khunberri

Hey everyone! I have a quick question to ask all of your nurses! I'm a second semester nursing student, and I saw something during my clinical rotation that made me question whether or not what I saw my nurse do was okay. We had an elderly patient who was very hard to wake up. She was very sleepy, and didn't really respond when we were speaking to her. It was time for her morning medications (about six pills). My nurse tried giving the patient her medications one by one, but she ended up chewing one of them! After trying to wake the patient up so she could take her medications for several minutes, she placed the medications back in the drawer (they were all left in the little plastic medication cup). Later on, maybe a few hours later, she was able to give the patient her medication. My question is, are you allowed to place medications back in the drawer like that? If you realize that your patient is drowsy to the point where they ignore you and continue sleeping, what do you do?