The nine rights of medication administration: an overview.

Nurses are responsible for ensuring safety and quality of patient care at all times. Many nursing tasks involve a degree of risk, and medication administration arguably carries the greatest risk. Unfortunately, patients are frequently harmed or injured by medication errors. Some suffer permanent disability and for others the errors are fatal. Nurses have traditionally followed the five rights of medication administration (patient, drug, route, time, dose) to help prevent errors, and more recently, the seven rights (including documentation and reason). This article identifies nine rights of medication administration.