Medication Safety: Your Role in Preventing Errors

Medication errors are one of the most common types of medical errors in healthcare. They happen to careful, well-intentioned professionals, and they can cause serious harm. Patients who are informed and engaged are a powerful additional layer of safety — not because you are responsible for your care team’s performance, but because active patients catch errors that would otherwise be missed.

This guide explains how to be a safe, informed partner in your own medication management during IV therapy.

The Five Rights of Medication Administration

Healthcare providers use a framework called the Five Rights before administering any medication. Understanding this framework helps you ask the right questions:

Right patient — is this medication being given to the correct person?
Right medication — is this the medication that was ordered?
Right dose — is the amount correct?
Right route — is it being given through the right method (IV, oral, subcutaneous)?
Right time — is it being given at the scheduled time?

Some frameworks add right reason and right documentation as additional rights. The point is that each of these elements must be verified before a medication is given. As a patient, you can participate in verifying several of them.

Your Identity: Verify Every Time

Every time a nurse or other provider is about to give you a medication, administer an infusion, or draw blood, they should ask you to state your:

Full name
Date of birth

This is not bureaucratic tedium. It is a safety check to ensure the medication prepared for you is not accidentally given to another patient. Patients in adjacent beds, patients with similar names, and patients moved to new rooms are all scenarios where identity confusion can occur.

Your role:

Provide your name and date of birth when asked — do not just say “yes” when asked “Are you Jane Doe?” Actively state your name. Passive confirmation allows errors to slip through.
If the nurse does not ask, you can initiate: “I just want to confirm — you’re verifying this is for [your name]?”
If your wristband is missing or unreadable, ask for a replacement before any medications are given

Know Your Medications

A patient who knows what medications they are receiving — by name, purpose, and expected schedule — is a patient who can catch errors.

Know:

The name of each IV medication you are receiving
What each medication is for: “This is my antibiotic for the bone infection”
The approximate infusion duration: “This usually takes about 30 minutes”
How often it should be given: “I get this twice a day, usually around 8 AM and 8 PM”
The expected side effects to watch for

If a nurse brings a medication you do not recognize or that does not seem to match your usual schedule, ask before it is given:

“What is this medication?”
“Why am I receiving this today?”
“This is different from what I usually get — can you confirm this is correct?”

A professional nurse will answer these questions calmly and clearly. If the answer does not make sense or the nurse cannot explain it satisfactorily, ask them to double-check with pharmacy before proceeding.

Allergy Verification

Every time a new medication is started, your nurse should verify your allergy list. If you have a known drug allergy, you should:

Confirm that your allergy is documented on your chart (visible on your wristband and in the record)
Actively tell the nurse about your allergy when a new drug is introduced: “Before we start, I want to confirm that my allergy to [drug] is in the chart”
Understand the difference between a drug allergy (immune reaction — rash, hives, anaphylaxis) and a drug intolerance or side effect (nausea, stomach upset) — both are important to document, but they have different implications for which alternative medications are safe

Questions to Ask Before Any New IV Medication

For every new medication introduced during your IV therapy:

“What is this medication called?”
“What is it for?”
“Is this a new medication or one I’ve had before?”
“What are the most likely side effects I might notice?”
“What side effects should make me call my nurse immediately?”
“How long will I be on this?”
“Does this interact with any of my other medications?”

Asking these questions serves two purposes: it ensures you are informed, and it prompts the nurse to pause and consciously confirm the details — which is itself a safety step.

What to Do If Something Seems Wrong

Trust your instincts. If something about a medication, a dose, or a schedule seems different from what you expect, speak up before the medication is given. It is much easier to catch and correct an error before administration than after.

How to speak up:

“This looks different from what I usually receive — can we double-check this?”
“I thought I was getting this medication in the morning, not at night — is this correct?”
“This bag is a different color/size than usual — can you confirm the dose?”
“The pump seems to be set to a different rate than yesterday — is that intentional?”

If you feel dismissed when you raise a concern, escalate. Ask to speak with the charge nurse. Ask for the pharmacist to be consulted. Patient safety concern escalation is appropriate and expected.

Safe Medication Management at Home

When you manage IV medications at home (home OPAT, TPN, etc.), you take on additional responsibility for safe medication handling:

Before every dose

Check the expiration date on the bag
Check the label: correct drug name, correct dose, correct patient name
Inspect the bag: clear solution (or correct color for the drug), no particles, intact seal
Confirm the dose time in your log

Storage

Keep all IV medications in their designated, properly temperature-controlled space
Do not store medications in areas with temperature extremes (a car in summer, near a stove)
Keep medications away from children

If something looks wrong with a bag

Do not use a bag that:

Has a cloudy appearance (unless it is normally cloudy — e.g., lipid-containing TPN)
Contains visible particles or floaters
Has a broken seal or damaged packaging
Is expired
Has a label that does not match your prescription

Call your pharmacy. Do not proceed with a suspicious bag.

Missed doses

Do not double-dose (take two doses to make up for one missed) without specific guidance from your pharmacist or care team
Call your pharmacy or OPAT coordinator if you miss a dose

Medication disposal

Do not pour unused IV medications down the drain or throw them in regular trash
Ask your home infusion pharmacy about safe disposal — many provide return bags or advise on medication take-back programs
Sharps (needles, Huber needles) should be disposed of in a sharps container — do not place loose sharps in garbage

Medication Interactions

IV therapy often involves multiple medications simultaneously — the primary IV drug, pre-medications (anti-nausea, steroids), and your existing oral medications. Interactions between these are possible.

Always provide a complete medication list — including:

All prescription medications
Over-the-counter medications (including antacids, sleep aids, vitamins)
Herbal supplements and natural health products (St. John’s Wort, ginkgo, fish oil, garlic — all have known drug interactions)
Recreational substances

Ask your pharmacist if you have questions about whether a specific supplement or OTC medication is safe to take during IV therapy. Pharmacists are the drug interaction experts on your team.

Pump Rate and Settings

Your infusion pump is programmed by your nurse with specific rate settings. These are based on your prescribed medication and your clinical assessment.

You should not adjust the pump rate yourself unless you have been specifically trained to do so for your home infusion (e.g., a gravity drip that you have been taught to adjust for infusion completion).

However, you should alert your nurse if:

The rate displayed on the pump does not match what you have been told to expect
The pump appears to have restarted from a different rate after an alarm
The infusion appears to be running faster or slower than usual (very full bags emptying unusually fast, or very slow drip visible in the drip chamber)

Speaking Up: It Is Always Appropriate

Patients sometimes feel reluctant to speak up about medication concerns because they do not want to seem difficult, uninformed, or like they are questioning a professional’s competence. Please consider:

Medication errors happen even in excellent hospitals and to excellent nurses — not because of incompetence, but because healthcare is complex, busy, and human
Every patient safety initiative in modern healthcare explicitly asks patients to speak up
A nurse who is confident and performing correctly will welcome your confirmation checks — they see it as shared safety vigilance, not criticism
An error caught before administration is a near-miss; an error that reaches the patient is an adverse event. Your question at the right moment can be the difference

You are entitled to know what goes into your body, when, why, and in what dose. Every time, without exception.

This guide is for educational purposes. Active patient participation in medication safety is encouraged by every major healthcare safety organization, including The Joint Commission, Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), and the World Health Organization.