Medications

Your Role with Medications

As a home care worker, you may be asked to assist some of your clients with the self-administration of medication. Self-administration means that the client swallows, applies, inhales, or inserts the medication into his or her own body. Assistance with self-administration means that you can help the client with certain parts of this activity, such as through limited hands-on assistance, encouragement, and reminding.

Your role is one of assisting. Under no circumstance should you take on the total responsibility for setting up a medication or administering it.
When the Care Plan specifies, you are permitted to:

Remind the client when it’s time to take medication
Bring the medication to the client at the client’s request
Bring equipment to the client needed to prepare and self-administer the medication
Show the label to the client to check the right person, medication, dose, expiration date, time, and route
Open the container or package so the client can take the medication
Position the client
Provide appropriate liquids for swallowing medications, as requested by the client
Pour pre-poured medication into bath water
Store medication in an appropriate place
Bring the garbage receptacle to the client so he/she can dispose of special medication equipment after use
Observe, record, and report

Your role will differ with each case. The exact tasks and responsibilities will be included in the Care Plan, and you should not assist the client with medications unless the instructions are written there. If you have any questions, you should contact your supervisor.

When documenting your tasks, you should use the word “assisting” rather than “administering” or “giving” since that’s what you’re doing and because assisting with self-administration of medication is an extremely important task!

YOUR CART

Your Role with Medications