Medication Error Disclosure: Ethical Implications
Although making mistakes may be an inevitable fact of life, when nurses make errors in regards to medications, they have an obligation to report the error. From a deontological ethical perspective, the fact that the consequences of the error were minor or nonexistent is irrelevant. The existence of error is still significant in highlighting some failure, either in the administering advance practice nurse’s preparation and use of standardized operating procedures, or the procedures themselves. From the point-of-view of professional ethics, reporting errors has a vital role in preventing future errors from occurring. This should be at the forefront of the nurse’s mind, not protecting her own reputation or that of the institutions’ reputation.
According to Wolf & Hughes (2008), “reporting potentially harmful errors” should encompass all errors including “that were intercepted before harm was done, errors that did not cause harm, and near-miss errors is as important as reporting the ones that do harm patients” (par.2). The individual who commits the error is seldom, for self-interested reasons, the best person to determine whether an error is serious or not. When intercepted errors reveal critical deficits in the institution’s standardized operating procedures as well as issues with the nurse’s own actions, this can be used to prevent more serious consequences from occurring later.
Ethical and Legal...
References
Chamberlain, C., Koniaris, L., Wu, A., & Pawlik T. (2012). Disclosure of “nonharmful” medical errors and other events duty to disclose. Archives of Surgery, 147(3):282–286. doi:10.1001/archsurg.2011.1005
Sorrell, J.M. (2017). Ethics: Ethical issues with medical errors: Shaping a culture of safety in Healthcare. OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 22(2). DOI: 10.3912/OJIN.Vol22No02EthCol01
Wolf, Z. & Hughes, R. (2008). Error reporting and disclosure. NIH. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2652/
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