[austin heart]

Does anyone know about any rules and regulations regarding nurses wasting narcotics with medics when the bring a patient into the ER? Do yall do it your ER?
Thanks!

[traumaRUs]

Yes, we do. The way we do it is that, say we have a cardiac patient that received 4mg morphine pre-hospital. The RN and paramedic than waste the 6mg morphine left over and we both sign the pre-hospital paramedic paperwork. This ensures adequate documentation and its easy too.

[suzanne4]

Always did the same as well.

[Dixielee]

Originally Posted by traumaRUs

Yes, we do. The way we do it is that, say we have a cardiac patient that received 4mg morphine pre-hospital. The RN and paramedic than waste the 6mg morphine left over and we both sign the pre-hospital paramedic paperwork. This ensures adequate documentation and its easy too.

Ditto, never had a problem.

[Aneroo]

We do the same.
However, I'm not fond of the practice. Someone could easily pull up some NS in a syringe and say it was morphine (the medics here have a bad habit of pulling up the full amount of med in the syringe).
I also have problems with nurses who just throw a half-empty thing of a narc into the sharps containter to waste. I draw mine up and squirt it out- if someone wants the drug bad enough, I have no doubt they would reach into a sharps container.

[austin heart]

Originally Posted by Aneroo

We do the same. However, I'm not fond of the practice. Someone could easily pull up some NS in a syringe and say it was morphine (the medics here have a bad habit of pulling up the full amount of med in the syringe).

This is the reason that the nurses in my ED, including myself, refuse to do it (we are small, 9 beds). Most of theses medics I don't know from Adam and there are a few that I do know that I don't really trust. Now there is a big hub bub going on because the city paramedics are complaining about us because we will not waste with them.
I don't understand why they can not waste with their partner.
If there is a medic that happens to read this.......Can two medics or a medic and an EMT waste narcs together or does there have to be a nurse?

[SFCardiacRN]

I'm not fond of wasting either. All I am really witnessing is a syringe with liquid being disposed of. If I ever have to give a deposition, that is exactly what I'll say. I do take comfort in the fact that NO ONE can hide a narcotic addiction for very long. If I see the warning signs, I'll tell them to find someone else.

[traumaRUs]

My take on this is that you truly have no idea what you are wasting even with an RN unless you are with them 24/7. So...I don't see the issue. I will say that about 9 years ago, I wasted several times with an RN who was abusing narcotics - injecting the waste into himself and then I was wasting normal saline. However, like another poster said, they eventually get caught.

[MarcusKspn]

I worked as an EMT with a Paramedic. I wasted with my partner. I knew we could waste with the Nurse or a Doc also, but had no rules against wasting with EMT.

[ERNurse752]

I'll witness the waste with a city medic/any other outside medic. Like someone else said above, it's not like any nurse or hospital medic couldn't have put NS or H2O in the syringe just the the same.