When a nurse misses the scheduled due time for a medication, which action should be taken to reflect the Not Given status?

• A. Manually mark the original due time as Not Given
• B. Auto-flag the entry as Not Given after one hour
• C. Delete the medication from the schedule
• D. Change the due time to the actual time given

Answer: (A)

When documenting a dose that wasn’t given at its scheduled time, you need to reflect that the dose was scheduled but not administered. The correct action is to manually mark the original due time as Not Given. This preserves the planned dosing time in the record while clearly showing that the dose was not delivered, and it allows you to add a reason (such as patient refusal, unavailable staff, or a plan to administer later).

Why this is best: updating the status to Not Given keeps the medication administration history accurate and auditable. It avoids altering the scheduled time, which would misrepresent when the dose was supposed to occur, and it avoids deleting the entry or auto-changing times, both of which would distort the medication record and compromise safety and reconciliation.