Key Drugs Join PPEs on List of Front-Line Shortages

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

We MUST change how healthcare and healthcare delivery is viewed by the bean counters and hedge fund managers (should not own hospitals IMHO)---back to putting PATIENTS CARE NEEDS first, realizing that NURSES ASSESSMENTS are they ones keeping patients safe and alive, have adequate medical supplies, PPE, and common MEDICATIONS available at ALL TIMES. Karen

Key Drugs Join PPEs on List of Front-Line Shortages

From Medscape.com -Free registration required

Marcia Frellick

April 02, 2020
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/928039

Quote

First it was a critical shortage of personal protective equipment. Then pleas for more ventilators to sustain patients with COVID-19 and providers to care for them. Now, multiple sources are reporting deepening shortages of the drugs needed to help ventilate patients and keep them sedated.

Shortages are already evident for albuterol; neuromuscular blockers and sedatives, including fentanyl, midazolam, and propofol; and vasopressors for septic shock, even as orders increase exponentially.

The rates at which hospitals traditionally had been able to fill orders for ventilator-associated drugs was 95%, Dan Kistner, PharmD, told Medscape Medical News.

"These classes of drugs have dropped to 60 or 70% in the last month alone," said Kistner, senior vice president for pharmacy solutions at Vizient, a group purchasing organization that negotiates medicine contracts for about 3000 hospitals and healthcare facilities in the US.

"Every day it's dropping 2 or 3 additional percent," he continued....

...A California nurse's tweet in a nationwide thread of tweets under #WeNeedMeds poignantly described the consequences of severe shortages of some of these drugs. "Please do not put me on a vent if you can't keep me sedated," she writes. "I understand the alternative is death."

[LovingLife123]

It’s terrible. People requiring maximum ventilator support, and they are not sedated, causing panic and self extubations. Until we can gown up and get in there to reintubate, they are losing precious oxygen.

My hospital has very little sedation meds left and we are saving it for dire situations.

This whole situation is heartbreaking.

[caliotter3]

I can’t even stand to be on a CPAP. I wake up thrashing about because I can’t breathe. Can’t imagine being on a vent without sedation.

[MsJenn_The_RN]

We really are running out of everything.

[Nurselexii]

6 hours ago, LovingLife123 said:

It’s terrible. People requiring maximum ventilator support, and they are not sedated, causing panic and self extubations. Until we can gown up and get in there to reintubate, they are losing precious oxygen.

My hospital has very little sedation meds left and we are saving it for dire situations.

This whole situation is heartbreaking.

6 hours ago, LovingLife123 said:

It’s terrible. People requiring maximum ventilator support, and they are not sedated, causing panic and self extubations. Until we can gown up and get in there to reintubate, they are losing precious oxygen.

My hospital has very little sedation meds left and we are saving it for dire situations.

This whole situation is heartbreaking.

Thank you for sharing this post gives us more insight for those wondering how severe the lack of supplies is and how far it extends

[LovingLife123]

4 hours ago, Nurselexii said:

Thank you for sharing this post gives us more insight for those wondering how severe the lack of supplies is and how far it extends

My patient gagged on the tube and subsequently aspirated into the already damaged lungs due to sedation wearing off and no more available.

I’m sure all the secretions coming out with the immense coughing and aersolizing were not good for any of us in the room. It was not negative airflow.

I actually have PPE. I feel very fortunate for that. We do not have meds.