There are many difficult learning situations that I have encountered in my years of experience as a clinical preceptor and each experience provided an opportunity for me to improve my teaching skills. One of the most recent encounters that I have experienced is related to medication administration wherein I am assisting my students prepare medications for his patient. It is my routine activity to conduct a drug study with the student related to medication that they will give to their patients prior to actual administration of oral medications. My student completed the drug study sessions with me and is now ready to administer the medications to the patient who happens to be the mother of our leading consultants in the hospital. There are multiple oral medications to be given to the patient so one by one I asked the student to hand in the medication and its indication and action. The student was able to give the medication to the patient but the action and indications are all mixed-up making the patient doubt if the medications are really meant for her. I told her before entering the room to deliver the medications one by one and state each action indication as he hands in the drug to the patient. But he ended up giving all the medications all at once to the patient and randomly states the action indication as he remembers it. I know that I have to assist the student in her medication administration so we have to work together as a team. Good thing that we were able to ease the doubt and tension immediately and able to gain back the trust and confidence of the patient. My learning experience is that no matter how confident the student is during the drug study sessions prior to medication administration, never leave a student on her own during the actual administration because you’ll never know what will happen inside the patient’s room.
Good day Ma'am Czarlyn. Medication error is one of the leading problems in our practice, it's unacceptable in whatever form of reasoning it may be, especially nowadays, patient safety is always at the forefront of our priorities in providing care to our patients. Learners will always have those butterflies in their stomach when we start asking them about drug studies in the clinical area, which can be a make-or-break for them during the duty. But you can always notice is these types of errors come when our learners start putting their guard down and start to overthink the tasks that they are going to perform. I always remind my learners to take things one at a time to avoid overthinking things that will eventually lead to errors in performing their tasks. I usually go with each student every time they give medications, especially IV meds, but I just reason out that it's part of the process and my responsibilities as his mentor to be always there, not because we don't trust them, but it is what it is.