REFLECTIVE LOG

Today Sir Zubair sent us to LRH. During the clinical placement,

Sir Zubair sent all of us to psychiatric ward because there is only
one psychiatric ward in LRH. There we met with the head nurse,
she assigned us different patients to take history from them but
the patients were less, some were went to home for leave,
therefore one patient was assigned to a group of students. A
35year patient whose name was Hammad khan was assigned to
us. When I started taking history from the patient and filled the
ABCT forms, The patient was a little bit unstable. I informed the
staff nurse about his condition, then I continued my work. After
the completion of my assigned work, I started to check the
medication charts, so that I gained a little bit experience. When
I checked the medication chart of that patient, He was on
routine medications including Tab olepra which is ant
 REFLECTIVE LOG

psychiatric drug. The drug was prescribe with 10 mg dose and

BD frequency. When I observed the file, all the routine
medications including tab olepra were given by the staff nurse
but tab olepra was also given by the night shift recently. The
maximum dose of the drug for the patient was 10 mg, BD, but
the patient had given 20gm with the overdose of 10gm. This
critical incident made me felt anxious about the overdose of
the drug, because it may affect the patient with severe adverse
effects, but by the grace of Allah, the patient was not serious,
he was a little bit unstable. By observing this incident, I
evaluated that nurse was careless regarding the care of patient
because he didn’t check the documentation of the previous
shift as he documented in the medication chart. He also didn’t
ask from the patient about the recent medications that were
given to him. I also noticed that the nurse was on double shift
because he told me that he was working double shift at that
morning. Choragi, Moocher, & Esan, (2013) stated that
medication errors more likely occur from the nurses’ due to
tiredness, careless, high workload, stress, poor communication
and deficit of knowledge and skills as well as who work long
hours shifts (more than 8 hours). It is the safe practice of
administering drugs to patients following principle of five rights
such as the right patient, the right drug, right dose, the right
time and the right route (Medication Handling in NSW Public
Health Facilities, 2013).
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A nurse should require getting an education and training to be

a competent and confident nurse to perform safe medication
administration practice for patient safety. Nurses should also
require education on how to handle workload and prioritise the
tasks for the patient safety and to deliver the quality of care to
patients. Nurses should be kept in mind the importance of the
five rights of medication administration even in the busy
working situations and they shouldn’t be in hurry while
administering drug to prevent medication errors. In future if
situations like this occur during my clinical duty, I will guide the
nurse about the medication administration rights as well as
documentation that you have to follow the five rights of
medication administration and you should look for the previous
shift documentation in any condition to avoid medication
errors.

The End