JCAHO and bedside medications...

Specialties Ob/Gyn

Published

We recently received notification from our manager that all bedside meds needed to be kept locked up. This includes the Tucks pads, Dermoplast, lanolin ointment and All Purpose Nipple Ointment. So now our new mom's have to call us for every trip to the bathroom and anytime they need to apply ointment. It seems very taxing on nursing staffs time. Anyone else facing these issues and how do you cope? I can understand the Tucks and Dermaplast, but the ointments on a postpartum floor really seems to be pushing it.

ETA: Darn...I do know its JCAHO...transposed the letters...sorry!!

Yes you are making sense If only their ruling did ALL the time.......What is a perfect world LOL

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Thank-you for the Kudos :)

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Specializes in OB, NICU, ICU telemetry tech.

Our pharmacy prints "May self-administer" on the MAR for those items so that they may be kept at bedside; not sure if that's OK with JCAHO or not? I can't imagine my night if I had to keep running those in to my patients; holy cow. Ridiculous!!

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Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.

What's really pathetic is that I had a golf-ball sized hemorrhoid and nobody ONCE offered me Tucks or anything!

Backstory -- the month prior to my son's birth, I contracted a tummy bug, the kind that involves spewing out both ends at the same time, during which time I developed not one, but TWO golf-ball sized rhoids. The next week, one of them had thrombosed. My GP refused to see me upon hearing I was 36w preggo, so I went to see my midwife. Her exact words as she took a peek: Ay Caramba! (and no, she's not Mexican!) She said it looked like I had two testicles down there! Sent me off to a surgeon next door that same day, and for whatever stupid reason, he only sliced off the thrombosed one and left the other one where it was.

So a month later, I'm about to go in for inducement and the remaining "testicle" thrombosed. :icon_roll Told the staff all about it, they'd get it chopped off after the baby was born. Ended up with an emergency c-section (cord around foot and neck, no wonder he didn't move much in utero!) with general anesthesia (couldn't get the epidural in me after three tries), and woke up and still had the darned testicle!!! "Oh, we didn't know..." You put a catheter in my bladder, you ruptured my membranes, you pumped saline into my uterus to flush out the meconium, and you screwed a monitor into my son's head, and you didn't know I had a hemorrhoid the size of Rhode Island? :icon_roll It took me two days, but I finally got the surgeon to come to my room and chop it off a couple hours before I was discharged.

Oh, and if anyone's ever in the same situation -- don't get the local -- it hurts worse than the scalpel! Just take some Tylenol before and bite down on something while they whack it. Trust me.

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I am speechless. I really do not know what to say except I really feel for you. I hope your next delivery goes better for you.

TuTonka

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Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.
I am speechless. I really do not know what to say except I really feel for you. I hope your next delivery goes better for you.

TuTonka

Thanks.... Fortunately it was 9+ years ago, and I won't be going through it EVER again! I'm a "one and done" kind of momma!

But it's one of my many experiences with the medical community that I hope will make me a better nurse when I'm on the other end of the syringe.

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Specializes in L&D.
In the begining I believe that was the foundation but now I am not sure . Sometimes in an effort to build a good foundation it gets lost in the overkill. If it isn't broken don't fix it type of thing. Sometimes things can be fixed to the point of no repair due to over thinking. What is standard today is gone 10 yrs from now. They call it progress but....is it really?

Good foundations do often get lost in the overkill. Does anyone remember that HIPPA began to insure that someone changing jobs could remain insured? Now when we think of HIPPA, we think about not being able to tell family members if someone has had their baby yet and if it's a violation to have visable names on the baby cribs. Sad....

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has anyone had JCAHO (aka PITA) come thru recently & if so what are they looking for this time?

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Specializes in Med-Surg/Pediatrics, Maternity.

JCAHO just came through in December and this was not raised as an issue. We do keep the dermoplast and tucks in the bathroom and the lansinoh at the bedside. Perhaps you could get an order to leave the meds at the bedside. We have done this on medsurg for eye gtts, cough gtts, etc.

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Specializes in Family Practice, Mental Health.

Interesting post and comments.

I work in ICU now, and have not floated off my unit for longer than I can remember. However, it always used to be okay to leave certain meds (such as eye gtts, etc) at the bedside as long as there was a specific doctors order attached to each involved medication order that stated "Patient may keep XXX med at bedside."

Is this no longer allowed?

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