Legal and Regulatory Framework for Medication Administration in Australia

DIPLOMA OF NURSING
Name
Institution
Course
Date

Question 1
In Australia, the Department of Health (Therapeutic Goods Administration) is responsible
for scheduling, which is the classification system that controls how medicines and chemicals
are made available to the public. As well as the TGA, what else is involved in the legal and
regulatory framework which determines the access and use of drugs?
In New South Wales the poisons and therapeutic goods regulation 2002 controls the
medicines and chemicals which are produced in the companies and distributed to the public for
consumption. There are varieties which are formed to determine access to and use of drugs.
These aspects include packaging and labeling of drugs as well as how the drugs are stored. For
example, some medications must be stored at a specific temperature and medicines must be kept
in an enclosed area where the general people do not have access (Kumari, Hanuja,
Nagabhushanam, Reddy & Bonthagarala, 2016, p.2249). Prescription before giving any
medication to the public is essential, and the dealer must be certified, and the order where the
medicines are written and signed must be legal. The prescription process involves filling and
picking up a prescription of drug which is complex. For healthcare professionals to ensure that
the medication they administer to a client is active, they have to perform several things to ensure
appropriate prescription. The prescription process gives a patient the information they need to
find out if they are getting the medicine ordered by their doctors. The National Safety and
Quality Health Standard (NSQHS) is an organization in Australia whose primary objective is to
protect the public from harmful and hazardous effects which are associated with poor
prescription and improve the quality of health care services which is given to patients by
healthcare professionals (Brown, Hotham & Hotham, 2014, p.184). NSQHS provides a clear
description of quality frameworks which are required in health care institutions to implement

safe systems. Scheduled medication is a controlled drug and substance which is made for human
consumption, and it is structurally similar to a schedule. To ensure appropriate supply of the
medicine, the people working in the health industry as a nurse, doctor, and pharmacist must be
certified by the APHRA to give out proper medications to the public.
QUESTION 2
Provide details of the rights of medication concept, and jurisdictional and legislative
requirements that relate to the administration of medication with your organization?
The nurse administering the medication should refer to the prescribed ordered directly,
and the order must be legible, clear, and it should not be open to any misinterpretation so that
they may not end up making medication errors. If the nurse concludes that the order is not
precise or is incorrect, they should ask the prescriber before administering the medication. The
rules that are given through the telephone should be recorded in the patient’s medication records
immediately at that time and then read back to the authorized prescriber (Davis & National
Association of Medical Examiners and American College of Medical Toxicology Expert Panel
on Evaluating and Reporting Opioid Deaths, 2013, p.62). The patient must be adequately
identified, and the patient’s allergies and adverse drug reaction should also be checked before
administration. The only person should select, prepare, administer and record the administration.
Enrolled nurses need further training because healthcare sector is continually changing and
evolving and therefore new training is essential for them to be able to stay with the current and
latest development skills as well as the most recent technologies which are required in the world
of nursing (Dégardin, Roggo & Margot, 2014, p.167). Nurses also need further training so that
they can be able to comply with new laws and remain licensed and certified. Additional training

for healthcare professionals is very significant as it helps to keep abreast with the field so that
they do not lag behind.
There are various things which enrolled nurses need to complete before giving
medications to clients. Nurses have the right to demand to be complete and written. They have
the right to require the drug, dose, and frequency written by the physician before completing a
medication to a client. It is not right for enrolled nurses to accept an order I it is not written
clearly because it is not a safe practice and can lead to medication errors. Nurses should ensure
that they do not take the verbal order and that they only take telephone orders in cases where the
physicians are not physically present. Before completing any medication enrolled nurses and
other healthcare professionals should ensure that they have access to information so that they can
be updated and have easy access to drug information. Which means that healthcare institutions
should have a drug reference book available for nurses who administer medications to patients
(Dégardin, Roggo & Margot, 2014, p.167). They also have the right to ask for information about
drugs and medicines which they are supposed to apply to the patients. They should ask the
pharmacist who is a specialist in drugs information regarding them. For healthcare professionals
to be able to qualify for NMB NSW, the applicant must have successfully completed an
assessment in medication management which includes administration of medicines which
provides for drug calculations, pharmacokinetics which is the study of bodily absorption,
distribution, and excretion of drugs and pharmacodynamics which is a study of physiological and
biochemical effects of drugs.