Failure to Follow Infection Control Procedures During Medication Administration
Penalty
Summary
During a medication administration observation, a medication technician prepared and administered oral medications to a resident without adhering to proper infection control procedures. The technician handled all eight medications with bare hands, transferring them from their individual packaging directly into a medication cup. No hand hygiene was performed before or after the medication administration process. The resident involved had multiple medical diagnoses, including Alzheimer's disease, seizures, depression, dysphagia, supraventricular tachycardia, atrial fibrillation, and benign prostatic hyperplasia, and was assessed as having minimal cognitive impairment. The facility's medication administration policy, revised earlier in the year, requires hand hygiene to be performed prior to handling any medication and mandates that contaminated medications be discarded. The medication technician confirmed during an interview that she did not wash her hands at any point during the process and acknowledged that she should not have touched the medications with her bare hands. This failure to follow established infection control protocols was directly observed and verified during the survey.