Administering Tylenol to a friend

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Hi everyone, I'm a second semester nursing student and today in class my professor said something interesting I had never considered. We are learning about medication administration currently and her question was: "Your best friend is at your house and complains of a headache. She asks you for some of your Tylenol. Do you give it to her?" Almost everyone said yes that it was ok because it was your friend, not in your job setting, and she was a consenting adult capable of making her own decision to take the medication. Our professor said that was wrong and that you can't give any medication to your friend because you are not a licensed prescriber and you could lose your license if something happened your friend. She also said that same applies to your own children. So what are you supposed to do if your kid is sick and needs cough medication? You're always accountable if something bad were to happen?

RN2: "Yeah, my friend called and said he was having some left arm numbness and wanted to know if he should go to a doctor. I was like nice try, jerk, I'm not giving you medical advice. I could lose my license."

Hahahahaha. Yes!!

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Specializes in critical care.

Give the friend a placebo. If the headache does not resolve, contact EMS.

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Your friend is at your house and asks if she can eat some of your Triscuits. Do you:

A. Give her triscuits, despite not having a diet order from an MD and lose your license.

B. Give her triscuits, despite them being dusted with garlic which is a dietary supplement not ordered by an MD and lose your license.

C. Smack the triscuits from her hand, clutch your license to your chest and weep, terrified of everything everywhere.

I hope that I get to work with someone like you when I'm in the hospital.

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Specializes in Behavioral Health.
Boston, do you like Triscuits?
Unless I have PKU and then you just killed me.

I'll start working on an MS Word incident report for you. Sounds like you might need it. :)

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Specializes in Critical Care.
I have never seen Good Sam laws I acted under non-Emergancy situations.

In order to successfully sue someone for not recognizing something as an emergency condition you'd have to argue that an emergency actually existed at the time, which would also then cause it to fall under good samaritan laws, although not all states are that specific.

Even if there were no liability protection you're still not going to be able avoid liability completely. You could just refuse to answer, and then when their conditions worsens they could point out that they informed you of their problem and you ignored them. You could direct them to ER, where it could turn out nothing is wrong and now your advice has cost them a large ER bill, or they catch H1N1 while in the waiting room and a week later they're on a vent in the ICU, there's no completely safe answer, just a reasonable and prudent answer which is the safest.

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Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.
In order to successfully sue someone for not recognizing something as an emergency condition you'd have to argue that an emergency actually existed at the time, which would also then cause it to fall under good samaritan laws, although not all states are that specific.

Even if there were no liability protection you're still not going to be able avoid liability completely. You could just refuse to answer, and then when their conditions worsens they could point out that they informed you of their problem and you ignored them. You could direct them to ER, where it could turn out nothing is wrong and now your advice has cost them a large ER bill, or they catch H1N1 while in the waiting room and a week later they're on a vent in the ICU, there's no completely safe answer, just a reasonable and prudent answer which is the safest.

In order to invoke the law you'd need to prove you did think it was an emergency and in which case why did you just give them APAP and tell them to go home? ;)

If you refused to answer there would be no establishment of duty.

If you sent them to the ED that would be standard of care and thus no tort.

I am sure that's how the disposition would go ;)

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Specializes in Critical Care.
In order to invoke the law you'd need to prove you did think it was an emergency and in which case why did you just give them APAP and tell them to go home? ;)

If you refused to answer there would be no establishment of duty.

If you sent them to the ED that would be standard of care and thus no tort.

I am sure that's how the disposition would go ;)

I can't find any state's good sam law that defines an emergency by whether or not the person recognized it as an emergency at the time. Going to the ED for a headache is not the standard of care. Answering the question does not establish a nurse-patient relationship.

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Specializes in Urology, HH, med/Surg.
Psshhhhh, just given them beyotches some vitamin C, they'll snap out of it.

Ixchel! I swear to grilled cheezus if this resurrects the devil your shins aren't safe!!! Lol

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Ixchel! I swear to grilled cheezus if this resurrects the devil your shins aren't safe!!! Lol

margin, we should pop up the flu thread.

There hasn't been enough drama on AN lately

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Specializes in Urology, HH, med/Surg.

So I suppose the best thing to do is have people sign a release of liability upon entering your home. That would cover a myriad of problems that might arise!

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Specializes in Urology, HH, med/Surg.
margin, we should pop up the flu thread.

There hasn't been enough drama on AN lately

Oh my! There's all kinds of drama I'd rather stir up than argue with that brick wall!! Lol

I mainly posted that because I like saying

'Grilled Cheezus'

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Specializes in Telemetry.
margin, we should pop up the flu thread.

There hasn't been enough drama on AN lately

I beg to differ! :p

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