Medications from home

[LPN9200]

What are your policies/procedures for receiving medications from a resident's home (particularly narcotics)? I've always worked in places that typically refuse to accept them but will if in a pinch and they are unable to be obtained from our emergency supply or we lack scripts for narcotics at the moment. But a few days ago an incident happened and the aftermath left a lot of us questioning how it could have happened, why the medication was even accepted in the first place much less given, and how it filtered through several nurses including myself and we didnt catch it.

[LessValuableNinja]

It's completely based on facility policy. Regardless of policy, however, I've never seen any policy that required less than a prescriber's order that said they may use their home medications. In some cases, the specific medications and doses need to be listed out. In other cases, the requirement is simply for an order that generally says they use their home medications. In hospitals, I've not had any recent experiences where a pharmacist was not required to (in person) verify the medications and label the container.

[CoffeeRTC, BSN, RN]

Yikes. I need to recheck our policy. We do accept meds from home, but it normally for our respite patients that are only there for a week. I don't recall using narcs from home except with a hospice patient. I understand the position you might have been in. Often times we get admits on the weekend, pharmacy is taking forever to even answer the phone, doc is taking forever to call in scripts (if they didn't come with them from the hospital), you have the order for them, the resident is clearly in pain and has a need for them, it is easy to look the other way while they pull one from their purse or family might bring them in from home. BUT....I also see how this can go wrong, and it not being legal etc.

[CapeCodMermaid, RN]

We don't take meds from home especially narcotics. All our prescription meds have to be bubble packed ....I don't really know what's in a bottle...could be poison