medication delivery!!!!

[correctionsLPN1]

Hello to all my fellow brave correctional nurses out there!!

I am new to this site and also a new nurse! Starting in corrections (my ultimate goal) but I'm having one issue.

In the facility that I work in we house youthful adult offenders and due to having adults also they do not come to our pill line the YAOs have their medication delivered to them. The problem that I am having is the system that is set up to deliver the medications feels so unsafe to me and can very easily turn into a med error. 😣

So the system that we have is all medications a prepoured into 30ml cups and a lid is placed on the cup (all psychs are crushed and putt in water) on top of the lid that closes the cup we place another lid on top with the inmates name on it and place it in a tackle box and deliver the medication to the block. The problem is that these lids are NOT secure and sometimes they fall off or flip flop onto other cups. So if you are not familiar with the inmates and know what medication they take and this happenes to you jyou would have to either prepared again or would make a medication error unknowingly. I HATE this procedure. Any suggestions from any of you nurses that have deliver medications to blocks or RHU would be grealty appreciated!!!!!!!!!!

[DawnJ]

Does sound unsafe. We take laptops to the pods and pour the meds there off a cart

[bsnprg]

Pre-pouring meds are absolutely against our facility (LTC) policy!

I wonder if there is a state policy for this ???

Sent from my iPhone using allnurses

[correctionsLPN1]

I wish there was. We only have 1 med cart and it's to store all DOT meds

[ILoveHealthCare]

At the jail I worked at they prepoured all the medications into little envelopes that closed. That was much easier because the pills didn't fall out. They also used the pill crusher sleeves and added water to that when they got to the tanks for those who cheek their meds. The envelope was only a little bigger than the pill crusher sleeve. They reused the envelope which had the inmates name and id number as well as tank written on it.

[buttercup99]

Why can't the name (or initials) be written on the cup or the first lid instead of the 2nd lid?

[CryssieD]

We us the envelope system--you can close them, line them up alphabetically in bins (separate bins for each wing/floor/unit/pod), and pour into water-filled cups to administer them. We also use a laptop so that we can check the pills in the envelopes against the MAR for each offender.

[canigraduate]

I'm confused as to why it's only written on the second lid and not on the cup. I understand the lid is quicker to read, but the cup is safer. Why not do both? When I pull meds for multiple people, I always at least initial the cup (depending on where I am and HIPAA).

Why have a second lid in the first place? That doesn't make sense to me, as it is wasteful and unsafe. Maybe you could use tape to either secure the 2nd lid or replace it?

I think you should take this up the ladder, with the suggestions you have seen here, to keep your inmates safe.

[DawnJ]

Piece of tape over the lid would solve the spillage problem

[emilyy11]

We use envelopes when we pre-pour. The only people we pre-pour for are those on lock down. We can't bring the cart into segregation blocks.

[taxifolia]

I have worked in two facilities and in both pre-pouring is an absolute no no..