hi and welcome to this video we're going to talk about the nurse's responsibility and how to safely give medications to your patients ready all right so what are the five rights of medications if you haven't heard that terminology before these are really important because if you follow each one of these five rites of medication you will never make a medical error so i know when i've had to review charts and look at medication errors one of these five rights was not followed 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 five rites of medication so let's take a look at what these are first of all you want to make sure before you give the medication that you have the right drug 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 now all of this information will be included in the physician's order or the healthcare provider's order so you would be surprised at how many drugs sound very similar or packaged very similar to another medication 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 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 i could have caused significant harm to my patient if i had pushed that medication iv so don't just assume always take particular care to make sure you read the label next right patient 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 birth date just to be sure that you've identified that patient as the correct patient to receive the medication now dosage sometimes things change you want to make sure that the dose that you're giving is appropriate for that medication and for that patient right route remember that impacts how much drug gets to the site so you would never want to give an oral dose iv and timing sometimes this can be pretty tricky in the hospital because you're seeing multiple patients you're giving medications to multiple patients it becomes very complex to keep everything on time 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 so those are the five big ones right drug right patient write dose write route and write time 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 now there's some other things that people keep adding to the five rights and they're actually really helpful so i wanted to talk about them so you have an idea of what those are first of all write documentation 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 you want to make sure that you do the appropriate assessment and as we learn through the different drug categories and families i'll help you understand one of the most important assessments to do you want to evaluate how that patient is responding to that medication now the patient always has a right to education and lastly they have a right to refuse the medication now they might seem kind of odd but remember it's a therapeutic relationship that the nurse has with the patient and no matter how much we think a patient needs a medication they always have the right to refuse 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 but always know that they have the right to refuse any medication okay so every nurse should know the five rights for the medication because we're the last line of defense for the patient 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 we are the person that gives the medication to the patient 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 [Music] you