My Experiences with Medication Administration

Administration of Medicine and the Importance of Safe Practices

Administration of medicine to patients is an important aspect of the healing process and should be done right and in the safest way to preserve the health of the patient. During my clinical practice sessions, I have had to deliver medications to patients and administer them personally. Such instances were very remarkable and have shaped up my hands-on experience with clients. I recall my first experience practicing to give pre os I failed to comply with the three-drug checks where I forgot to check the expiry date of the ordered medication. There was also Jay, who failed to comply with medication administration (Harris, et. al., 2014). During practicing a subcutaneous injection, Jay injected a needle that had air bubbles in it without realizing until it was too late. This was one striking event in a series of many students related experiences.

The Importance of Following Medication Administration Guidelines

In contrast, I observed my partner Len who followed the medication administration guidelines where she confirmed the administration of a subcutaneous injection perfectly while role-playing a nurse. During the procedure, Len validated the medication order with me, did two patient checks and three drug checks using the five rights of medication. Being present in the above incidences was the best thing to happen because the experiences make me feel like there is more to nursing than just care, and that medication administration is a really important procedure (Potter, et. al., 2016). This core practice reduces risks of worsening infections and keeps the population healthy. It, however, poses the risk of being sued to the hospital as it is liable for the student with mishaps during the procedure. It is important to note that the practice emphasizes the importance of details. My failure to comply with checkups ruined my first experience. It was, nonetheless an okay start because it pushed me to be more careful in subsequent procedures.

Strategies for Successful Medication Administration

That being said, I realized I should probably have had a clipboard and a pen to record down the drugs needed and to remind myself to check up on the drugs. Keeping in hand a reminding agent would have gone a long way to smoothen my practice sessions. Consequently, I have come up with a strategy to ensure success in the CPU sessions. I will always walk around with notebook and pen in hand to record important details, the next step should be to feed patient data into the hospital records so that in case of a revisit it saves me or any other person the stress of starting background data collection (Smeulers, et. al., 2015) This is all in accordance with the five rights of medication. The final step is exercising maximum precaution during drug administration to avoid complications. To put this plan in motion, I would require further contact with the nursing staff to compare their actions with those set out in my plan so that I do not, by any chance, falter in the future.

Works Cited

Harris, Margaret A., et al. “Using simulation to improve the medication administration skills of undergraduate nursing students.” Nursing Education Perspectives 35.1 (2014): 26-29.

Potter, Patricia A., et al. Fundamentals of Nursing-E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences, 2016.

Smeulers, Marian, et al. ”Quality indicators for safe medication preparation and administration: a systematic review.” PLoS One 10.4 (2015): e0122695.