Adaptive Mechanisms

Adaptive Mechanisms

Introduction

Nursing is a noble profession and the basic role and responsibilities of a nursing professional involve the provision of best health care services to the patients. The patient care, support and safety are the prime responsibilities a nurse has to cater. This document evaluates the safe administration of medications in the nursing practice and the strategies that avoids the occurrence of error in the methodology.

Discussion

The nurses hold the prime responsibility of administering the medication in the safest way possible to the patients. The patients that are resident in nursing homes and hospital settings are greatly dependent on these nurses for the appropriateness of the medication timing and accuracy of the dosage. However, the medication administration errors are not uncommon in nursing practice. The most commonly occurring problem in this regard is the administration of wrong dose to the patient.

Dosage calculation and accuracy

Accuracy of a dose is necessary to ensure safe and effective therapeutic regimen. The doses need adjustments in accordance to the patient's age, sex and the disease condition. In case of paediatrics, the doses are different. For this purpose dose calculations are done. In order to ensure safe administration, the nursing professional should have competitive skills and extended knowledge regarding the dose calculation. The calculations are mostly done by using the mathematical formulas, so, the nurse should be capable of carrying out this complex calculation. However, in the hospitals and clinical settings, the calculations of the doses are done by the pharmacists. The nurses are recommended to perform the calculation to recheck the dosage accuracy. Many nursing professionals lack the ability of performing drug calculations. It is, therefore, essential that the nursing students should be prepared for the drug dosage calculations they might come across with, in the future. The professionals who are already in practice should also ...