why do so many nurses post that they love the med scanners

[the nites]

Why do so many nurses post that they love the med scanners, b/c, as we all know: they are shills and somehow these posts are turning up b/c the scanners are slow at best, and 2, next time you are on a jet flight at 30000 feet or in your car going 55 mph + and the jet or your vehicle acts w/problems like the scanners routinely do--then you know in your last living breath that the scanners really are a fraud and someone made you post such nonsense that they are great.

[BonnieSc]

I was totally anti-scanner and happily left my school placement and two different jobs right before they got scanners--coincidentally, but I was pleased. Then I had a travel assignment with scanners--they finally caught up with me. And I discovered they aren't nearly as much trouble as I thought, and are actually quite helpful. Love seeing my meds chart themselves. I'm now a convert.

[brandy1017, ASN, RN]

Because they know they can always get a job at Walmart or Macy's for some extra Christmas money! lol The scanners where I work are very temperamental, many times the patient ID won't scan or a med won't, not to mention all the extra time just to get into the right screen and all the stupid questions the bot asks you when you try to give a med. The only thing I can say for it is it's an added safety measure, otherwise, I find it just another time consuming hassle!

[amzyRN]

They prevent med errors and are an extra protection. Some times they break and can't be used. I don't delay an important med because the scanner is down. We can give meds without it if the scanner is acting up, then I go back to the old way of checking manually. But I prefer scanning meds. I've worked at a busy facility and had no scanner and almost made a med error. That bothered me.

[akulahawkRN, ADN, RN, EMT-P]

While in school, most of the time, we used a barcode scanner system to document our medication administration. Most of the time, we used a scanner that was directly connected to a computer, but occasionally we would use a dedicated handheld device. The handheld wasn't all that bad but you just had to be aware that there occasionally were very tiny icons that would show up to remind you to fill out an additional form with a specific medication. Probably the worst part of using the barcode scanners on the floors is that orders had to be entered into the computer and then cleared by pharmacy before we could give a med. Most of the time, that worked well in preventing errors. I also liked using the Pyxis system for a very similar reason... we could simply easily pull all of a patient's medications and if an order had been d/c'd, it wouldn't let us pull that med. We'd back that up with scanning at the bedside. Very rarely, but often enough, a med order would be changed between it being drawn from the Pyxis and scanning it at the bedside and there'd be warning box indicating that the medication was not currently ordered.

The thing you have to remember to do is to scan the patient, and the medication before you give the med. If you give the meds before you do the scanning, you've short-circuited a safety point and if the med was d/c'd, you've just caused a preventable med error.

I've worked primarily with Epic and Cerner systems that do this and they both work reasonably well.

Where I see issues happening (and the computer systems must be flexible enough to allow this) is when you must pull meds via verbal order. I presently work in an ED and even if we had 24 hour pharmacy on hand, we often don't have time to wait for the med to be made available, so there a Pyxis system would have to "know" to allow staff to pull meds and just record who pulled them at those times or to make a med available when a verbal order is entered into the system without pharmacy verification. Could I re-incorporate scanning into my practice? Yes, and it wouldn't slow me down. Scan the patient, scan the meds, they usually document themselves, and administer the meds.

At present, where I work, we have computers at every bedside, so it's not like we would be unable to easily incorporate a scanner into the present workflow. More than one hospital I was at had scanners connected to a computer at each bedside so finding an available scanner was never an issue. Those that used handheld devices were much more troublesome because you'd have to locate one that wasn't in use before you could administer medications. Those places usually frowned on administering meds without scanning them first, though you could do it and enter it "manually" into the computer. Such entries would be notated that it was manually entered and not scanned as per usual workflow.

[Jm0136]

Gotta love my

Scanner!!!!!! Duh! It cuts med time in half and its error proof.

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

its error proof.

Please tell me this is tongue in cheek and not serious.

The scanner is a tool, not a replacement for critical thinking.

[annie.rn]

So you see... she would have given a double dose.. imagine what it could have caused in the pt..

I was just wondering , in our ER they don't scan. . And we all know that it gets very crazy.. what if someone pulled 4 of the 20's to give 80mg... without scanning. . And it was actually going to be 4 of the 40's.. that's a huge disaster, you know...

So IMO, no matter how slow it is... the scanner still saves our behinds...lol..

Just ma 2cents.

It is nice to have the scanners but ultimately you should always be checking the vial for the concentration as you are pulling it up prior to giving it to the pt. The human is the last stop on the med administration train.

It is wrong that the pharmacy stocked the wrong vials but the nurse should be verifying dose prior to the med getting into the pt. We cannot be over reliant on technology. Hopefully, that's what would happen in your E.R. scenario.

I understand what you are saying, though :-) The scanner did catch a potential error but hopefully it would have been caught by the nurse in the end. Scanner or no scanner :-)

.

[canigraduate]

Hmmm....

I think the OP is higher than any plane and won't have to worry about scanners on the way down. Where to find some Funyuns, though...

[ShyeoftheTiger]

Shill!

I just loled and scared off the cat. This thread is the best.

[ThePrincessBride, MSN, RN, NP]

I greatly prefer med scanners to paper charting. Paper MARs are for the birds.

[BrandonLPN, LPN]

Now that so many people have responded & the OP only has 6 posts I'm gonna start taking bets on whether or not she will return.

Unless.... the folks at Big Scanner sent their hired goons to "silence" her....

[ixchel]

Unless.... the folks at Big Scanner sent their hired goons to "silence" her....

Since this thread is so weird anyway...