Medication Errors at Nursing Homes: What to Look Out For

If you have a loved one in a nursing home, monitoring their medication is a very, very important function you can do in assistance, hopefully with the nursing home itself. So the only way you can monitor the medication is you need to ask the nurses to see the medication administration records. There is great laws in place and great record-keeping requirements that nursing homes are supposed to maintain to make sure that the right medications are going to the right people at the right time. The first step for a family member to monitor their loved one’s medications is to check these sheets and inquire why your loved one is getting sometimes multiple medications. So anybody who’s monitoring or advocating for a loved one in a nursing home needs to know every medication their loved one is on, how frequently it is administered, why they are on it, and has someone recently reviewed to make sure A) they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing and B) that they’re not interacting with each other in a way that is harming your loved one.