Hello all. I wanted to post a question to all of you and get some feedback regarding a situation that occurs on a regular basis at a facility I was recently employed at.
Ok, this facility receives it's medications from an outside pharmacy, but does carry certain commonly used floorstock medications. I was working as the med nurse on this unit and a new order had been written for a patient for a med that we don't have on floor stock due to it not being a common drug we use. I was told to remove this exact med from another patient's drawer and give it to this other patient. I felt very uncomfortable doing this and would not follow through the request. This goes against what I was taught in nursing school and also didn't feel it was ethical. My other concern was who is this patient paying for this medication that want me to give to this other patient. I addressed this and was given a look of a complete idiot! I was concerned with this fact. I was told not to worry about it and I could just replace it at a later time. This leads to another problem, the same nurse is not consistently the med nurse and we are often assigned to another unit, if the census is high.
Is this standard practice where you work? I never came across this situation w/ my previous employer. Also, since this situation arose I have since been terminated and the reason I was given was due to a med error; however, that med error was never discussed prior to my termination, nor did I actually see the paperwork related to this.