Leftovers (meds, not food...)

[Jedrnurse, BSN, RN]

What do you all do with the inevitable unclaimed meds left in your med closet?

[arlingtonnurse]

There is a medication drop site at our police station I drop them off at.

[JenTheSchoolRN, BSN, RN]

1 hour ago, arlingtonnurse said:

there is a medication drop site at our police station I drop them off at.

I drop the pills at a med disposal at CVS usually. Epi-pens go into my sharps and dropped off with my sharps (which, interestingly enough, I drop off a needle drop off site at a local recovery center about 2 miles from my school).

I do hold a couple of expired Epi-pens to do my Epi-pen admin demo for my staff (Stick real Epi pen in plastic container to show how the real one works).

[MHDNURSE]

The local police station takes all of ours.  They have specific rules- like pills need to be out of the bottles and all dumped into one plastic bag, etc.  Each nurse made sure everything was done correctly with another nurse and nurse leader as a witness and then we took them to the police station.

[k1p1ssk, BSN, RN]

Same as above; Only thing I'll add is that we document that families were informed about picking up meds before the end of the school year and never showed up or that they asked that we dispose of them (this usually only happens with expired epi-pens).

[ihavealltheice]

4 hours ago, arlingtonnurse said:

there is a medication drop site at our police station I drop them off at.

same

[BettyGirard, BSN]

Yep, our police (well Sheriffs Office) has one as well, but our SRO is kind enough to transport the stuff for us to wherever it goes so we don't cram their rather smallish box full with my stuff.

[KKEGS, MSN, RN]

One of our RNs drives around to all of the schools on the last day with one of our resource officers. She collects it all and it is turned over to the police for disposal with the county. We also inform families that if they don't come pick up the meds on the last day we will dispose of them. 

[Flare, ASN, BSN]

16 hours ago, KKEGS said:

One of our RNs drives around to all of the schools on the last day with one of our resource officers. She collects it all and it is turned over to the police for disposal with the county. We also inform families that if they don't come pick up the meds on the last day we will dispose of them. 

I pretty much do the same.  Anything not picked up is taken to the PD for disposal at the end of the year.  They won't take our epipens, but the local hospital will.  

[AdobeRN]

Our Risk Mgmt department takes care of disposing the meds.  We bag up at end of the year and someone from the department makes their rounds to all the schools and collects the meds and disposes them. 

So wasteful....some years it makes me sick thinking of the expensive meds we are tossing - just from my own experience having an allergy/asthma kiddo with crappy health insurance - those inhalers and Epipens were not cheap. 

 

[arlingtonnurse]

21 hours ago, AdobeRN said:

So wasteful....some years it makes me sick thinking of the expensive meds we are tossing - just from my own experience having an allergy/asthma kiddo with crappy health insurance - those inhalers and Epipens were not cheap. 

Agree with this.  So many inhalers that were never touched... so many epipens, it fills a whole sharps container.  I wish we could just keep some in stock.  I think about 15% of my inhalers get used.  And so far (three years in) 0% of my epi

[londonflo]

In the hospital we wasted do many regular insulin vials. Each patient who was on sliding scale got one from pharmacy, when they were discharged we threw the vial away. What a WASTE!. The our pharmacy changed their fulfillment for regular insulin. We draw the amount of units required from the community bottle in the Pyxis and put a scannable sticker on it. Not sure that this in any safer...