Med times not on time

[smiley321]

Does anyone else have an issues with meds not getting taken on time? I feel that I am doing a lot to ensure they get taken on time, but it is still an issue with campers not coming. It is not happening with a few campers, it is happening with many campers and many staff forgetting. Med times are at the hasher bell (which is fifteen minutes before the meal and when one person goes to set the table for their cabin) and between 9 and 945 at night. Here is what I'm doing now:

- On the first day, counsellors get a slip of paper listing which of their kids have daily meds and when they are

- If campers forget, I go to the meal and remind both them and their counsellor, and ask them to come directly after the meal (the campers actually coming right after the meal happens 50% of the time)

- If they still forget, I need to go to their program areas to bring them back to the med centre. This isn't usually an issue if it's one camper, but it's frequently four or more. I am the only medical staff and this usually results in meds being very late, as I can only go get one camper at a time. Sometimes I can get another staff member to track down the kids, but not always.

- If one counsellor is consistenly having campers who miss med times, I take them aside separately and discuss the issue with them

- I brought up the problem during the all staff meeting before the start of the session (we have two week sessions)

What more can I do? What do other camps do? I feel I have made the point very clear that meds need to be on time, that it is endangering campers when their meds don't get taken on time, that really you are not doing your job if your kids aren't receiving their daily meds. I am unclear what else I can be doing, but something is clearly not working. I sometimes feel like giving up and accepting that half or a majority of the daily meds are going to be late! (which I am not okay with)

Thanks!

[jdlunger1]

i understand you! i am a fourth year nursing student and am the camp nurse during this summer. most weeks i get an rn to help me but sometimes i am all alone and it can be hard because the kids do not want to come and get their medications!

- i think what has worked for me is that i have built a rapport with the staff since i have been with them since may.

- along with repeating my same routine so the counselors know it.

i also keep the rule that i've seen in most hospitals up to an hour before and an hour after the med pass time. a couple of times i have sat down with the counselors and gone over potential consequences some of the kids may have if they do not take their medications especially the ones with inhalers and such. sometimes that wakes them up because they don't want to have to deal with an asthma attack while they are out in the woods. in my opinion, what can make or break your system and organization really boils down to your staff. i am very fortunate to be working at a christian camp and the staff members care very much about their kids and their medical needs. i don't know if this has helped you much in finding solutions but i hope you can figure something out so the rest of the summer can go smoother for you!

[Neveranurseagain, RN]

I worked at a camp for a few weeks where kids missing meds was a huge issue. I did all the things above, but still had too many kids (even 1 kid missing meds is too many in my book!) missing meds. So I came up with an incident report form and filled it out every time a camper missed their meds or took them more than 1 hr late outlining the steps I had taken to ensure compliance. I dropped the filled out incident report into the head counselor's box, and within a few days, no one was missing their meds!

[SnowbirdRN]

We do meds right after meals (though if they want to pop in before a meal I allow it) and I often would have about 3-5 kids forget each time. All the program areas have walkie talkies so I would just check the class list and call the camper down. The only difficult part was when an area didn't answer their radio. I'd take the med with me to the class and pull the camper aside to do it. I didn't mind terribly during the day because it got me out of the health house and I could see classes and stuff but bedtime meds I'd get a little irritated if they didn't come because I have a lot to do before going to bed. If it were just allergy medicine I'd let the camper forget and learn on their own but any other stuff I tracked them down.

[nikki_nurse]

I also had issues with this this past summer. For breakfast medications, I would ask the campers to come down to the health station for their meds before breakfast. Usually a third would forget to come down. So I would bring them to the dining hall and give them to the camper at the meals. For lunch and dinner, I also bring them straight to the dining hall. Before bedtime, an announcement was made at the campfire (which is right before bed) so usually most of the campers would come down. A couple of times I had to go up to the cabins to bring a medication to the camper (and then would have a discussion with the cabin leader about bringing their campers down).

I don't know how else to do it to help them to remember to come down. Thankfully, I was allowed to prepour the medications into containers before the meals in case they did not come down, but next year I will be a Registered Nurse and I won't be allowed to do that.

[bsyrn, ASN, RN]

At the camp where I work, the Nurses take med carts to the dining hall and each cabin brings their campers up to the med carts. We found that bringing the meds to the campers was much easier than trying to get the campers to come to the infirmary. If a camper requires a medication that is during rest time (2-3pm) we will walk to the cabins and administer the meds. This system works really well.

[dc8atp]

We do all of our meds at meal time. When the girls are waiting to come into the dining hall, I will stick my head out the door and ask for anyone with morning meds to come in. Then same goes for lunch and dinner. Bedtime meds vary on what activity is going on that evening. If they are all up near the dining hall...all camp activity or campfire, etc. then we pass them out at the dining hall, other wise I am going for a drive.

Our Unit counselors carry the rescue inhalers with them in a Bum bag just in case.

Last year I had roughly 120 campers during the 4th session and 39 of them took morning meds, 2 lunch meds, and 6 dinner meds. I don't remember the numbers for hs meds though. Boy breakfast was rough. It made for me to never sit down to a meal at breakfast though.

Kari