That is NOT my medication and that is not my medication chart that you are looking at. Before giving ANY medication, you must check the 5 RIGHTS (right patient, right time, right medication, right dose and right route)- this is the Australian law. It should not be my responsibility as an Intensive Care Psychiatric Patient, with temporarily impaired cognitive thinking skills, to make sure that you are giving me the right medication, ESPECIALLY since this is a newly prescribed med I and am not yet 100% familiar with their shape, size or colour. Additionally, it is not your right to tell me that 'abstinence is the best method' when I ask for my contraceptive pill, a pill which I am taking for my skin.
No Love,
No, I do not want my sedative right now, as it tends to make me drowsy and I haven't had my shower yet. In fact, the last time I took this sedative before having a shower I passed out in the shower. I know that it's charted for 8:00pm, but under the law, I am allowed to take my medication either 2 hours before or 2 hours after the charted time. Therefore don't you DARE tell me that I have to take the sedative right now 'because you've all ready signed for it'. It is against the law to sign for a medication before it's been swallowed or refused by a patient. Furthermore, a patient has the legal right to refuse their medication or delay them as long as it is within the two hour legal time frame.
Additionally, before you attempt to give me a Blood Sugar Level (BSL) test, please actually check to see whether I am actually scheduled to have BSL testing at all. Again, it should not be my responsibility, as an Intensive Care Psychiatric patient to remind YOU what routine testing I need to have done.
No Love,
I should point out that the Intensive Care Unit held only 5 beds and only 4 of those were filled, so it's not like the nurse had hundreds of other patients to give medication to or keep track of. Most evenings, the night nurse would read magazines, chatted to the patients or played Nintendo DS as all the patients were self caring expect for medications.
Both of these nurses were not the regular nurses and I only saw a grand total of 3 nights and didn't by any means reflect the general standard of the nursing care at the hospital. I didn't make a complaint about them because:
- I didn't (and still don't) know their names
- At the time, I didn't know who to complain to; I had only been in hospital a week and I didn't know who the Nursing Unit Manager was.
Despite these incidence, I would still recommend the hospital and still call it one of the best psychiatric hospitals in NSW.