Sure, I can't understand there are situations where nurses can't administer drugs due to various medical conditions. This wasn't one of them.

The problem was that the hospital didn't have enough staff to cover the ward. So a nurse would do rounds, my wife would ask for pain relief, the nurse would say "sure" and then disappear for two hours and never return. The next time a different nurse would come around and we'd ask for pain relief - same outcome. Eventually it got so bad that I went to get a nurse and found them standing around the nurse's station having a chat. I (rather irately) asked them to give my wife some endone since she'd be waiting for 14 hours since her surgery for pain relief, one of the nurses rolled her eyes and followed me to the room where she proceeded to pull panadol out of her pocket and give my wife a talking to about asking for endone every time a nurse was doing rounds (the nurse didn't even bother to check my wife's chart or look at the board on the wall).

After that I called our pediatrician and the doctor in charge of my wife's case, the doctor came down and checked the chart and then went and set the nurses straight. After that they started giving my wife a dose of endone every twelve hours for the next couple of days until she was able to get up out of bed on her down and use the bathroom.

I get that it's a stressful and difficult job, and that there's sometimes not enough nurses on the ward to provide adequate care... but it only takes a few extra seconds to read a chart and listen to what your patients are telling you. If you can't handle the job or you don't care enough to do it to the minimum acceptable standard then why even bother showing up for work in the first place?