medications at bedside

[carebearsRN]

if you walk into a patient's room and saw medications placed at their bedside, what is the proper thing to do as a nurse? do you remove it from the room, take the meds and double check its order, or make the pt take it?

what is the proper way of handling this?

[mykrosphere]

Obviously in health care it would be very limited to for example eye drops, cough drops, ointments.

i agree with this here.....

although i think technically, if its a medication/ script, it should not be at the bedside at all.

i occasionally find pills in med cups at the bedside, or even inside the bedside table. any med i havent gotten out myself gets thrown out.

i also do not leave any pills or whatever on the table for the patient to take without my watching them take them.

no matter if theyre alert and oriented or not.

i just explain that i cannot leave the stuff in the room for them to take at their leisure because i could get in trouble and thats usually a good enough explanation for them.

if they wont take what i have gotten them, i waste it and come back when they will take it.

[mykrosphere]

and........that question is horribly vague !:sstrs:

[loriangel14, RN]

that is a terrible question. if it was me and it wa my pt the meds would be discarded after I had figured outwaht they were. if they had been sitting there since last shift I couldn't give the since I didn't pour them. Where i worl meds are never allowed to be left bedside. I just had out out with a pt the other night that wanted her puffers left at the bedside.

[mcpnurse]

that's terrible

[carebearsRN]

and this is why Im deliriously happy that I am no longer in nursing school

haha this question wasn't from school... I took a pre-employment med exam today and this question stumped me i'm stuck in between removing it or checking against its orders .... if the question had said something like "what should you do FIRST" then it might give me a hint. However, I think both answers could be applicable here

[scg08rn]

where i work, the state came in for medications being left at the bedside (a patient reported it to the ombudsman..). it is not acceptable, and the nurse who left them at the bedside will be terminated. it is not safe, somebody else can come in and take them. if any medications are left at bedside without a doctor's order, the nurse will be immediately terminated. kinda harsh, thankfully i'm not one to do it.. i like to throw out the medication cup after all medications are taken. and even if medications are left at the bedside, what if the patient takes them and ends up choking and no one is around? the best answer would be to remove them, find out who left them, and report it to the supervisor.