Nurses have traditionally relied on five vital signs to assess their patients: temperature, pulse, blood pressure, respiratory rate and oxygen saturation. However, as patients hospitalised today are sicker than in the past, these vital signs may not be adequate to identify those who are clinically deteriorating. This paper describes clinical issues to consider when measuring vital signs as well as proposing additional assessments of pain, level of consciousness and urine output, as part of routine patient assessment.
Nurses are responsible for ensuring safety and quality of patient care at all times. Many nursing tasks involve a degree of risk, and medication administration arguably carries the greatest risk. Unfortunately, patients are frequently harmed or injured by medication errors. Some suffer permanent disability and for others the errors are fatal. Nurses have traditionally followed the five rights of medication administration (patient, drug, route, time, dose) to help prevent errors, and more recently, the seven rights (including documentation and reason). This article identifies nine rights of medication administration.
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