Medication Administration Record
documentation of administered drugs
A Medication Administration Record (MAR, or eMAR for electronic versions), commonly referred to as a drug chart, is the report that serves as a legal record of the drugs administered to a patient at a facility by a health care professional. The MAR is a part of a patient's permanent record on their medical chart. The health care professional signs off on the record at the time that the drug or device is administered.
Format
The actual chart varies from hospital to hospital and country to country. However they are typically of the format:
Administrative
Patient Name (often Surname, First name or similar)
Treating team details
Allergies
Other, variable – weight, special diet, oxygen therapy, application time of topical local anaesthetic e.g. EMLA
Prescription Details
Drug name
Dosage strength
Route
Frequency
Medication indication / Diagnosis
Prescribing doctor details, signature
Day by day chart where carers/nurses administering medications can sign when medication has been given
Kardex
A kardex (plural kardexes) is a genericised trademark for a medication administration record. The term is common in Ireland and the United Kingdom. In the Philippines, the term is used to refer the old census charts of the charge nurse usually used during endorsement, in which index cards are used, but has been gradually been replaced by modern health data systems and pre-printed charts and forms. The term derives from an early purveyor of recording cards. American Kardex.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Medication Administration Record” is documentation of administered drugs. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Medication, Administration and documentation, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “documentation of administered drugs” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6806657. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Medication Administration Record” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.