Med Pass - Page 2

I dunno, We had a pharmacy that filled a month worth of pills on cards- a different card for each medication so that if the pt had 10 dif meds, they sent 10 cards for the month etc. How many times did I find the cards filled with the WRONG pill? Loads of times, and each time it was Ooops , sorry ! If we had given the wrong pill and there had been an adverse reaction, who would be to blame, you got it. Its not being old fashioned, its being responsible and preventing errors. BTW we were told, even though pharmacy filled the order, nurses are responsible to give the right pill and pharmacies errors are our responsiblities!
I would not feel comfortable with baggies of pills, and the surveyors wouldnt either.
My take? the adm are always trying to balance their budget on nurses backs, the problem is , when they look at the budget, they mistakenly think that nsg is getting too big a peice of the pie and forget that its called "Nursing" home for a reason, we are responsible for the majority of the work and without nsg there is no home.
The problems begin when one DNS / DON is willing to lower her standards (her risk) and the Administrators who talk to each other then pressure their DNS's to follow suit. You have to have a real command of the accepted standards of care for your state in order to stand up to the administrators and protect the professionalism in your facility. OTOH, we do have to respect the budget and show that we are making the most of it.
With your experience you must have lots of great ideas and instead of telling the administrator "NO" divert his attention to your ideas on making the most of the nsg budget and show that you are on board with his goals of running a fiscally responsible business that is also professional, passes surveys and progressive.
Good Luck!

The last facility I was in went to the "baggie" system. We had lap tops on our med carts and we had to sign in every shift. The bags were strung together and had morning, noon, evening, and noc meds all in one. The special meds (i.e...antibiotics, coumadin, etc...) were seperate. There was a scanner on the cart and once you brought up the patients pictures and list of meds, you would scan each barcode on the package for the appropriate time and if the med was wrong, it would buzz you, otherwise it would place a check mark in the box with the med. Then when you hit record all, it would list the meds that you scanned and then you would have the chance to put in pulses or b/p's etc...then you would hit record again and a small box would come up asking if you were sure and then you hit ok and the patients picture would gray out so you would know that you gave the meds. It is very smooth and eliminated a lot of errors but the pharmacy would still make errors and place the wrong pills in or not at all. You still have to check them carefully. Also you would refill the cart 3 days a week so you would always have supply. You had to watch the CMT's too because sometimes they would miss things. It did save a lot of time.