Beth RN

I worked in a small rural hospital and pharmacy went home at 5pm everyday! When a new med was ordered or needed on any of the units then the Nursing supervisor was responsible to obtain the med from the locked pharmacy. I would have to unlock, search the drawers for that particular med, chose the amount to get through until pharmacy arrived back in the am, label it on the envelope then deliver it to the other RN in the unit requested. This didnt include narcotics but all else was available. We documented what we took out in a binder for documentation and left a copy of the order in the box. This included IV antibiotics etc but we didnt mix them. The RN accepting the order did the mixing only as they were the one administering it. We never had a problem with it and I'm not sure how they are handling it in that 90 bed institution now with the new rulings.

Were I work pharmacy leaves at 11 during the week, and 5 on weekends. Things are changing a little for us currently, it used to be that we had to enter the pharmacy were we could pull drugs out of a "night cabinet," but apparently JCAHO now says that the night cabinet should be seperate from the pharmacy, that nurses can not have access to the entire pharmacy. So, they moved the night cabinet into our office... The way we work it is we get the order, we have to enter it into a computer system that cross references allergies and compatibility, then we access the drug from the night cabinet. If the drug is not in the night cabinet then we are suppose to call the pharmacist to see what they want us to do. We never mix drugs, that should only be done by the nurse giving the drug.