Destroying narcotics

What would you do??? You come on your shift and you find some 'heavy' narcs in a non-locked med bin for one of your patients. You find a label which states that some of the pills were found in the pts. room. Nobody has said anything about this in report.

You bring this to the attention of the charge nurse and they tell you to just throw them away, that if you fill out a report..someone will get in alot of trouble......just throw them away.

Well, I didn't 'just throw them away'. I notified the head nurse and she said she would take care of it herself. She wanted the pills and pharmacy came along and disposed of them before I got back.

How would you have handled this one???

The same way you did.

You did the right thing! Don't ever take chances with narcotics.

The same thing you did. I would have put them in something locked until I could speak with her.

Mary Ann

Shame on your charge nurse. Some indeed needs to get into trouble for such a sloppy practice. You did the right thing, used the chain of command. You still might want to write an incident report.