"Mistakes are a sign that a safety problem exists, not that a nurse is doing a bad job" (Cohen, 2003, p.38). In hospitals across America nurses are making mistakes by administering wrong medications or the wrong dose to the wrong patient. While in nursing school everyone is taught to follow the five rights to giving medications.
             Technology is constantly changing the duties that nurses have to fulfill. Increasing technology has given nurses more time doing the other millions of things they must do. IV pumps have made administering fluids intravenously a lot easier for nurses. The pump allows the nurse to set the flow rate at a constant mL per hour. This allows nurses just to punch in the rate instead of calculate the number of drops the patient must receive in order to receive the ordered dosage. However, technology has a down side in the hospital setting too. It cannot always help to reduce medication accidents, because technology doesn't allow the nurse to administer the medication faster by not checking the five rights. Even though technology will help with the entire math, it will not substitute for always double-checking the medication to make sure it is given to the correct patient.
             No matter how careful a nurse is it is always possible to encounter a mistake. When reading charts it is hard to decipher exactly what a doctor has written. When reading a chart a nurse might think that one drug should be administered when really it should be something totally different. When writing in charts doctors and nurses use a system of symbols to allow them to document things faster and easier. However sometimes the abbreviations get easily confused. The commonly used abbreviation for micrograms is Mg. This can easily be confused for mg or milligrams. Sometimes an accident happens even though they do follow the five rights.
             Even though accidents do happen in the hospital many
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