Back pain on med cart

Nurses Stress 101

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Specializes in Critical Care, Med-Surg, Psych, Geri, LTC, Tele,.

Hello fellow nurses! I just started working about 3 weeks ago as the nurse in an LTC. I've never had back pain before.

As a former CNA I know how to use good ergonomics to transfer pts, reposition, etc, but the pain I'm feeling results from a different type of strain I don't know how to prevent or alleviate.

The problem is my back- lower and upper hurt when I have to get multiple meds from the bottomdrawer of the cart. There are 11 pts meds down there and each has multiple meds.

Do you have any suggestions on better ways to retrieve them or exercize sorry treatments I can do to help with this.

I want to pull out all meds for 1 pt at one time. I'm also thinking of clearly marking the bottles and bubble packs with a designation for HS or PM to help me not have to bend so many times.

Do you all have any suggestions for giving meds to residents who are in bed for the HS med pass? The beds in this facility don't adjust so I have to help some pts sit up in a poor ergonomic position (bending over) for me. I'm thinking of asking the Dr to change done of the ducosate type meds to an earlier time or trying to give done pts their meds as early as I can but still within the time frame so they're not in bed.

Thanks in advance!

At one of my jobs we use a med cart. We keep each pts meds in a brown paper bag. I pull the bag out for the correct pt, dump it into the top of the med cart and dispense the meds. You will still have to squat down, but only once per pt.

Specializes in retired LTC.

Be careful about marking up any bottles or cards. It may be against some pharm reg and you could get zinged.

Specializes in Critical Care, Med-Surg, Psych, Geri, LTC, Tele,.
Be careful about marking up any bottles or cards. It may be against some pharm reg and you could get zinged.

The bottles are all written on already with some indecipherable codes meant for same purpose. I'm NOT using the markings to administer, just to avoid squatting or bending 10 times per resident in order to find the correct 4 bottles out of the 10 down there. I used to think it was bad to mark them also, but like I said, they're marked already and I'll still do 6 rights and triple check.

I like the paper per bag idea...I wish there were little containers down there that held each persons meds.

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