Narc counting

3quarters · Jun 25, 2011

yes, thank you for your input.

NamasteNurse, BSN, RN · Jun 25, 2011

The "right" way is the way your current DON says to do it.

Forever Sunshine, ASN, RN · Jun 25, 2011

Offgoing nurse reads from the narc book. Patients name. drug.. and number of pills remaining.

Oncoming nurse counts the drugs from the card.

3quarters · Jun 25, 2011

LOL, that's a good one but we're not upgraded with pyxis. We're r out in the boonies

3quarters · Jun 25, 2011

I've been a nurse for 29 years and the facility has had 3 Administrators and now on the 4th D.O.N.in 6 mos., They all have different ideas on how to do things, I'm now told we have been counting the narc's all wrong. Can anyone tell me the correct way to count off the narc's at shift chg..Pease I want to be right in what I'm doing.

I want to make it clear that the new D.O.N. is going by policy of the facility.

mazy · Jun 25, 2011

Off-going nurse reads the paper where the pills have been signed out and says the number, in-coming nurse checks the actual pills on the card and verifies the number is how I've always done it.

A good example of how things can go wrong is when you have a narc card where someone accidentally popped a pill out of order, if you don't see that when you're counting off the number it's not going to be reflected accurately on the sign off sheet.

But this post brings up the question of whether there is any "official" policy about this -- seems to be an official policy about almost everything in nursing.....You would think that with State coming in and scouring through paperwork to make sure everything is done correctly they would have some kind of policy about narc counts in facilities that use paper.

kids · Jun 25, 2011

I've never seen a policy that was particular as to which nurse handled the meds and which the book. But every place I've worked (as far back as I can recall) BOTH nurses visualize the amount of the drug being counted and the amount recorded in the log.