Counrtry doses

[Bethy-lynn]

In our unit, we tend to give a lot of "country" doses (such as adding on a couple extra units of insulin if someone's sugars are high, or giving the extra mg of Ativan to the resident Meth od). We even joke about it with some of our md's. I guess I'm just a little curious about how "normal " this is. i feel like I work in an EXTREMELY liberal unit ( we order a lot of things, labs, ekgs, x-rays, O2, and we make few med changes like changing from iv to po, or giving benedryl or tylenol) and I was just wondering what the consensus is.

It's the only unit i've worked in as an RN and I was just curious.

[canoehead, BSN, RN]

I heard about "country" dosing from a former nursing supervisor when I first started OB in a new hospital. I thought well, everywhere there are different ways of doing things, and decided to just watch and learn.

Two years later that nurse was up before the Board for drug diversion, four years later she has charges against her and had fled the state.

I admit I have given tylenol without an order, pushed fluids, started emergency treatment without an order, but never, never, never would mess around with any sedating med.

Possible exception being if a patient was threatening staff with bodily injury- but even then.... AND I would write an incident report, and notify the MD afterwards.

A reputation for being less than meticulous with controlled drugs will do you absolutely no good.