Medication Administration

A reader contacted me towards the beginning of this last semester and asked my opinion on getting patient assignments. She stated that for her medical/surgical rotation she would go to the unit the morning of clinical and get her patient assignments and write down their history and medications for the day. In her opinion this did not give her enough time to fully understand the purpose of the medications and when she was administering them her instructors would give her a hard time about not fully understanding their function. This provided anxiety and made the reader feel a little unsafe.

When I was in nursing school I had to go in the night before the clinical in order to get my patient assignments and write down their medications. I then had to write out a medication list stating every drug, its purpose, route, duration and side effects. Even though this was a lot of hard work, the next morning when my instructor asked questions about why I was given the medication, I was able to provide a more thorough answer. I also had to create a patient care map. This included my patient’s diagnoses, pathophysiology, drugs, treatments, side effects, etc. It was a great tool to see how every little thing is connected and why we were providing the care we did.

I remember drug administration being one of the most stressful parts of my clinical rotation. Instructors did expect you to know what you were giving and why. If you are able to go in the night before, like I was, I would highly recommend it. If you are not allowed to, then perhaps they would allow you to come to clinical early in order to read your medications and get a good handle on why you are giving them. You could always bring your medication book to clinical with you, or there are even some great PDA or IPhone applications that provide all of the medication information you need.

As I explained to my reader, eventually this process will become a lot easier. The more you see the same medications over and over again, the easier it will be to cross them off the list. Then you will mainly have to focus on the unusual medications that are not commonly given.

I hope this helps those of you that are going through this process now, or will be in this next semester. If anyone has any other tips or advice for getting a handle on their medications for the day, I would love to hear it!