Patient Safety & Quality AssuranceQuestion 73 of 100
A prescriber's office telephones the pharmacy to give a new prescription. In most states, what should the technician do?
a.Take the order, enter it, and have the pharmacist verify the entry afterward
b.Transfer the call to the pharmacist, because accepting a new verbal prescription is outside the technician's scope in most states
c.Take the order only if it is not a controlled substance and the caller is a nurse
d.Ask the caller to repeat the order twice and document it as a written prescription
Explanation
Receiving a new oral prescription requires professional judgment about the drug, dose and directions as they are spoken, so most state boards restrict it to the pharmacist and the correct action is to hand off the call. Entering it first and verifying later means the error has already been recorded, a nurse relaying an order does not change the technician's scope, and repeating an order does not convert a verbal prescription into a written one.
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