Running head: ETHICAL ANALYSIS 1

Ethical Analysis

Selina Dykes

Grand Canyon University: NSG324

January 16, 2019

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Ethical Analysis

Among the many quality indicators that are described and incorporated in the world of

nursing, medication errors have become a growing concern. A medication error results when a

nurse or physician overlook the seven rights to medication administration during the preparation

stage of passing medications. Looking into the article, “Measures to Prevent Medication Errors

in Intensive Care Units”, the authors discuss the various methods to distributing medications in a

safer manner. Concepts such as employing full time pharmacists, cultivating a positive

environment where nurses can speak up about their errors as well as creating an interruption free

preparation area can all lead to an increase in proper medication administration.

This article integrated ethics in the research by being sure to include evidence-based

recommendations which resulted in a fair and ethical study. Although the authors did not

complete their research on actual patients individually, they trialed intensive care units at several

hospitals. Additionally, they searched through various articles to summarize the top points for

four categories being: prescribing, transcribing, dispensing and administration. Prescribing

demonstrates the effectiveness of avoiding giving medications that the patient does not

necessarily need. Transcribing signifies the errors that are produced from handwritten orders that

are illegible. Dispensing explains that pharmacists should review all the drugs before distributing

and using certain fonts when writing drug names to make a distinct difference in names that look

similar. Finally, administration follows the five rights to medication. Nurses trialed different

methods such as wearing a yellow sash to symbolize to other health care professionals that they

were to not be disturbed (Plutínská & Plevová, 2019). With this, it was discussed that articles

chosen followed a certain criterion that made them considerable. This promotes a baseline

standard and allowed for the authors to write an article about topics that were relevant and
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proven to be seen in clinical settings. Some of the criterion included being published from 2008-

2018 in addition to it being focused on preventative measures of incorrect medication

administration. Databases such as EBSCO were included to uncover these articles giving the

study validity and specifications. Moreover, these methods successfully prevented research

misconduct because the articles and papers used were reliable and peer reviewed pieces instead

of featuring information taken from misleading websites.

Within this study the subjects’ rights were protected because the authors were sure to

include 189 different ICUs and 11 of which were further analyzed. Because of this, the study was

ethical because it displays the equality of information from each unit rather than holding one

hospitals ICU reputation over others. This protects the patients’ rights among these units because

by utilizing evidence-based practice, they were able to trial the four categories as mentioned

before to analyze if improving these specific concepts bettered the patient’s outcome.

Furthermore, the patients were able to exercise their autonomy of making decisions for

themselves as well as having the right to refuse these treatments and being a part of the trials

without any restrictions or compromise of care. Additionally, the authors protected the subjects’

rights by not mentioning names of the patients in the ICUs which shows that HIPAA was not

violated. By pulling articles from a reliable database like EBSCO, there was some form of

consent by the patient for their statistics to be used.

This study shows to be ethically sound because the authors maintained a professional

level of confidentiality by protecting the patients’ identity. In addition to this, they used reliable

sources to pinpoint certain concepts that can be improved in order to provide better care and less

medication administration errors. Additionally, only the names of hospitals ICUs were

mentioned rather than the individual patient themselves who have previously had a mishap with
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this quality indicator. Overall, quality indicators are ideas that enhance the care given to

patients. As a nurse, it is a priority to continuously try and improve these methods in order to

provide this high standard of care.

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Resources

Plutínská, Z., Plevová, I. (2019). Measures to prevent medication errors in intensive care units.

Central European Journal of Nursing & Midwifery, 10(2), 1059–1067. https://doi-

org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.15452/CEJNM.2019.10.0014