Alcohol prep pads

Haunted · Nov 17, 2004

You should ALWAYS have alchy preps with you during clinicals. I assume they are all sterile until you use them. Also keep cheat sheets on lab values, drug cards on your patient, scissors and multi colored pens. A calculator comes in handy also.

Antikigirl, ASN, RN · Nov 17, 2004

Oh yessssssss keep those little preps with you..they come in so handy, and when you need one fast...with both hands busy (as always happens) having one in a pocket where you can free an hand or have another nurse grab one and help is always a bonus! Murphy's law...don't have one, you will need it stat!!!!! LOL!

Makes me wonder how much money is lost in preps going home in nurses pockets per year???? LOL! I must have had at least a 2 year supply go though my laundry! LOL!

boulergirl, CNA · Nov 17, 2004

Our facility removed alcohol prep pads (the folks from corporate took them out of the med room due to new regulations) but I keep my own with my glucose monitor, so sometimes I grab one of mine to clean my stethoscope (if someone else uses it, I don't want their ear germs on my scope--eeeewww! Never noticed if they were sterile or not--I figured they were due to the alcohol.

SusanJean · Nov 17, 2004

I would think that all alcoh prep pads would be sterile, by nature of the alcoh -- unless they are contaminated w/ something...

General E. Speaking, RN, RN · Nov 17, 2004

I can probably round up about 50 of 'em right now if I had to (and I'm at home!) I used to be an immunization nurse and would sometimes bring my daughter with me during Saturday shot clinics. Once, I was using an alcohol wipe to clean something in the car and my daughter yelled from the back seat, "Yuk! Something smells like a SHOT!" :mad:

NewEnglandRN, RN · Nov 18, 2004

At the LTC facility I am doing my clinical at, they HIDE the alcohol prep pads. You would have thought we were asking for a portable MRI scanner to fit in our pockets! :chuckleSo, we went our and bought a huge box for the students use. I always clean off my stethiscope between clients and the ear-pieces if someone else uses my Lithmann.

kbrn · Nov 18, 2004

I am a little confused. Why did you facility remove the alcohol prep pads. They are used for so many things in the hospital. What do you use to clean the IV port before giving IV push medication?? What do you use to clean off the top of a container of normal saline before drawing up some into a syringe. ETC, ETC, ETC. Please enlighten me.

I do know how it is when a facility hides things from students such as dynamaps, O2 Sat monitors, etc, but not alcohol prep pads. That is a new one on me.

NewEnglandRN, RN · Nov 18, 2004

I guess they don't want the aides or students going home with any... they keep them locked up in the med carts. :uhoh3:

boulergirl, CNA · Nov 18, 2004

I work as a med tech in an assisted-living facility, and corporate office came and removed the prep pads, gauze and some other stuff from the med room during their audit recently. We're under a whole bunch of new regulations. I was told we weren't even supposed to have band-aids in the house, but I still see them in the med room and the first aid kits, and packets of topical ointment (even though we're not allowed to put anything on a wound before putting a band-aid on--that's considered medical treatment).

We had a resident fall the other night and her only injury was a skin tear. All we could do was clean it with soap and water--we had to leave the wound open for the nurse to bandage when she came the next day. Umm, okay so as a med tech I'm allowed to hand someone a narcotic pill but I can't cover a skin tear? :uhoh3:

And, how is the nurse supposed to dress wounds if we're not even allowed to keep the supplies to do so in the building?? About a week ago one of our residents split her head open. The nurse and I could not find any gauze, so we had to stop the bleeding with a washcloth, and wait for the medics to arrive.

Antikigirl, ASN, RN · Nov 18, 2004

We have locked cabinets in our med rooms (which are converted closets), and they have a little tote that has gauze, kerlix, steris, dressing shears, q-tips, cotton balls, alcohol preps, and a bio bag (we also have separate bio hazzard kit in each room too!). Our Caregivers are trained in first aid and can administer BLS if needed till a nurse is there, which includes skin tear treatments.

They are some of the best steri placers I have ever met! Talk about knowing how to approximate and get it done on even the toughest skin tears! Sadly, we get so many of them in assisted living that to wait for the one nurse was too risky (infection risk big time...get em cleaned, approximated, and covered!).

It strikes me as wrong when I hear caregivers aren't allowed to do something as simple as a dresssing. They should be trained in first aid...and our State laws have a Good Samaritan law anyway that says that if you have training, you must administer aide to the best of your ability until advanced trained help arrives which would cover a caregiver rendering wound care till a nurse arrived! If you had a open wound, and had to wait till the next day...*shutter*, you risk infection! What if it was a foot wound on a diabetic and not treated for hours??? Not good!

Sometimes I think administration is so afraid of liablity that they loose their minds and cause bigger probelms! Taking that equipment out of those rooms is silly, and with how much I have to travel in my huge facility, I appreciate it being there when I get called STAT to a room and don't have my cart with me!

tiroka03, LPN · Nov 18, 2004

I never heard of anything like this. Hiding supplies, or not even stocking them. I thought I had heard of everything.

In my facility, on my unit, we have two med carts. There is one drawer in each cart dedicated for generic wound supplies. But of course this is locked. In the med room which again is locked, we have bins with wound supplies with specialized wound supplies specific to each pt with wounds. Then in an unlocked cupboard we have more generic wound supplie items.

Then if we have a pt who has a myrid of supplies used many times daily, we keep them in the closet in their room.

In my opionion, it is easier to have supplies for anyone to use on hand. When nursing students come, they can be such a drain on time, why would anyone try to hide such an item, and get asked a thousand times where something is.

life is too hard to make it harder still.