The 6 Rights

There are six rights of medication administration They are:

The RIGHT:
1. Patient
2. Drug
3. Dose
4. Route
5. Time
6. Documentation

The six of these are very important. One of the most common med errors is due to a nurse giving a med to the wrong patient. What a dumb mistake. The first thing you always do when dealing with any patient is check their ID bracelet and compare it to documentation (MAR). The right drug is important because many names of common drugs are very similar. There are lookalike/soundalike medications that can cause a med error and huge complications with your patient. Dosage is important. If something written on the MAR doesnt look right, stick with your gut. It could have been transcribed wrong. The route makes a huge difference. Something that is given IM instead of SubQ changes how quickly the med is absorbed and could have dire consequences. Time: make sure all meds are due within 30 minutes of the time you're giving them. With pain meds, make sure the last dose was not given 10 minutes ago. Lastly, document everything you do immediately after. If you are working with another nurse, they could accidently double up a med if you did not document that it was already given.

This is a list of lookalike/soundalike medications from the joint commissions.

http://www.jointcommission.org/LASA/

This is just a picture of some OTC medications. Depending on your facility, they may or may not need an MD order. Although they are OTC, they can be just as dangerous as precription drugs if administered wrong.