Medication Aids; What will this mean?

[arelle68]

One of my brightest CNAs came to me excited about how the facility has already offered her a job as a Medication Aide. She is about to start a four month program of training, along with 2 other CNAs at our facility. Our facility has not used Medication Aides up to this point. The nurses pass the meds. This is my question: What will it be like working in a place where UAPs pass the meds. Will they try to stretch one nurse over the whole facility? I would like to hear from people who have had experience with this. Will nurses lose hours over this? Will the facility lay off nurses?

[Up2nogood RN, RN]

I was a CMA at one time and also worked in LTC and yes, CMA's pass all meds. In one facility I could give GT meds but not JT. Another place the nurse gave all the tube meds. Potentially it could cut the nurses hours since it will free up a LOT of your time. I loved working as a med aide before but working as a nurse I HATED passing pills. In my state we use them in LTC everywhere and we are used to this arrangement. The last SNF I worked at perdiem on evenings for 60 residents we had 2 nurses and one med aide. On nocs just one nurse but really no scheduled meds just PRN's.

[husker_rn, RN]

I have worked with med aides in LTC. One was a small facility and I also had a treatment nurse; the larger one had 55 + residents and I had them all. G tube meds, finger sticks, insulin, eye drops were mine too. Med aides can be VERY helpful but you still need to keep an eye on meds. Most will ask if/when on meds but I did work with a couple who thought if it was ordered it MUST be given. Have mixed feelings on the subject.

[jnrsmommy]

Work LTC w/ med aides, in Texas. Ours can give all PO, SL, creams, lady partsl, rectal, eye drops and ointments, and patches. One facility I worked at allowed them to give inhalers so long as the resident could work the device themselves. You can have some that are great, and some that I wouldn't trust to give pills to the evil dog that bit me when I was a little girl. We still have to give all Gtube/Jtube, injections, and coumadins. Our med aides are supposed to come to us first if a resident requests a PRN, most are really slack about it, but when I work, they know they better come to me first. I also spot check their MARs throughout the shift just to make sure things are being given and signed for, or if someone is refusing meds. Also, our policy is that if a resident refuses the med for the med aide, the nurse has to attempt x2 to give med, before it can be signed off as refused.

It does take a little getting used to, but it does help out tremendously when you have a good one working w/ you.

[arelle68]

This is what I'm asking: When you have a medication aide, do you have more patients? Do you have fewer nurses? Do the nurses have fewer hours? What does this mean for our jobs?

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

I work in a nursing home in Texas where medication aides are heavily utilized, and I love it. The LVNs/LPNs and RNs do all the assessing, injectable meds, suppositories, wound care, IV therapy, finger stick blood sugars, admissions, discharges, checking of meal trays, feeding tube meds, topical creams and ointments, and charting.

However, a major drawback is that sometimes the company does eliminate a licensed nursing position in favor of a cheaper medication aide position. For example, my former workplace used to utilize 4 LPNs/LVNs on a unit with 80 elderly residents. Now, the staffing matrix consists of 2 LPNs/LVNs and 1 medication aide who passes oral meds and eyedrops to all of the residents. The medication aide also obtains vital signs.

In my city, the facilities that utilize medication aides can easily attract and retain nurses, whereas the nursing homes that do not use med aides tend to have a high turnover rate of nurses. Some nurses simply do not like passing pills to 30+ residents.

[tolerantgirl]

I really disagree with having medication aids. They do not have enough knowledge regarding renal excretion of medications, medications that are metabolized in the liver, etc.. I doubt they have to take pharmacology and that was a grueling class learning all the classes of medications and drug interactions. There is just so much to learn about medications. I wonder how the Board of Nursing feels about this, would be interesting to know.

[arelle68]

I work in a nursing home in Texas where medication aides are heavily utilized, and I love it. The LVNs/LPNs and RNs do all the assessing, injectable meds, suppositories, wound care, IV therapy, finger stick blood sugars, admissions, discharges, checking of meal trays, feeding tube meds, topical creams and ointments, and charting.

However, a major drawback is that sometimes the company does eliminate a licensed nursing position in favor of a cheaper medication aide position. For example, my former workplace used to utilize 4 LPNs/LVNs on a unit with 80 elderly residents. Now, the staffing matrix consists of 2 LPNs/LVNs and 1 medication aide who passes oral meds and eyedrops to all of the residents. The medication aide also obtains vital signs.

In my city, the facilities that utilize medication aides can easily attract and retain nurses, whereas the nursing homes that do not use med aides tend to have a high turnover rate of nurses. Some nurses simply do not like passing pills to 30+ residents.

So what you are saying is that the one Medication Aide replaced two licensed nurses. They hired the med aide, and laid off to LVNs. With nursing jobs already so hard to come by, are we just going to let this happen to our jobs? Is there any way to stop this from happening? The nurses lose jobs, the residents lose the safety of having a licensed professional administer their meds. The nurses and patients lose again. The corporations win again. When will it stop? :angryfire

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

So what you are saying is that the one Medication Aide replaced two licensed nurses. They hired the med aide, and laid off to LVNs.

My former workplace did not lay off anyone. Instead, people were given the chance to move to shifts where they were badly needed.

[Up2nogood RN, RN]

I really disagree with having medication aids. They do not have enough knowledge regarding renal excretion of medications, medications that are metabolized in the liver, etc.. I doubt they have to take pharmacology and that was a grueling class learning all the classes of medications and drug interactions. There is just so much to learn about medications. I wonder how the Board of Nursing feels about this, would be interesting to know.

A med aide is not required to take a pharmacology class because they are just PASSING out meds as they are ordered on the MAR. That's why we have LPN's, RN's, RCM's, and MD's. Yes, the nurse is responsible for overseeing the med aide but in my state the med aide has a license from the BON to uphold also. The med aide class I took was 120 hrs of class time and 120 clinical hrs. We were taught the same math formulas, same classes, side effects, interactions, etc as I was taught in nursing school. Pharmacokinetics and dynamics were not gone into too deep as this was out of scope of practice.

[kcarter76]

i live in phoenix and i have a cna and a pct cert and now i am a caregiver/caremanager that passes meds at a assisted living. They are very trusting here because i have 52 regular residents and 35 dementia residents we have 1 rn works 9-5 2 lpns that work 9-5 and then we have us med techs 3 on days 3 on evening and 1 overnight but i am allowed to give all meds coumadan insulin, all narcotics, prns 1st doses of anything the only thing i cant do is picc lines but i can do all others now when i move to ohio in feb for nursing school i have to take a whole new 120 hr course and i can only do 1/3 of the stuff i do now its amazing depends on where you live what you can do the only problem is i can still make more as a cna in the hospital than i do passing meds and making sure people dont die what kind of crap is that?