To determine the root-causes of medication errors several dimensions must be taken into consideration including education of the care provider, technology, and system modifications. Continuing education programs as well as teaching programs for healthcare personnel should seek to illustrate the significance of precise communication as well as documentation in an effort to reduce the likelihood of errors occurring. Likewise, when it comes to electronic prescribing systems and automated drug dispensing technologies the percentage of errors is greatly minimized. Also, maintaining the policies, which encourage healthcare teams to report or analyze the medication errors without any type of punishment, is also necessary to avoid such mistakes in the future.

Medication errors are defined as preventable actual or potential adverse occurrences that may result in wrong medication utilization or cause harm to patients (Ambwani et al., 2019). Different causes leading to these errors are showcased in scholarly information such as human error, system problems, and non-communication integration in a health care system (Bindra et al., 2021). According to a research, it emerged that healthcare providers are overwhelmed with work and this makes them potent a prescriptive and administering errors (Hawkins & Morse, 2022). Also, the use of abbreviations and/or poor writing particularly when completing prescriptions has also emerged as a common area of concern, with regards to the interpretation of drug orders (Ross et al., 2021). Writing also indicates that there is a higher common of errors where handoffs are done such as during admission or discharge whereby failure in medication reconciliation leads to patients receiving wrong dosages, or even completely wrong medication. Lack of proper knowledge in terms of interaction between different drugs or any side effects that a particular drug may cause is another cause of drug related mistakes especially among new practitioners(Garin et

al., 2021). These dimensions when learnt from the scholarly research help one realize that where the healthcare system can prevent are areas of concern.

The type of scholarly information chosen is quite useful in explaining the issues of medication errors by sharing knowledge-based information on the possible causes of medication errors and the consequences that patients are likely to face. For example, communication failures investigations explain that general problems, including ambiguous directions and low e-health record interoperability, foster settings vulnerable to medical adverse events. Additionally, research on providers’ fatigue and time constraints provide an appreciation of the people factor in the errors, emphasizing the importance of systems solutions such as decreasing the providers’ working hours or increasing the use of technology to cut on the physical human interventions. The analysis of the errors during passing over the patients shows that there is a high level of the medication reconciliation problem to identify the best solutions for healthcare organizations. This is especially evident by choosing this form of scholarly information which shows that medication errors are complex and often span from human, technological as well as procedural approaches that need to be enhanced to impact the total patient safety and outcome.

Medication errors include wrong dozes, wrong medications, wrong routes of administration, wrong times, wrong preparation and wrong patients given a medication. It therefore covers a vast array of mistakes such as wrong strength, wrong drug, no observation of a patient’s reaction to a drug, and medication transcription errors (Tsegaye et al., 2020). These are mistakes that can take place at some stage of medication process and they are most of the time system errors, human errors or communication errors between the healthcare providers.

Medication errors are reported to be one of the most common causes of injury and preventable harm in healthcare facilities on the global level which makes this issue a significant sphere of public health.

Medication errors involve various people that include the healthcare providers which comprises of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and even the patients themselves (Dionisi et al., 2021). Physicians may injure patients by administering wrong dosages or by not checking on the possibility of the react of the drug the patient is already taking with the new drug or treatment required; pharmacists may misunderstand physicians’ prescription or give out wrong drugs. Nurses are the primary representatives of care providers in USA and are in direct contact with patients and while giving out medicines and this may lead to the wrong medicine or wrong dose being given due to overwhelming pressures or miscommunication. Patients are also involved since they may not understand or follow dosing instructions correctly this may result into a medication error. Sources of these errors can be attributed to individual and structural factors resulting in their occurrence. This pressure is compounded by such factors as excessive patient workload, in the form of medication management, inadequate education on medication/drug interactions, cross-team communication breakdown, lack of integration of technology, and information verification and medication orders inadequacies. There emerge specific causes of these errors, and only when these causes are realized, can measures be put in place which would reduce the occurrence of such mistakes and therefore benefit the patients.

Medication errors can only be solved by employing various strategies that deal with human factors that cause the error in addition to the system. Two major strategies include enhanced professional education of healthcare providers regarding inter- drug interactions, dosing,

medication reconciliation, and nursing considerations during the transfer of patient care. The failure that arises from the lack of such knowledge can be eliminated by adopting better training practices that focus on such aspects. Also improving interprofessional communication using universal structures and probably avoiding the use of ambiguous language in a reasonably present order. Other technological advancement like e-prescribing, bar code, uses when administering drugs and CDSS has been found to reduce the errors as many processes are done through technology (Küng et al., 2021). These systems can alert the possibility of possible drug-drug interaction or alert the providers of incorrect dosages hence providing an added layer of safety. Another measures that are needed for improving the medication safety include the creation of the safety culture, which implies that employees should report adverse events willingly without any consequences.

The failure to manage medication errors poses a risk of severe outcomes in relation to the patient and the whole system. Failure to address the problem raises the danger of patient harm because mistakes with medications result in adverse drug effects, increased length of hospitalization, and sometimes death in extreme cases (Rasool et al., 2020). This not only leads to harm of patients but also have adverse effects on the reputation of the healthcare institutions. From a business point, medication errors lead to significant costs, which include, costs resulting from adverse effects related to wrong medication, legal cases, and fines. Furthermore, if ignored these problems cycling occurs in a healthcare enterprise forcing the entity to spend time and resources trying to cover up mistakes that could have otherwise been avoided. Lastly, not addressing medication errors is counterproductive to the concept of patient-centered care and can have negative implications for the healthcare organizations.

The measures regarding the possible solutions of medication errors reflects the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice of the health care (Varkey, 2020). .Patient’s welfare is at the center of medication safety because of the principle of beneficence. Provider education, meaningful use of IT, such as electronic prescribing systems, and transparency should serve as the main strategies through which healthcare providers would like to monitor and prevent adverse effects. For example, the implementation of Electronic Health Record systems to check the drug interactions increases patient health benefits by avoiding the complications that result from the drug-drug interactions (Bouzillé et al., 2019). Non-maleficence, which requires healthcare providers not to harm patients, is also covered by these interventions since the prevention of such medication-related mistakes will not harm patients. This ethical obligation is upheld when studies of general healthcare have demonstrated that whenever bar code systems are employed during the administration of medications, error rate reduces.

The principle of justice which propounds justice and fair share in provision of health care is also enriched when solutions to medication errors are enforced. Making sure that every single patient has an equal opportunity of having a safe and sound medication irrespective of his/her status in life or in whichever part of the world he/she comes from also helps in bringing justice in the healthcare field. For instance, other researches reveal that patient groups that are poorly served result in higher rates of medication errors since they do not have access to better technology or their healthcare personnel has inadequate training. Electronic systems’ widespread use, along with appropriate training for all involved healthcare settings, would repeal these standards of care disparities deteriorating the vulnerable populations’ quality of care. Therefore, through the

adoption of these solutions, the healthcare systems provide equal constitutional responsibilities of protecting, promoting, and fairly dealing with all the patients.

Medication mistakes are one of the biggest problems in the sphere of healthcare and are connected with adverse effects on patients, costs, and reputation of the realized healthcare system. Some of the causes of these preventable errors include human factors such as fatigue, system limitations, and poor coordination. It is possible to eliminate these mistakes by applying some strategies like providing the providers with knowledge on the issue, using technology means in the medical practice, and making the issue more transparent. Beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice are the ethical principles underlying these solutions that assign equitable care of all patients and reduce risk factors of medication errors.

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Bouzillé, G., Morival, C., Westerlynck, R., Lemordant, P., Chazard, E., Lecorre, P., Busnel, Y., & Cuggia, M. (2019). An automated detection system of drug-drug interactions from electronic patient records using big data analytics. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 264, 45–49. https://doi.org/10.3233/SHTI190180

Dionisi, S., Di Simone, E., Liquori, G., De Leo, A., Di Muzio, M., & Giannetta, N. (2021). Medication errors’ causes analysis in home care setting: A systematic review. Public Health Nursing, 39(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/phn.13037

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Rasool, M. F., Rehman, A. ur, Imran, I., Abbas, S., Shah, S., Abbas, G., Khan, I., Shakeel, S., Hassali, M. A. A., & Hayat, K. (2020). Risk factors associated with medication errors among patients suffering from chronic disorders. Frontiers in Public Health, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2020.531038

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