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Introduction
The problems of medication error and issues about drug reconciliation play a highly adverse role in the contemporary medical care setting. It is stated that adverse drug events take place in the percentage of cases that fall within the range from 5% to 40% for hospitalized patients, and within the range from 12% to 17% for post-discharge patients (Mueller, Sponsler, Kripalani, & Schnipper, 2012). Medical errors are also very costly; it is estimated that in 2008, for example, they cost the U.S. nearly $19.5 billion (Andel, Davidow, Hollander, & Moreno, 2012). Thus, it is paramount to find out what leads to medication errors to be able to take action to address these causes and decrease the frequency of medication error occurrence in the medical setting. Therefore, this paper details the implementation of a research project aimed at uncovering the reasons for drug errors and problems with medicine reconciliation in the hospital setting.
A Step by Step Instruction for Implementation
On the whole, it is possible to implement the medication error and medication reconciliation research project in five main steps. These steps will include the creation of questionnaires for the interviews; contacting the Chief of Hospital Operations of the target hospital; gathering the sample of participants who will be interviewed for the proposed project; conducting the interviews, and analyzing the data which will be gathered throughout the project. More details related to each phase of this procedure are provided below.
Phase 1
At this step, the researcher will have to create the questions for the interviews which will be conducted with the participants of the study. It is paramount to stress that, since the sample will include two main types of participants, that is, health professionals and patients, it will be required to create two different questionnaires one for each type of the participants. These questionnaires will be comprised of five open questions each, formulated in a manner which will prompt the respondents to reflect upon their experiences about the medication error and the problems which caused issues with medicine reconciliation, and give a textual answer to these questions (Denzin & Giardina, 2016). It should also be stressed that at the beginning of the questionnaires, a form will be included that will ask for the informed consent of the participants to take part in the study.
Phase 2
After the creation of the questionnaires, it will be needed for the researcher to contact the Chief of Hospital Operations of the target hospital (the Tisch Hospital, which is located in New York City, NY). The researcher will make a phone call to the Chief of Hospital Operations and will ask for a face-to-face meeting aimed at discussing the details of the research with the hospitals official and gaining his or her permission to carry out the study. On the agreed date and time, the researcher will go to the office of the Chief of Hospital Operations, explain to him or her the nuances of the study, its importance, and significance, and ask for permission to conduct the research. It is expected that the Chief of Hospital Operations will allow to carry out the study; in the (unlikely) case of failure to obtain the permission, the researcher will have to choose a different hospital for the study.
Phase 3
After the permission to conduct the study will be obtained, the researcher will contact the potential participants (nearly five doctors, eight male patients, and seven female patients) by giving them requests to take part in the study (via the Chief of Hospital Operations). The explanation of the crux of the problem and the research study will be provided to the potential participants, and they will be asked to help with unveiling the causes of the frequent medication errors in the health care system. Once enough individuals will agree to take part in the study, the recruiting process will be ceased.
It should also be noted that, once the first participants are recruited, it will be possible to start the interviewing process, for not all the respondents need to be interviewed simultaneously, and some of them might become unavailable at a later date.
Phase 4
Once at least some participants are recruited, they will be interviewed by the researcher using the previously created surveys. The interviewees will be asked to provide their answers to the questions in an essay format. In addition to that, the interviews will also be tape-recorded to permit gathering more precise information from them. It is expected that each interview will last for nearly 30 minutes, but the participants will be allowed to take their time answering the questions if they desire to, to ensure that they provide full answers which comprehensively describe their opinions about the issues in question.
Phase 5
Finally, after the interviews are conducted, the researcher will be able to analyze the data gathered throughout the study. It will be needed to employ qualitative methods for data analysis (Denzin & Giardina, 2016). In particular, it might be decided that coding will be an appropriate technique for data analysis, in which case the texts gained during the interviews will be subjected to coding techniques to identify the main themes emerging in the responses of the participants (Saldaña, 2013), which may be employed to explain the potential causes of medication errors and the problems related to drug reconciliation in the given setting.
The timeframe of the Project
Table 1 below presents the detailed timeframe of the project, explaining how much time is expected to be required to carry out the steps outlined in the previous sections of this paper.
Table 1. A detailed timeframe of the project.
Required Budget
On the whole, it is possible to implement the proposed project without any substantial financial investment (which also means that it can be implemented by a student); the only necessary spending will be to cover the costs of printing questionnaires and forms. However, if the researcher decides to transcribe part of or all the audio recordings made during the interviews, this will require additional funding, depending on how much of the recording will need to be transcribed.
It is also possible to pay the participants some money for the interview, but giving them much money should probably be avoided to ensure that they participate because they have what to say, and not simply because they want to make some additional money.
Other Resources Needed
It is expected that apart from the time, the access to the phone, the computer, and the Internet, as well as some money to cover the stationery needs of the research, no other resources will be required for the implementation of the proposed project.
Conclusion
On the whole, it should be stressed that medication errors and problems with drug reconciliation lead to highly adverse outcomes for the patients, and cost the U.S. considerable amounts of money. The proposed study might help uncover the reasons for these problems. To conduct the study, a five-step process will have to be implemented, which is expected to take several months to complete.
References
Andel, C., Davidow, S. L., Hollander, M., & Moreno, D. A. (2012). The economics of health care quality and medical errors. Journal of Health Care Finance, 39(1), 39-50.
Denzin, N. & Giardina, M. (Eds.). (2016). Qualitative inquiry: Past, present, and future: A critical reader. New York, NY: Routledge.
Mueller, S., Sponsler, K., Kripalani, S., & Schnipper, J. (2012). Hospital-based medication reconciliation practices. Archives of Internal Medicine, 172(14), 1057-1069.
Saldaña, J. (2013). The coding manual for qualitative researchers (2nd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
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