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Is this legal?? Nurses Deciding Drug Administration Times

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Author Is this legal?? Nurses Deciding Drug Administration Times

midaz

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  • Joined: Nov 2007
  • Location:
  • Posts: 23

Thu Nov 25, 2010 6:11 pm

My hospital has recently decided that rather than having the medical staff write drug administration times in the medication chart that (as long as the frequency is charted) it is up to the nursing staff to decide what times drugs are given. So the Dr will chart the drug, dose, route and frequency but leave the times blank. My self and my coworkers are uncomfortable with this as we're in Theatre so potentially unfamiliar with the drugs we'd be deciding on times for the ward staff to administer.

I've had a look online but can't find a lot of information, and even one site which states nurses are able to "alter" medication times e.g. to suit meals being served for medications required to be eaten with food.

Are we just being overcautious or is this practice illegal?

sash

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  • Joined: May 2010
  • Location:
  • Posts: 45

Nov 25, 2010, 08:13 pm

Hi I work in aged care, and the Dr's pretty much never write the specific time a drug is to be given on our charts.
When a new chart is written up we write the times in ourselves based on what the DR has written eg mane', QID, nocte', daily etc.

Not sure if that helps any, but we certainly do that in our workplace.

Can you speak to your unit manager about your concerns?

megan08

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  • Joined: Jan 2009
  • Location:
  • Posts: 100

Nov 26, 2010, 08:08 am

Hi Midaz,

I'm currently studying my Div 2 EN in Melbourne and we have always been told it is illegal for a nurse to write in the drug administration times and it is purely up to the doctor to do this. My understanding is, if the nurse was to write in times they are technically altering the drug chart and that is against the law. Of course from what I have heard in reality the nurses always write up the drug admin times, but I wouldn't want to take the risk of making a mistake just to ease the doctor's workload! Hope this helps a little.

ticklish

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  • Joined: Sep 2009
  • Location: North Brisbane
  • Posts: 38

Nov 28, 2010, 09:19 am

technically no, nurses cant write in times because this is prescribing which is not a part of the registered nurse scope of practice. A nurse practitioner can because they hold the appropriate authority. However, sometimes the rules can be bent.

I work in an intensive care unit where all the times are left for the nurses (registered) to write in and this gets checked by the team leader (usually a clinical nurse or a very senior RN). When you have for example, 6 different IV medications due at the same time the doctors generally dont know how long it takes to administer each drug so they leave it for the nurses to decide to to prevent having 4 different IVAB's due at the same time that take 1hr each to infuse and you only have 1 or 2 access lines to use.

Again, talk to your line manager if this practice makes you uncormfortable in any way.

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