I recently moved to a new state that has very different scope of practice laws than the state where I come from. I was trained as an RN to take my responsibility of administering medications extremely seriously. The five (seven) rights of medication administration and all that; making sure I was aware of indications, contraindications, potential side effects and complications of every single med I ever gave. We learn this stuff in school and I for one have always taken it very seriously.
My new state allows unlicensed personnel like medical assistants to dispense meds, including injections. I am so uncomfortable with this practice and was wondering if it's common. I know medical assistants go through training and I have to assume that the training is adequate. But I can't believe that the training is truly equivalent to what we go through as nurses to enable us to safely administer medications. It seems like a huge liability issue, not to mention potentially unsafe if the MA is unaware of some medication contraindication or something.
Thoughts?