Pharmacology is the study of drugs, their origin, uses and reactions in the body in the body of humans. Pharmacology emerged as a key area in American Medicine particularly after John Jacob Abel stressed the significance of chemistry in the field of medicine. Moreover, pharmacology mainly focuses on how drugs react in the body of a person to alleviate the person from the effects induced by various disorders which a person might suffer from. This essay, therefore, offers discussion on the linkage that exists amidst pharmacology, pharmacodynamics, and pharmacokinetics along with the list of the most common mistakes in medical administration together with the measures for preventing the errors.
Pharmacology refers to the science of drugs and the effects of drugs in the body of living things. Its role is to assist medical professional to understand why the changes are taking place in the body of an individual after taking medication, and this would significantly assist in discovering new medicine to assist in fighting disorders and to improve the effectiveness of medicines.
Pharmacology
Pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetics as fields in medicine are related to pharmacology through being the branches of pharmacology. Pharmacodynamics as a branch of pharmacology involves the study of physiological or biological impacts induced by the varying concentration of drugs on the body of a person over a given duration.
It further involves the localization of drugs to a specified location of the body. Most of the medications normally tend to have to have effects on more than one part of the body, and they may induce some unwanted side effects. Therefore, pharmacodynamics relates to pharmacology thus offering insight on the specific effects of drugs on the parts of the body, and this would significantly improve the study of drugs thus enhancing pharmacology as a field in medicine.
Pharmacokinetics
Pharmacokinetics, on the other hand, is the branch of pharmacology that deals with the study on how drugs are absorbed, metabolized and excreted by the body. Habitually, a drug may be administered to the body through the mouth or injection. The form of response of an individual to a specific drug typically depends on the inherent pharmacological properties of the medication at its site of action.
It is, therefore through the aid of pharmacokinetics that the understanding on how the drugs and absorbed, metabolized and excreted from the body would be made available to the medical professionals who might disseminate the same knowledge to the patients.
Pharmacokinetics thus relates to pharmacology by shedding more light on how the medication administered to treat various infections is absorbed and excreted from the body after assisting the body in fighting the disease. This would significantly enhance the knowledge of pharmacology and drugs in general.
Similarly, medication error refers to any preventable event that may lead to inappropriate use of medication or patient injury. In contrast, the medication is controlled by health care professionals and the patients. The error in medication administration therefore, include
- Failure to administer medication to the right patient
- Failure to administer the right medication
- Failure to administer medication at the right time
- Failure to administer the right dose of medication
- Failure to administer medication through the right route.
Errors
The errors in medication administration can be prevented through the use of various strategies which include but not limited to ensuring the five rights of administration of medication and following proper medication reconciliation procedure.
Other strategies include double-checking the procedure for drug administration, considering using name alerts, and having the physician or another nurse read the back of the medication to be administered to the patient receiving healthcare. Nurses must ensure that the institution’s policies regarding medication transcription are adhered to.
While transcribing medication as prescribed, the nurse should ensure that the medication is prescribed for the correct patient, in the right dosage, through the correct route promptly. This would resultantly help prevent errors in the administration of medication.
Furthermore, to prevent the occurrence of errors in medication administration, it is required that the health care institutions must have in place mechanism for medication reconciliation when a patient is transferred from one institution to another.
This would enable the transferred patient to continue receiving the same medication as those which the patient was receiving before being transferred to another healthcare institution, and this would as well assist in preventing medication error. Additional mechanisms of preventing error in medication administration include proper storage of medication for proper efficacy and availing drug guide at all times of drug administration.
Conclusion
In conclusion, pharmacology is the field in medicine which deals with the study of drugs. It has two main branches which are pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics which contribute towards enhancing understanding drugs and their mode of actions in the body. Moreover, administration of medication is usually associated with some errors which include but not limited to the failure to administer drugs to the right patient via the correct route.
