Controlled drug question

[suzanne7575]

I was working on a ward at the weekend and when I asked someone to check out some oromorph 20mg with me they told me it was kept in the trolley and only had to be signed by one person, and that anything under 20mg didn't need to be kept locked away or double signed as it wasn't a controlled drug. i must admit this was a new one on me and it felt very strange ding it, but apparently there are loads of wards in my trust that practice this and have done so for a while. i guess i missed something being announced about this along the way because where i used to work all our Oromorph was classed as controlled and had to be double signed.

[SuesquatchRN, BSN, RN]

Come to the states. A freakin' 0.25 lorazepam is treated the same as morphine sulfate.

[english_nurse]

Come to the states. A freakin' 0.25 lorazepam is treated the same as morphine sulfate.

pmsl :)

[ZippyGBR, BSN, RN]

the real reason for controlled drug policies in hospitals is to reduce the abuse potential

which also leads to all sorts of drugs being treated as CD such as codiene phos and Df118 tabs...

[XB9S, BSN, MSN, EdD, RN, APN]

I agree with Zippy here, we never used to treat temazepam as controlled until we had a night nurse taking it to help her sleep, now it is treated the same as morphine

[english_nurse]

not many nurses in my hospital nicking the oramorph then by the looks of it in shropshire, we are too busy chasing sheep

[suzanne7575]

it would still be impssible to nick the oromorph though here, because although it is kept in the drugs trolley, and doesn't have to be double signed, it still has it's own CD book and is checked with the rest of the CD's every night.

[english_nurse]

it makes me laugh, you know when you check oramorph, do you look at the bottle and guess how much is in it? we always used to, not the most exact science really

[suzanne7575]

it makes me laugh, you know when you check oramorph, do you look at the bottle and guess how much is in it? we always used to, not the most exact science really

It's years since we used the bottles of oromorph, in the trust i used to work in and the one i work in now we have the vials in varying srengths. Only the 10mg/5mls ar kept in the drug trolley and we can give a max of 20mg at one time, other doses are kept in the CD cupboard. Of course some wards still keep the 10mg in the CD cupboard too.

[english_nurse]

we had the vial for a while, but the trust decided they were too expensive, now we are back to the bottles,

They obviuosly prefer cheapness to safety where i work lol

[suzanne4, RN]

In the US, temazepam is treated just like Valium, it is in the same classification as that.

Anything containing morphine, no matter the dose is a Schedule II narcotic and is treated as such. You only need one person to sign it out, but two to sign if there is any waste.

And a phycisian cannot phone in a prescription for it, it must be on a written prescription.

[Fonenurse]

My hubby is a pharmacist and tells me that Oramorph is not strong enough to be classed as a CD in the UK and therefore does not need to be treated like one... so you can all challenge your CD book entries - save yourselves a job checking it off etc!