How close do you check your pills?

Specialties School

Published

I had a parent drop off a refill of meds this am. The kiddo takes the tabs in halves and wholes - halves with me, so parent gave me a refill from their bottle. When I went to take a moment of quiet time to pre-halve the pills, I noticed that 2 of them were not the same when i looked closer, looked it up and noted they were his am pills. Very similar looking, slightly smaller, same shape and different imprint.

So then my mind started going - how much of a responsibility do we have to check each and every pill for accuracy? I mean we would expect that most parents are not mixing into one bottle, but the reality is that many parents do.

Do you think if I didn't notice, the liability would fall on me or the parent?

Am I over analyzing this??

We make our parents split any pill that needs to be split. So I will only accept pills already halved if I have to give 1 and 1/2. I have been told splitting pills is a for parent/pharmacist to do.

When I've had to do a pill and a half, I have halved them all and give three half pills so I don't have to try to shake the bottle just right to get a full pill and a half pill.

Specializes in school nursing, ortho, trauma.

if the pills were pre split, i can guarantee you, i probably would have never noticed the difference. It was only the slight differences when they were all together that even made me notice there was a difference

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