Interesting case of the spilled pills

Jedrnurse, BSN, RN · Mar 15, 2019

Horrible directive, horrible judgement. Not much of a defense.

Cowboyardee · Mar 15, 2019

Agreed with Jed. The BON was in the right. 'Just following orders' isn't an adequate defense when those orders are obviously unethical.

It would have been a more interesting and ambiguous case if the pills had been temporarily irreplaceable rather than merely expensive, which would have made the choice between giving possibly contaminated medicine and not giving medicine at all.

klone, MSN, RN · Mar 15, 2019

Holy cow. That's just...wow.

JKL33 · Mar 15, 2019

That is totally crazy. There is no way in H I would've been involved in retrieving those pills from the sharps container.

This is idiocy on every front - including the idea that you can't trust your expensive pills with your employees, so the best thing to do is have those same employees (or anyone, for that matter) manipulate the pills unnecessarily. <DUH>

KCMnurse, BSN, MSN, RN · Mar 15, 2019

I was astounded at the idea of shaking the sharps container until the pills fell out. Something tells me this is not the first time they did something like this.

EllaBella1, BSN · Mar 15, 2019

What in the actual... If I were that inmate I would pursue legal action. That's just wrong. And disgusting too.

mimibrown, ADN, BSN · Mar 15, 2019

Yikes, sounds like a pretty bad judgement call on everyone's part. Probably also a bad idea to count them just because they were expensive.

Kallie3006, ADN · Mar 16, 2019

What in the Sam Hill is wrong with those people? Who wants to play chance with the sharps container? That's Russian Roulette Medical style

Night__Owl, BSN, RN · Mar 16, 2019

I'm not fishing anything out of a sharps container unless a gun is held to my head. I'll get fired, I'll flip burgers instead of being a nurse, I don't care.

anurse4sure, LPN · Mar 16, 2019

If these pills were so expensive, like $1000/pill that they had to be kept locked up with the narcs and counted like narcs why didn't the pharmacy bubble pack them? If you have to dump the pills out to count there is a risk of possibly losing pills? And there is no way that I'd ever try to retrieve anything from the sharps container let alone pills to give to a patient.

Emergent, RN · Mar 16, 2019

Yes, totally poor judgment, but you know what gets my goat? Prisoners get expensive treatments for free, hard working, law abiding citizens can't afford treatments and medicines. Hard working mothers and fathers go into debt paying for astronomical copays and out of pocket expenses while the indolent segment of the population gets a free ride.