them physically and mentally and they tend to make errors in medication due to exhaustion and overwork (Haw, Stubbs Dickens, 2014). Besides, improper environment in many healthcare settings may contribute to medication error. Absence of proper lighting, extreme heat or cold and many other environmental factors create distractions, which again lead to errors threatening patients life. There are other reasons, which have also resulted in the occurrence of medication errors. Often researchers have also noted that lack of proper knowledge among the nurses regarding the procedures of medicine administration and the precautions that should be taken (Nuckols et al., 2015). Moreover, they are also found to be not having proper idea about how a particular drug works, different generic names that they have, their contraindications which often results in medication errors. Moreover, researchers in many cases also see that the nurses are not competent enough in their role to obtain proper information about the patients. Incomplete patient information often results in medication errors (Lan et al., 2014). The nurses should have detailed knowledge about whether a patient is allergic to a medicine, the other medicines that the patient is taken and similar others to understand whether any drug-drug interaction or drug allergy would take place or not. The nurses should know about the previous diagnoses, their current lab results and others to deliver a safe care to the patients of the patient. In cases where the nurses are confused, they should always consult senior nurses or physicians or cross check with other nurses to develop a safe medication regime for the patients (Sahay, Huchinson East, 2015). Often memory lapses due to huge pressure of work have been noted. Here nurses, in spite of knowing a patient to be allergic, fail to remember it at the correct time and results in memory-based error. Another issue that had also been stated by researchers is the different systemic issues that healthcare sectors face. In many cases, the medication is not properly labeled, medications having similar names placed in close proximities, absence of bar code scanning systems often result in medication errors (Graves, Symes Cesario, 2014). Nurses who need to handle many patients might make mistakes and therefore systemic issues should be properly evaluated from time to time. Healthcare policies of the healthcare sectors: Therefore, it often becomes important for a healthcare organization to introduce policies that would prevent any sort of medication error. Two important policies need to be prepared by the higher authorities. First would be a policy that would mainly help the nurses to adapt ways that would lessen the medication errors. The policy should contain a detailed information about how a nurse should prepare herself in a skilled way so that she does not get involves in any cases of medication errors. The first guideline that it should provide is the gaining of proper knowledge about the patient whom she is attending. This should include the patients name, age, weight, vital signs, date of birth, diagnosis, allergies and current lab results. She should also encourage patients to use barcode armband (Kom Bates, 2013). Often nurses are seen to avoid scanning barcodes due to time constraints and due to added administration times of using such arm-band systems. This often leads to potential threats to patients life. The nurse should use all the information during disposal so that the patients safety can be ensured. They should also be guided to avoid shortcuts while providing care. After introducing important guidelines for the nurses about gaining knowledge about the patients, the next set of guidelines would be introduced to develop knowledge about the drugs. Nurses will have to develop proper knowledge about the importance of accessing current, accurate and readily available medications. This information might come from different sets of sources. This may include order sets, computerized information systems, order sets, patient profiles or text references. A nurse should not avoid her instincts if a concern arises in her mind regarding any medication (Starmer et al., 2014). She should immediately consult with a senior nurse or may go to a physician or a pharmacist for help. She should use the policy as a consort, which will benefit her in long run. The second policy would be published for the administrative system of the healthcare sectors. This would help the administrative systems to take steps that would help in the development of the system of medication administration where nurses will have fewer scopes to make mistakes. The administration will try to develop a system, which will keep lines of communications open. The SBAR tool can be used by the healthcare sectors to analyze the situation, background, assessment and recommendation for any miscommunication that had taken place. This tool is evidence based and will bring positive results in medication administration techniques. The nurses should be guided to double check high alert medicines. Errors may happen because of the medicines having similar packaging, sounding similar and others (Starmer et al., 2014). Therefore, the administrative system should assure that the drugs are having labels with higher fonts, tear off cautionary labels; possess different colors so that the drug doses can be differentiated and many others. The administrative system should also monitor that each of the drug, which is administered in the patients, is properly documented and recorded. Accurate documentation is very important and total records should be present about the name of the medicine, route of administration, time and response of the patient and even if there is any refusal of the drug by the patient. If not present, the bar-coding system should be implemented and properly train nurses to handle them. It should allow the verification of the six important medication rights. This should include right individual, right medication, right time, right dose, right route and right documentation. Another important domain that the administrative system should look into is for arrangement of training sessions for the nurse about the medications that get introduced into the facility (Salmasi et al., 2015). This training should include important policy related education about procedures and protocol that the staffs need to follow. These can be updated along with the comprehensive nurse CR programs, which empower nurses by including healthcare videos. This would prevent medication errors as well. Nurse educators and trainers should include important prevention tips and should clearly discuss the consequences that may arise on any error. The consequences should also be included in the policy like taking disciplinary actions, criminal charges, job dismissal, mental anguish and others. These would make them careful, as none would want to hamper their career and be a cause of a patients death. Conclusion: Medication error has been one of the leading concerns that every healthcare sectors is facing. A large number of initiatives are taken by every sector to reduce the rates of medication errors. 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