MED cart Wars. LTC

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Anyone have any stories pertaining to this? I never had a problem for 8 years and now I'm in a war.

I'm not talking about what's on top and how it's arranged. I'm talking about the items in each drawer.

I'm the full time day nurse with a recent hire of a brand new grad who is full time now also who has never worked in LTC ( her first real job).

The other nurses at our facility are laughing over this but I have to live it. When other nurses have worked my unit nothing ever was changed or put out of place. This is actually The way I received this unit when I first started years ago. And kept it the same.

When i work other units i dont change their Med carts.

Anyone?

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She is changing stuff around? Just get the unit manager to tell her not to do that if you don't have the oompth to tell her yourself. There are plenty of nurses who would have no problem putting her in her place no matter where they stand on the totem pole.

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Specializes in Gerontology, Med surg, Home Health.

Years ago when I was a full time staff nurse I worked on a 60 bed sub-acute unit. I had 30 of my own patients and the majority of the meds were given on day shift. I had the cart organized to make the med pass as smooth as possible. We had a bunch of part time 3-11 nurses who apparently didn't care how they left the cart. I spoke to each one of them and said since I was the only full time person and had more meds to hand out than they did, the cart would be kept MY way, or else. They never messed with the cart again....and, yes, I said or else nicely.

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I would definitely talk to her and if it did not change then I will take it to my manager

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Specializes in Geriatrics, Dialysis.

I shouldn't laugh but I went through something similar recently. Not a new nurse, but a new transfer to my wing. She decided to move everything so she could find things on her weekend, despite only being scheduled on that wing for her weekend. I didn't have to say anything to her, the other nurses that work the different shifts on that weekend took care of that. By the time those two were done with her she called the administrator to complain, asserting her "right" to arrange the cart as she saw fit. Apparently the administrator told her in no uncertain terms to never mess with another wing's med cart again.

I do think it's kind of funny that we have 4 wings, all with treatment and med carts that look exactly the same. Until you open them that is, every wing has things set up inside them differently depending on the preferences of the nurses that regularly work that wing.

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Specializes in Rehab, acute/critical care.

I can understand your frustration. Talk to that nurse and tell them you liked how it was? Maybe the new nurse was trying to help with the med cart and doesn't understand they're doing the opposite. I used to work LTC and had a set team/cart each time I worked and it was annoying having to relocate everything after someone did their own version of spring cleaning aka rearranging for no reason.

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