Returning to Practice

[thinmint]

Hi,

I'm an RN who has not worked with patients for 10 years. I'm being considered for a research position at a hospital. The job is 70% administrative and does not require me to be an RN but because I am an RN, I have to take the nursing medication administration test! I failed it by one question yesterday and have the opportunity to retake it. Below are two of the questions I may have gotten wrong and which may reappear on the test tomorrow! I still don't know what the correct answers are!

HELP!!!!!!!!!

You discover meds left at a confused patients' bedside. What do you do?

1. Give them. no

2. Call the doctor. no

3. Remove them and compare them to the MAR for this patient. maybe - seems reasonable - the medications could have even been poured for another patient - who knows.

4. File an incident report. maybe (for the purposes of the test)

A doctor orders a dose of a medication which is more than the upper limit of the standard dose. You call the pharmacist and he confirms the dose is larger than standard. You call the doc and he confirms he wants that dose. There's no more info. What do you do?

1. Give the medication. maybe. (there may be justification for the non standard dose even though the nurse in the question didn't ask what it might be)

2. Hold the medication and page the nursing supervisor. maybe

3. Give it but change the dose. no

4. I forget the 4th option but it didn't seem reasonable.

I got all of the calculations and the drug knowledge questions correct but the section with these scenarios did me in!!!!

Any input relating to the above 2 questions would be greatly appreciated.

[classicdame, MSN, EdD]

Guess you figured out by now they are wanting to know about your nursing judgment.

#1 - never give any medication you did not prepare yourself. Period. I would write the variance report.

#2 Chain of command question. You now know the dose is wrong. Your nurse practice act probably says something to the effect that you are not excused for doing the wrong thing no matter who tells you to do it.

Good luck!

[KR]

I totally agree with the poster above me.