Republic of the Philippines

ISABELA STATE UNIVERSITY

Echague, Isabela

COLLEGE OF NURSING
Tel # 078-305-9176

Name: _______________________________ Date: ________________

Year Level & Section: ___________________

ORAL MEDICATION PREPARATION

Today, I’m going to demonstrate how to administer oral medication. The oral medication is
the safest, most convenient, less expensive, and most commonly used medication.
The purpose of this procedure is to prepare and administer oral medication safely and
accurately so the client may receive maximum therapeutic effectiveness from them.

STEPS RATINGS
First, we need to perform the assess the patient as a preparation for the 3 2 1
procedure
1. Assess if the patient has allergies to medication
2. Ask if the patient is able to swallow the medication
3. Ask if they are experiencing any feeling of nausea and vomiting
4. Inform them about the specific drug action, side effects,
interaction, and adverse reactions
 During treatment, knowing what adverse effects may
occur equips a patient to look out for possible problems,
and to deal with them appropriately if they occur.
5. Ask if they have knowledge of the medication and procedure.
 If they have not obtained knowledge about the medication
or procedure, you can give information about the
medication they’ll be taking and what are the procedures
or medication they’re receiving.

6. Prepare the materials/ equipment needed.

 Client’s MAR/ Medication Card
 Dispensing system
 Medication tray/ cart
 Disposable medication cups: plastic cups for tablets and
capsules, calibrated cups for liquids
 Pill crusher/cutter

The rationale in assessing the patient is to give them

awareness about the medication as well as for us
nurses, to identify whether the patient is suitable to
receive the medication.
SKILLS
7. Perform hand hygiene and observe other appropriate infection
prevention procedures.
 Rationale is to prevent any microbes and other
contaminants to spread, in this the patient is safe to
acquiring the medication while we prepare them.
 For me I will be using alcohol to disinfect my hands
8. Because we’re not in a hospital, we don’t have a dispensing
system we’re just going to assume that we already have
unlocked the dispensing system and we will now proceed to:
 Republic of the Philippines
ISABELA STATE UNIVERSITY
Echague, Isabela

COLLEGE OF NURSING
Tel # 078-305-9176

9. Obtaining the appropriate medication

 Check and verify the MAR(doctors order in the
medication card)
 The doctor’s order is: paracetamol tablet and
ascorbic- syrup
and take the appropriate medication from the shelf, drawer,
or refrigerator. The medication may be dispensed in a bottle,
box, or unit dose package.

 Taking medication and Compare the label of the
medication container or unit-dose package against the
order on the MAR
 The doctor’s order for the 15 y old patient are;
1. Paracetamol tablet 500 mg(compare it, the
same…)
 Syrup, a doctor’s order for a 6 y.o(compare-
ascorbic acid syrup, also same)
 Check the expiration date of the medication
 read exp.
 This means that these medicines are still
consumable by this time.
 Next, were going to check if the labels in the package are
still legible.
 It seems that we are able to read the labels clearly
which confirms that the packaging is still in a good
condition.
The rationale in verifying, reading the MAR and
checking the medicines if they’re still in a good
condition for consumption is for us to obtain an
accurate and right medication for the patient.
 Use only medications that have clear, legible labels.

Because now we can prepare the medication by calculating the

proper medication dosage and also prepare the medication w/o
contaminating it.
10. Prepare the medication
 Calculate the medication dosage accurately.
 Prepare the correct amount of medication for the required
dose without contaminating the medication.
 In preparing a tablet medication, let’s again check
the doctor’s order which is;
Paracetamol tablet 500mg
 Since we are comparing it we have verified that it
is the same. 500 mg,

TABLETS/CAPSULES
 Now we’ll be putting this tablet in our medicine cup, make
sure that we are putting the tablet with its package.
The rationale is we are just going to remove the tablet
 Republic of the Philippines
ISABELA STATE UNIVERSITY
Echague, Isabela

COLLEGE OF NURSING
Tel # 078-305-9176

if we are going to administer the medication already

to the patient so that we’ll be able to prevent
contamination.
 Break only scored tablets if necessary to obtain the
correct dosage but since our tablets and the dosage we
need to administer according to the MAR is the same, we
don’t need to do that
 Now there are instances that a client has difficulty
swallowing, for them to take the medication easily, we can crush
or powderize using a pill crusher or between two medication
cups the tablet then put it with a small amount of water or mix it
in with soft foods.
 If it is acceptable, crush the tablets to a fine powder with
a pill crusher or between two medication cups.
 Mix the powder with a small amount of soft food/water

Next thing we are going to do is to prepare a liquid medication.

 Now let’s compare it again with the doctor’s order,
5ml of Ascorbic syrup for a 5 y. o, the route is oral.
LIQUID MEDICATION
 First is we need to shake our tablet to mix it so that the
active ingredients are evenly distributed throughout it for
more effective medication.
 Remove the cap and place it upside down on the
countertop so that we can prevent infection because
microbes might contaminate the cup if placed another way.
 Hold the bottle so that label is next to your palm so the
liquid medication will be away from the label when pouring.
 Place the medication cup on a flat surface at eye level for
accurate measurement and fill it to the desired level.
 After that, we need to wipe the top of the bottle before
putting back the cap with a paper towel.
 Before capping the bottle, wipe the lip with a paper towel
 If the medication is 5ml, we need to use the syringe for
that.
 Let’s assume that the required medication is 2ml,
prepare the medication in a sterile syringe without
the needle.
 So were going to use a 3cc syringe for this
 When using a syringe we need to attach the label on it with
the name of the medication and the route.
11. Place the prepared medication and MAR together on the
medication cart
12. Recheck the label on the container before returning the bottle,
box, or envelope to its storage place to ensure that we are going
to put back and store the medication correctly.
13. Now that we are done with preparing the medication we can now
prepare the client for administration. And remember to perform
 Republic of the Philippines
ISABELA STATE UNIVERSITY
Echague, Isabela

COLLEGE OF NURSING
Tel # 078-305-9176

proper hand hygiene techniques that we learned and also

document all the data we gathered.
TOTAL

Rating Scale:

1- Needs Improvement
2- Satisfactory
3- Very Satisfactory

Rating:
RS x 100
N

Where: RS- Raw score

N- Total # of items

Clinical Instructor