Source: Madeline Lassche, MSNEd, RN and Katie Baraki, MSN, RN, College of Nursing, University of Utah, UT

According to the 1999 Institution of Medicine (IOM) report titled To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, medication errors are significant contributors to avoidable patient deaths in the hospital environment. Therefore, to maintain patient safety and to avoid medication errors, it is important that every nurse adheres to at least five "rights" of safe medication administration. These five "rights" refer to the right patient, right medication, right medication dose, right time of administration, and right route of administration. The nurse should check for these five "rights" at three different checkpoints points in the mediation administration process: 1) while comparing the Medication Administration Record (MAR) when withdrawing medications, 2) while comparing the MAR to acquired medications, and 3) while comparing the MAR to both the medication and patient identifiers at the bedside. This video will demonstrate the acquisition component of medication administration, which consists of performing the five "rights" during the first, second, and third checkpoints.

Prior to acquiring medications from a medication dispensing system (MDS), the nurse must consider whether the medication is appropriate, given the patient's medical conditions, medication allergies, and current clinical status and when previous doses of the medication were administered. In addition, certain medications may need preparation prior to administration and prior to the second medication safety check. There are different electronic MAR software, including hardcopy MARs, as well as different types of MDS. The general steps for each system are the same, and although this video illustrates the steps performed using one of these software tools, the safety checks highlighted in this section are universally applicable.