5 Rights of Medication
Unfortunately, I've seen cases where the five rights of medication use have not been met, and those five rights are to make sure you have the right patient, the patient is receiving the right drug, that is the drug that's actually been ordered by their physician, the patient receives the drug at the right time. The patient receives the right dose and the patient receives the drug by the right route, whether it's oral or I.V. or subcutaneous injection. I've seen cases where a medication was given to the wrong patient. It isn't that common, but it does happen. I've certainly seen cases where the wrong drug is given, especially where two drugs have a similar name but have very different effects. I've seen cases where the correct drug was given to the correct patient, but not at the correct time. So it's either given too often, which can cause a problem or not often enough, which could cause a problem. I've seen the wrong dose given many times, unfortunately, especially with narcotic drugs, which can cause death when the wrong dose is given, the wrong route. I've seen cases again where patients have died because a drug that's meant to be taken by a subcutaneous injection instead is given directly into an I.V., which has a much greater effect on the patient and causes death. I've literally seen just about every kind of medication error there is.