Do you stop your medpass to "watch a pt"?

[northmississippi]

I am always late with med pass because I am always to to stand at the front desk to "watch" a nursing home pt in case they try to get out of wc and could fall. I spend about 40 minutes of each med pass doing this and im always late. I just dont think its right to be asked to do that. How would you handle it? They won't use a restraint or get a one on one.

[caliotter3]

Watching residents is generally done by the nursing assistants. If you need to do a med pass and you are "it", I would place the person in a geri chair out in the hallway where they can be easily seen. Or, if this is day shift, find someone in an office, and park the resident in front of their office with the door open, while you do your med pass. Sometimes you can even get the PT people to do some observation.

[Live.Love.Nurse.♡]

I agree, that would be frustrating.. my morning med pass takes about 3 hours, and if I get any interruptions (even if it's only for a few minutes), it can knock me way behind. I can't imagine having to stop what I'm doing to watch a resident. Do you have a nurse's assistant who you could delegate that task to? At my facility the cna is awesome about answering calls for me and if I'm in the middle of a med pass, she will provide care for them and only interrupt me if it's a nursing matter that she can't take of. If the nursing assistant isn't available to do it, I would suggest maybe speaking with the nursing supervisor about the issue.. if it's causing you to be far behind and "hurry" through the rest of your med pass, that can also be a safety issue for your residents.

[bluegeegoo2, LPN]

I have had to take a resident along with me in their w/c on med passes before. It's a pain, but can be done.

Also, make sure they're clean, don't need to eliminate, give them food/drink, and medicate for pain. (Tylenol works wonders.) The reason for doing so is that, generally speaking, a dementia resident who is attempting to self-transfer is either uncomfortable, anxious, hungry/thirsty, etc. Pinpointing and addressing the problem will eliminate the behavior. Most of the time, anyway.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

As someone who worked in LTC for six years, ain't nobody got time to watch a high fall-risk resident one on one.

Administering the medications was my priority in LTC. As horrible as this sounds, management will not make any sweeping changes for everyone's betterment until there's a remarkable increase in the number of residents who start falling.

[IsmeAmanda, LPN]

Delegate to a CNA or like someone else said - park them in a geri chair in the hall. Another good idea - have them taken to ALL activities, that way they are watched and stimulated.

[Junebug903, LPN]

Yep, totally. Every shift for one specific woman usually. We all take turns for the most part. During our med pass, the CNAs pretty much exclusively watch her. The supervisor will sit at the desk and watch her for a long time also. We don't have any issue with everyone taking turns. Sometimes one CNA has a heavier assignment or more alert folk that are on their lights a lot, so they don't watch her as much. Totally normal and definitely can be a time suck for everyone, but we try to help each other.