Final answer:
Nurses are tasked with maintaining the current medication profile and reviewing all patient medications alongside pharmacists, who provide advice on drug interactions and effects. This responsibility is critical to patient safety, requiring teamwork and constant vigilance in drug management.
Step-by-step explanation:
In the healthcare setting, maintaining a current medication profile and reviewing all patient medications is a collaborative responsibility, typically involving pharmacists, nurses, and physicians. Nurses play a crucial role in this process, ensuring that the medication administration records are up to date, checking for potential drug interactions, and reviewing these details with the healthcare team. It is the duty of a nurse to verbally confirm the name of the procedure, verify the counts of needles, sponges, and instruments, ensure correct labeling of specimens with the patient's name, and address any equipment issues.
Pharmacists, who must hold a doctorate in pharmacy and be licensed, have the expertise to advise on drug selection, dosage, interactions, and side effects. They work closely with physicians and nurses, providing critical oversight of the medications prescribed and dispensed. The collaboration between these professionals is essential for patient safety, particularly when precision in drug dosages and concentration measurements is vital to avoid harmful or fatal outcomes.
As medications continuously require evaluation even after being marketed, through pharmacovigilance systems, both pharmacists and nurses must stay vigilant to monitor long-term safety and effects on different patient subgroups. The interplay between various medical professionals, including the authority dynamics between doctors and nurses, contributes to the complexity of this responsibility, reinforcing the need for continuous communication and teamwork in medication management.