Med carts

[Rionoir, ADN, RN]

I see people talk about med carts frequently on here and am just curious what that entails. At all of the hospitals I’ve been at here, pharmacy will bring the meds up already sorted by patient and packaged individually with the prescribed doses and then put them in a locked drawer outside of the patient rooms, which their nurse for that shift then administers, if appropriate. Do the nurses with med carts administer meds or just perform the same function pharmacy is performing at the hospitals here? I would assume they aren’t actually giving the meds since they don’t know anything about all the patients?

[Corey Narry, MSN, RN, NP]

I am not sure but back in the olden days of my short stint at a skilled nursing facility as an RN, we did have huge med carts that we push around like a large ice cream cart but containing no such treats but instead full of medications for like maybe a whole wing of residents (up to 30?). Each drawer contains an organized array of medications labelled for each resident and there is a separate locked compartment for controlled drugs. Just the thought of that cart gives me nightmares now because I'm not sure how I survived that.