A male patient looks at the medication in the cup and tells the nurse that he does not take one of the tablets. Which action should the nurse take next?
a. Tell the patient that the medications are correct.
b. Recheck the medication and the medica-tion order.
c. Call the pharmacy to bring the correct medication.
d. Remove the medication and document the incident.
B
A safe nursing intervention is to recheck both the medication and the order because the drug in question may be a new prescription, a new strength of the same medication, or a different generic form of the same medication. Regardless of the cause, the problem needs clarification. Telling the patient that the medications are correct is premature and misleading and denies the patient the right to information. The nurse does not know if the medications are correct yet. After checking the medications against the medication administration record (MAR) and the original prescrip-tions, he or she can call the pharmacy for help. The nurse removes the entire cup of medications and rechecks all of them. Documenting the incident is premature because the nurse needs to complete the investigation first.
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