Barcoding/scanning with students nurses

ERNurse752, RN · Sep 15, 2004

I don't have that system, but when I was in school our instructor had to be there while we got out all meds and went over the orders/allergies etc before we could give them. The instructor just had to go from student to student. If it was po, I think we could then give them on our own. If it was IM, she had to be present. IV we couldn't do at all. It was just understood that it was the instructor's job to supervise all of us, not the staff nurses'.

2rntish · Sep 15, 2004

That's the way it was here before the "new, latest and greatest technology" was implmented. IT is a nightmare for our staff and the students. The school has already told us that they will have to go to a small, rural hospital to get medication administration clinicals if we can't do something different.

Being able to co sign one time after all the meds were scanned would be acceptable, but to scan and co sign after every single med is not functional. :angryfire

NurseyBaby'05, BSN, RN · Sep 15, 2004

At one of the facilities where I did my clinical, the students were required to get their own badges to scan and their own log-ons for the meds and charting. Our instructor would verify our meds and watch us scan them to be sure that we had everything correct, but then we gave them on our own. Any injections and IV's weren't barcoded, they watched us do those. Eventually they just watched us draw up any injections and program pumps and let us do the rest on our own. We needed two nurses to scan their badges for insulins and roxanol (sublingual) and certain other meds. That was hospital policy for all nurses, not just students. Obviously, the second "nurse" scanning for me when I had those drugs could not be another student. It was usually our instructor. She had a few staff nurses that were former students that she knew really well. She would let us do almost anything with them. But the liability was our own. Now the pixsys was another story. She had to sign anything in there out for us. Over all, it seemed to work pretty well. IMHO

explorer · Sep 15, 2004

Does anyone use the Bridge scanning/barcode system and if so, how do you deal with stident nurses? Our administration set it up to require a co-signature for student nurses. Every pill, shot, topical...has to be scanned and a co-signature from faculty or staff applied.
4 pills = 4 co-signatures, add an injection and IVPB = 6 co-signs.
It is not going to work. Please help
Our staff does not have timw to co-sign every single pill...faculty can not be with 6 nurses at the same time and co-sign every single med...
what are we going to do? tell students they can't pass meds. That should help...

In BCMA everyone has their ID card which has your social security number programed into it. Everyone is responsible for themselves. Each medication has its own IEN number programed into a barcode on the package that the medication is in. A person can make a mistake, but it is hard to do. I work at the Kansas City VA and the same program is being used throughout all VA hospitals. It has its problems, but all in all it is a good program.

:balloons: