Empowering nursing practice with information: Medication management data

As a major component of nursing value-added care activities, medication management activities represent a potential opportunity to influence and improve patient-centric care models. In the course of a shift, nurses are often challenged with fragmented or incomplete representation of information around medication delivery status, dispensing trends, and administration activities, all of which occur in a complex environment of care.

The medication administration process (MAP) can represent up to 40% of nursing activity. It involves assessing the patient, gathering medications, confirming the "rights" of medication management, administering medication, documenting administration and observing for therapeutic effects.⁴ In US healthcare, over 60% of patients are prescribed at least one medication; 15% take five or more medications.⁵ When caring for hospital inpatients, medication errors occur at a rate between 4.8-5.3%, and are the cause for 1 of 131 outpatient and 1 of 854 inpatient deaths.⁶ Providing nurse innovators and leaders with relevant, streamlined, and robust data around risk factors that contribute to medication management errors and adverse events represents one example of an area for innovation in future nursing practice. Nursing innovation and collaboration in medication management can position the nursing community as owners and inter-professional leaders of patient practice evolution, reflecting the underlying expectations that make nursing the most respected profession in the United States today.⁷