CNAs give medications

[Beaue]

Where should the line be drawn with CNA distributing medication with six month or less of training. When I worked as CNA at assistant living, the CNA with a month of training distributed medication to residents. Even with some training, still dangerous for CNA to give medicine. We charted the medicine on the resident's chart after giving the medicine. Every CNA is not responsible enough to give out medicines, which is another big problem. Believe assistant living homes are one of the worst things that could have happened in America. This rule need changing to only LPN and RN or higher can distribute medications. i saw so many times where someone gave a person the wrong medicine. Even know a girl fired from three places for making this mistake. What do you think of this?

[violet87, BSN, RN]

I was a 19-year-old unlicensed direct care worker at a personal care group home for developmentally disabled adults back in 2000. After receiving a whopping eight hours of training, I administered their medications every morning for the very handsome wage of $8 hourly.

Looking back at the situation, I was passing Haldol, Zyprexa, Premarin and other medications without knowing what they were for.

I currently work as a direct care counselor at a group home and pass meds every day after only taking a short class. It's scary to see the kinds of people they let do this. So hearing about a CNA passing meds isn't shocking. At least they were committed to helping people enough to make it through a program and to take and pass a state exam, unlike some of these 18 year olds that didn't even read the job description and just wanted a pay check.

I have my cna cert and I'm a first year nursing student which puts me WAY above the qualifications for this job and that fact is terrifying.

With the right training however, I feel perfectly comfortable with CNAs passing meds at snfs, alfs, ect.

[NurseSpeedy, ADN, LPN, RN]

While working at an ALF, I worked with Med Techs. The facility gave them a four hour course held by their own personnel about medication OBSERVATION. They were not legally able to perform medication ADMINISTRATION. The difference? A nurse was required if the resident could not take the medication cup filled with meds and place them in their own mouth and swallow. The facility had a memory care portion where they had a nurse pass the meds for that reason. Now, when they were short staffed they would pull the Med tech from the cart to work as an aide and have the nurse pass the meds. The Med tech is not required to know what the medication is for or what is safe to give with other meds. The nurse IS. Hand a nurse over 100 residents to pass medication on, many in individual pill bottles from the pharmacy, I'm telling you the pass will not be done in two hours. Couple that with the coronary the nurse is ready to have when looking at what has been signed off and passed earlier during the month by the tech and the changes that need to be made to the timing, meds that should not be given with each other, and calls that need to be placed to the primary to have scripts changed...when the nurse takes the cart the nurse is held to the standards of their license, not those of the Med tech. I was horrified by some of the stuff I saw trying to get through a med pass that a nurse hadn't been doing beforehand.

[Pudding212]

When I working in a nursing home, I was not allowed to give medications as a CNA. Only the LPN and RN's were allowed. I would assist with positioning the pt and passing of supplies during dressing changes and caths but did not do the work myself, again only the LPN and RN's were allowed. When I was in home health, it was only different because I would make sure the pt took their mess while I was their.. but just monitor not physically Gove it to them if that makes sense.

But now I'm working in an office as a CMA and the physician has a CNA doing the work of a CMA... drawing up medications, giving shots I'M and she documents it as a CMA because here CNA classes do not go over medications what so ever. She's not qualified to do that. I'm not sure if it's considered illegal because a lot of his staff are doing things like these because they are trained to do so.

[zynnnie]

I am a CNA and work in a hospital as a PCT and PRN in a Nursing home. I don't think is okay for CNA/PCT to pass out medication in any setting. I do EKG, bladder scan, remove Foley etc but i Dont think I can pass out medication because any mistake with that can result to death or something worst than death.

I believe CNA/PCT are not there yet. Nurses make medication mistakes and it will be disaster if they let CNAs/PCT pass medication.

With the era of pain med thievery, as a nurse I will not delegate my med duties to CNA cos when patient complains about not getting their pain med/Narco,who bears the burden? CNA or Nurse? When med get lost in transit and that is somebody license up for grab by the board.

[Sour Lemon]

When my schizophrenic uncle lived at in assisted living, he never received medicine correctly by the staff. After missing even one dose of medicine, The challenge of getting him back on schedule was tough. I loved giving medicine because it's something I was able to learn before I got into nursing. Some people are not responsible enough to give medications.

What leads you to believe that your uncle "never received medication correctly by the staff"?

[derbygal52]

The correct word is further

[OrganizedChaos, LVN]

There is no way I would feel comfortable with a CNA passing meds. But I do feel comfortable with med aides passing meds. The med aides are very helpful & we (as nurses) could not do our jobs in high patient areas (LTC & corrections).

Don't get me wrong, I love CNAs & a good one is invaluable!

[Duttygal86, BSN, RN]

I worked at a MH half-way house in Florida back in the day. I remember passing meds to 20+ psych patients at a time, some of the meds were anti-hypertensives and seizure meds.

That scares the crap out of me as a Sr. BSN student looking back. I had 0 training.

[spaghettis]

My first job at 19 was at an ALF where we were considered "PCAs" (patient care assistants). I had my CNA license and although that's what they preferred, many of the longer employed employees were not. We were required to do "medication reminders" for the residents where basically they had a locked medication cabinet with medication pill packs filled by a pharmacy or family member and we had to unlock it at designated times. This also included when the patient needed a PRN medication such as tylenol, laxative, etc. They got away with this as we were only supposed to unlock the cabinet and not touch the medication. Unfortunately this was not really the case because many times the patient really wasn't capable of loading their spiriva, holding the pills in their hands, etc. It was interesting.

[Lovemysugar]

CNAs should be able to do vital signs. I'm not sure about the rest as most of the rest is done in the hospital setting. Although I would think bladder scans would sometimes be done in LTC.

CNA's absolutely do vitals... That's the only thing they should be allowed to do and are tested on accordingly... In CA anyway. :***:

[SDaisy79]

Yes, it is a scam...a whipping $12,000 tuition & fees scam according to the disclosures I found. Click on the link below for an interesting read about the PCT "undergraduate certification" offered at Everest Institute.

Even more ridiculous is that only 49% complete the "program" and of that 68% get jobs, really? That is scary!!

[IceDancer]

I am sure plenty of people will disagree with me but my personal opinion of people administering medications to anyone, is that they should obviously follow the five drug rights (pt. drug, dose, route, time), and that they should know what the drug does and *why* the person is getting that drug. Additionally, ideally, they should know if the dose they are giving is within a safe range. As a home care nurse I taught patients and family/other caregivers the importance of these things and myself and my fellow nurses did our best to provide them with that info about their own medications.

I don't believe that anyone should be hired to administer meds knowing less than that. And frankly, unless you are a nurse, you will not be able to understand/remember the drugs, doses and mechanism of action on hundreds of meds, you do not have the pharmacology and physiology background required to do so. I believe hiring people to hand out pills like you would hand out linens is a dangerous cost cutting attempt that causes all sorts of problems. When my own mother was in an assisted living facility I experienced those problems first hand and working in home care, where I visited many assisted livings, I continued to see the ramifications of people giving medications and not knowing much about them.

When you are a new nurse you end up looking things up all the time to start that learning process. I remember having a student nurse on the floor when I worked in the hospital who was working with her preceptor to administer meds, and she made a med error. Now, if she had been supervised properly that should not have happened, but the other aspect of it is, I remember asking her why she would ever give that particular med to that particular patient (he had no diagnosis that would indicate a need for the drug) and she said back to me, "Am I supposed to look up every single drug to find it what it does???!!!". I said, "Um yeah. You are. Until you remember them, you gotta look them up." She looked at me like I was crazy. She got kicked off our floor.

I believe that in an institutional setting, the bare minimum to hand out meds should be an LVN/LPN. Anything less is risking patient safety, again, in my opinion.