OSCE › Station
Medication round: check, calculate, give or withhold
RCSI heading: Medication management and drug calculations. You get 2 minutes with the descriptor outside the door and 10 inside, marked competent or not competent on every line. RCSI publishes no sample for this station; the descriptor below follows the layout of the two samples it does publish. Check rcsi.com before your date.
Rehearse it
Stand up, say it aloud, use whatever is on your desk as the equipment. The debrief is the competency sheet and the assessor’s questions.
To assess a safe medication round: the ten rights, reading the HSE medication record, spotting an unsafe prescription, one dose calculation, and knowing what to do when a dose cannot be given.
Mrs Bridget Walsh, 78, on a medical ward. It is 08:00 and you are doing the drug round in the tabard. Her medication record has four regular prescriptions, one of them written in a way that should stop you. Her identity band, allergy band and a medicine trolley are at the bedside. The assessor answers as the patient.
You are required to work through the record, give what is safe to give, withhold what is not and say why, and calculate one dose from the stock on the trolley.
- Hand hygiene, tabard on, trolley locked between patients, introduce yourself
- Confirm identity with two identifiers against the record (name and date of birth, then the band) and check the allergy band and allergy box
- Verbalise the ten rights as you check each prescription
- Read the prescription in full: generic name, dose with unit, route, frequency and times, start date, prescriber signature and MCRN
- Identify the unsafe prescription (abbreviated unit, trailing zero, missing signature or route, brand name) and withhold it
- Check the administration record: a dose already signed, or an omission code, changes what you do
- Calculate the dose from the stock strength, show the working and say the volume or number of tablets
- Give the safe medicines: explain each, gain consent, watch it taken, sign with initials at the time slot
- Record a dose not given with the correct code from page 2 and say who you tell
- Say how you will check the response to the medicines and document it
Throughout: communicate in an accurate, clear and effective manner; demonstrate a level of competence essential for safe practice.
The pass: theory and OSCE
Run every station on the clock.
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Competencies assessed
Every RCSI descriptor lists the same five domains from the NMBI standards.
- Professional values and conduct of the nurse
- Nursing practice and clinical decision-making
- Knowledge and cognitive competences
- Communication and interpersonal competences
- Management and team competences
Mistakes candidates report
- Checking the name band without asking the patient to say her name and date of birth first.
- Reading "8u" as eight units and drawing it up. The assessor is waiting for you to stop.
- Giving a dose that already has initials in the 08:00 box because you did not look at the administration side of the page.
- Doing the calculation in your head and giving a number without a unit.
- Withholding without saying who you tell and how you record it.
Practise the parts
Sources
- NMBI: Guidance for Registered Nurses and Midwives on Medication Administration (2020) checked 2026-09-16
- HSE Code of Practice for Healthcare Records Management: Abbreviations (2010) checked 2026-09-16
- HSE Medication Record, page 2 (S2, 2017): omitted-dose codes checked 2026-09-16
- Drug round tabard and checklist, BMJ Open Quality (2019) checked 2026-09-16
This descriptor is a practice piece written to the shape of the RCSI samples. It is not an exam task, and the exam may ask anything from the reading list.