Thesis
Transitional Care Medication Safety: Stakeholders' Perspectives
Washington State University
Master of Nursing (MN), Washington State University
08/2013
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/4379
Abstract
Purpose: To identify barriers to and solutions for improving medication safety and reducing medical liability during patients’ transition from hospital to home. Methods: A qualitative descriptive study, guided by the Sensemaking Conceptual Framework, was completed with 10 focus groups of stakeholders that were segregated according to whether they represented patients/family members or a professional group. During each focus group, two case studies about patients experiencing medication discrepancies following a hospital to home transition were presented. Participants were asked to identify factors contributing to medication discrepancies, health system solutions to prevent medication discrepancies, and how assignment of responsibility should be accomplished if patients were permanently harmed because of a medication discrepancy. Results: Stakeholder groups identified common barriers and solutions to hospital-home transitional care medication safety. Barriers to medication safety included themes related to patient/family-level factors (competency, retaining old prescriptions, and access to medication) as well as health system-level factors (communication and care coordination, complex discharge processes, staffing and time constraints). Solution themes were: improving information management, increasing access to medicines, and enhancing human resources. Participants across focus groups also reported that attributing responsibility for medication discrepancies was contextual and would require more detailed knowledge than was provided in the case studies. Conclusions: A wide range of stakeholders identified similar themes regarding barriers contributing to medication discrepancies during care transitions and solutions for reducing or overcoming barriers. Approaches to address many of the identified barriers are available. Study findings support more widespread adoption of evidence-based strategies and legislative provisions to improve transitional care medication safety and to reduce medical liability.
Metrics
4 File views/ downloads
25 Record Views
Details
- Title
- Transitional Care Medication Safety: Stakeholders' Perspectives
- Creators
- Suzanna L. Smith
- Contributors
- Cynthia F. Corbett (Advisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Research Projects, College of Nursing
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Nursing (MN), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; Spokane, Washington
- Identifiers
- 99900590529601842
- Copyright
- http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/; http://www.ndltd.org/standards/metadata; http://purl.org/eprint/accessRights/OpenAccess; In copyright; Publicly accessible; openAccess
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis