Doctor's orders...

What exactly do you mean? Your question is a little vague.

If the doctor comes in and writes a new med order in the patient chart then we either flag it for the sec to process or do it ourselves: fax it down to pharmacy, transcribe it over to the MAR, make sure the pt. has education materials for it, then give it when its available/ timed for.

If it's a telephone/ verbal order, make sure to read it back to the doc so that it is written exactly as the doc intended, then process as above.

For other orders that do not involved medications, but tests etc. they do not have to be generally faxed or communicated to the pharmacy, but most likely are entered into an 'ordering' system in the computer that communicates with the other departments and central supply. This is usually done by the secs but can also be done by the nurses. Once the order is processed, it is generally 'signed off' (initialled and timed/dated) by the person who put the order in, and 'signed off' again by the patient's RN, which is the nurse's way of signifying that she is aware of the order and that it was put in completely.

Hope this helps!

Cardiac-RN, BSN, PCCN