Medication safety what if...

[SBGangelJC]

Hey all have you ever needed to carry or hold medications in your scrub pocket? If so what were the circumstances? Do you consider this to break a standard of care? Why or why not? Thanks. Peace and love you all.

[Graduatenurse14]

ALL of our meds are kept in the Pyxis so many of us pull say all of their 8:00 am and place them in a ziplock bag with a sticker with initials and room number. When we have to give say, morphine, we pull it up in the med room, place the syringe back in the wrapper and place sticker with initials, room number, med and dose written on it then carry in hand or place in our pocket to the patient.

If we need to give a PO narc, I've seen RN's place the opened med in the med cup and carry it to the patient and I've also seen them opened at the bedside. I open all of my PO meds at the bedside including narcs. I rarely have to waste a PO but if I do, then I do open it in the med room.

Not ideal but it's how it has to be done since we are supposed to pull up meds in the med room and not at the bedside which I don't like and really wouldn't like it if I were a patient!!

We don't do barcode scanning either so anything having to do with meds on my unit take so much time since we have to click off every. single. med. We use Allscripts' Sunrise which is it's own special nightmare. Epic is coming, thank God!!