Nurses take full responsibility for their actions when preparing a pillbox in the patient's home. But current practice raises a number of questions due to a lack of traceability.
Thus, when a private practice nurse prepares the pillbox himself, there is no proof for the patient or family that he has not made a mistake, or that one of his colleagues in the practice who prepared the weekly pillbox before him has not made a mistake. What's more, as the pillbox is not sealed, there's nothing to prevent other people in the home from tampering with it.
If the caregiver, who is helping a person who is losing his or her independence, makes a mistake when taking the medication out of the pill dispenser, the nurse is still responsible. Or if the patient chooses to take several medications in different dosing sequences, there's no proof that it wasn't the nurse who made the mistake during preparation.
Clearly, even if the pill dispenser prepared by the nurse in the home complies perfectly with the prescription, in the absence of total traceability in the medication circuit, this nursing act lacks security with regard to its own responsibility.
