Improving Patient Safety Through Accurate Medication Reconciliation

Medication errors due to incorrect medication reconciliation are a very present and serious problem in our microsystem. As an preop/postop outpatient unit, we see an average of 50 patients daily and perform medication reconciliations regularly. The problem is our nurses perform this task inconsistently and often incomplete, leading us to potential medication errors. During my CNL project, I worked with a committee of staff champions and developed a standard work guide for nurses to use in order to effective reconcile patient medications. We used fishbone diagrams, audit tools, surveys and led regular discussions in our huddles in order to develop this guide. Once implementation is complete, we hope to have at least 80% of our medication reconciliations to be accurate and a decrease in medication error related safety incident reports to no more than 21 reports (a 50% improvement) this fiscal year, ending in August 2016. In order to maintain sustainability, our staff champions will serve as resources for staff and we will implement our standardized medication reconciliation into our orientation and annual skills competency review