PSW Personal Support Worker

The New Year and Administering Medications

My first post of the new year! How’s everyone doing?

I have to admit I was pretty surprised when I checked the stats on my little blog here. In a little over a year it has over 4000 views! Thanks to you the reader and wordpress.com for hosting my blog.

Anyways, onto the new year. My place of employment has a brand new batch of updated training modules for me to go through. Whoopee…..

I received a comment on my last blog update, PSW’s and Medications. Here’s a bit of the comment:

I want to mention that is is not within the scope of practice of the PSW to give medications in most cases. The decision/consent is not yours to make. You need to consult with nursing or medical professionals before giving out ANY medication. To do otherwise would be putting your client at risk of great harm.

Now while I agree that PSW’s should not be handing out medications, well, that sometimes is just the way it is. I don’t condone the action. But PSW’s are largely unregulated, un-unionized and without much of a say with most employers. The tricky subject of refusing to administer medications (or as the comment states, seeking out other professionals in the workplace) is realistically up to each PSW, as the unfortunate reality is some employers might fire/cut hours of workers that refuse and just find PSW’s who will administer meds without question.