00:01
Hi, and welcome to this video,
where we're going to talk about
the nurse's responsibility
and how to safely give medications
to your patients.
00:09
Ready? All right.
00:11
So, what are the 5 rights of medications?
If you haven't heard that terminology
before, these are really important,
because if you follow each one of
these 5 rights of medication,
you will never make a medical error.
00:24
So, I know when I've had to review charts
and look at medication errors,
one of these 5 rights was not followed.
00:30
So it's really important when you're
learning to be a nurse
that you commit to yourself
that you'll never take a shortcut,
that you'll follow each and every one
of these 5 rights of medication.
00:41
So let's take a look at what these are.
00:43
First of all, you want to make sure,
before you give the medication,
that you have the right drug.
00:48
Next, it's for the right patient,
you have the right dose,
you're giving it by the right route,
and you're giving it at the right time.
00:58
Now, all of this information will be
included in the physician's order
or the healthcare provider's order.
01:03
So you would be surprised at how
many drugs sound very similar
or are packaged very similar
to another medication.
01:11
So you want to be very careful
that you always make sure
to read the label on the vial, on the bottle,
or the caplet before you
give the medication
to make sure that you have the correct drug.
01:22
I can remember when I was a brand new nurse,
I was supposed to give IV Lasix,
and someone had inadvertently replaced
that with a bottle of IV nitroglycerin.
01:32
I could have caused significant
harm to my patient
if I had pushed that medication IV.
01:37
So don't just assume.
01:39
Always take particular care to make
sure you read the label.
01:43
Next, right patient.
01:45
When you go into the patient's
room, you want to ask them
for all their medical identifiers. You're
going to want to ask them their name
and their birthday, just to
be sure that you've
identified that patient as the correct
patient to receive the medication.
01:59
Now, dosage. Sometimes, things change.
02:01
You want to make sure that the dose
that you're giving is appropriate
for that medication and for that patient.
02:07
Right route. Remember, that impacts
how much drug gets to the site.
02:11
So you would never want to
give an oral dose IV.
02:15
And timing. Sometimes this can
be pretty tricky in the hospital
because you're seeing multiple patients,
you're giving medications
to multiple patients.
02:23
It becomes very complex to
keep everything on time.
02:27
But you want to make sure that
you're giving that medication
at the appropriate time in order to
keep it as safe for the patient.
02:32
So those are the 5 big ones: right drug,
right patient, right dose, right
route, and right time.
02:40
And I promise, if you make sure that you
don't shortcut any one of those steps,
you'll always be on your way to
giving medications safely.
02:48
Now, there's some other things that
people keep adding to the 5 rights,
and they're actually really helpful.
So I wanted to talk about them
so you have an idea of what those are.
02:56
First of all, right documentation.
02:59
If it's a medication that has a certain
side effect or adverse effect,
I would want to make sure,
in my documentation,
that I included that the patient
either had signs of that,
or did not have signs of
that adverse effect.
03:11
You want to make sure that you
do the appropriate assessment.
03:13
And as we learned through the different
drug categories and families,
I'll help you understand what are the
most important assessments to do.
03:20
You want to evaluate how that
patient is responding
to that medication.
03:26
Now, the patient always has a
right to education, and lastly,
they have a right to refuse the medication.
03:32
Now that might seem kind
of odd, but remember,
it's a therapeutic relationship that
the nurse has with the patient.
03:38
And no matter how much we think
a patient needs a medication,
they always have the right to refuse.
03:44
You want it to be informed consent.
You want them to understand,
be educated as to what the medication is,
and why they're taking it.
03:52
But always know that they have the
right to refuse any medication.
03:57
Okay. So, every nurse
should know the 5 rights for the medication
because we're the last line
of defense for the patient.
04:06
I could share several stories with you
of things that nurses caught at the bedside
because we're a critically important
part of the team.
04:14
We are the person that gives the
medication to the patient.
04:17
So it's our job and our responsibility,
as patient advocates,
to make sure that we've thought through
all the potential risks for
this particular patient.