Advantages and Disadvantages of Single Nurse over Double Nurse Checking of Medications:Nursing Help

Hi all,

I am a registered nurse. I guide/ tutor nursing students for their Nursing Assignments/ Essays/ Case studies/ Thesis etc. in Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane since 10 years.

I am putting here one of my work.

Several studies have been conducted in Australia and globally to understand advantages and disadvantages of single nurse checking of medications over double nurse checking of medications in medication administration. With the increasing reliance on medication therapy as the primary intervention for majority of diseases, patients receiving medication interventions are often exposed to potential harm as well as several benefits (Douglass et al., 2018). Benefits include effective management of the disease or illness, reduced progression of the disease and improved patient outcomes (Rohde & Domm, 2017). The harm from medications can occur unintentionally as well as in the form of a medication error such as administration of wrong drug, dose, route at wrong time (Rohde & Domm, 2017).

Nurses have a primary role in safe dispensing and administration of medications used to treat patient conditions in the clinical care settings. They have the prime responsibility of ensuring safe drug administration in order to sustain therapeutic effectiveness of the treatment regime as well as prevent adverse events (Blignaut et al., 2017). The role of the nurse is not only to administer the prescribed medication following the rights of medication administration, but also to ensure that each drug administered to the patient has a clear indication and more importantly, the outcomes are evaluated (Durham et al., 2016). With inadequate emphasis on patient safety, increasing workload, inadequate staff, fatigue, illegible handwriting, flawed dispensing system and issues with drug labelling often challenge the nursing professionals to ensure safe-medication practises (Sears et al., 2016).