The Six Rights Nurses Have In Medication Administration

Written for the Mass. Nurses Association, these are the most wonderful rights I have ever seen as a Nurse, for Nurses. Nurses are under such responsibility when it comes to medication administration; it is up to us to check each doctor's order for mistakes, illegible writing, incorrect dosages, open-ended directions; and if it gets by us, it is our fault, the Nurses, not the doctors. We are the final people to recieve an order for meds before administration.

To see the 6 Rights for Nurses was a very fresh idea. We are accustomed to going through the '5 Rights of Patient Medication Administration.' These are:

1. Right Patient
2.Right Medication
3. Right Dose
4. Right Route
5. Right Time

If all 5 are followed for each patient that receives medication, the chances of a mistake are nearly nil. These have been ground into our brains since Nursing School.

Enjoy reading this very wonderful idea of giving Nurses a head start on the very time-consuming, important, and huge responsibility of administering meds. This takes such a load off of us to not have to check and then double and triple check the simplest of orders. No longer needed is our constant vigilance of making sure everyone involved; from the Pharmacist, to the Doctor that wrote the order, did it correctly. As long as we follow our 5 rights for the Patient, everything should be just fine.

If we lived in a world that adhered to 6 simple steps by others involved in medication preparation and orders; we Nurses would actually have our own set of Medication Rights!

Happy reading!!


http://www.massnurses.org/News/1999/990600/sixrights.htm


"The Only Constant in Life....is Change."