Insulin order

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I have a question on an insulin order. 1- 11p-7a nurses obtain finger sticks at 6-6:30, then when day nurses come in, we do narc count and then do report, and the tell u in report what the finger sticks were. By the time day nurses hit the floor it's sometime 8am. , do you give insulin based off another nurses finger stick, or should you obtain your own ? My problem being, how do you know if it was obtain correctly or the number wasn't transposed? I obtained my own today and gave off of my number and now I am not sure i was right? Feed back please

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Specializes in Emergency.

Aside from relying on someone else's reading you are basing your insulin dose on a reading from up to 2 hours ago... nope, not cool. I would not rely on this measurement, and I would advocate for a change in the policy.

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Why is the policy like this? That is dumb. Advocate to change it. If not, I would make it known that when you work, the nurses can forget the blood sugars and let you do them. I bet a few times of that and someone will change things.

But maybe there is a reason here? A fasting glucose?

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Specializes in ICU.

we recently changed our policy, now the AM nurses get the accuchecks because a dayshift nurse happened to recheck a bs before she gave a large amt of insulin for a high sugar and the bs was back down to normal and didnt require insulin. that 2 hour gap isnt safe.

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Specializes in Peds ED, Peds Stem Cell Transplant, Peds.

The 2 hour gap is not safe, like others suggest. The transposing of numbers can be corrected if your glucometer reading is transported to your EMR? I know what I have used in the past automatically loads into the chart when it is down loaded.

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