The problem is that the computer would confirm the dose and medication was correct. The nurses and pharmacy did not have access to the doctors’ original hand written orders. So they might not know the medication was wrong if it was one routinely given in certain circumstances. For example someone hacks the system and removes allergen info from patient’s chart. Because of that post surgery a patient is given an antibiotic they are allergic to and they have a severe reaction.
But you are right if the dosage was way out of wack for the patient that should have been spotted. It should just be second nature for a nurse to check such things. He sure would if he could not make out a doctor’s hand writing and was concerned with misreading orders. Relying too much on the computer means less independent thought.
People were dispensing the right medications and proper dosages in hospitals, long before computers came on the scene. As far as I know, hospital medications are dispensed from an in-hospital pharmacy, where a pharmacist or other qualified person gets the dosages together to be issued to where they are needed. The person that dispenses those dosages is the person responsible for making sure the medications and dosages are correct before they leave that room. A second person, if not a third, should be assigned to double-check and verify the first person's work before it leaves that room. If there isn't a paper record of the required meds and dosages for each patient in that hospital, and everything is stored on the computer, that bad decision falls on whoever came up with that procedure, and didn't have a back-up plan if/when the system ever went down. There is no excuse that can account for anyone in a hospital being given the wrong mixture of meds, or the wrong dosage.
What is a normal amount of narcotics for one patient can be life threatening for another, based on non-obvious things such as underlying medical conditions, allergies, etc