If you are using the pneumatic tube system to get meds, you gotta remember to take the meds OUT of the tube before sending stuff elsewhere. I cant tell you how many times I open a tube to take out micro specimens or put in blood products and find someones MEDICINE in there.....
We fax the orders to the pharmacy and then the Tech or pharmacist puts them in the Pyxis during business hours. When a patient is admitted they are automatically in the Pyxis and you override meds and get most medications. If you can't the PCC (Pt. Care Coordinator - aka House Supervisor) can get most of them, if they are in the Pyxis, or go to Pharmacy and retrieve them. SOOOO much better than what we used to do.
There are carbon copies on the order sheets the yellow copy goes into the pharmacy box. The pharmacy staff usually walk around quite often and pick up the meds. If it is something stat then we'll have to get the med out of the Pixis. If it's not in the pixis we call the pharmacy and may have to bring the yellow copy of the order and walk around the corner and get it. Its only about an 8th of a mile away ...not too far. :-)
Oh yeah we fax too. but now with hippa we don't do it as often because of the risks of wrong fax numbers being dialed and Personal health information being sent to the wrong place. ect... Yes, it is a hassle.
WOW! I always said our hospital needs a tube for lab specimens. We have to take the elevator down and it would be so easy to make a little tube, the lab is directly below us!!!!
We also just take the order sheet that the doc wrote the med order on and scan it down to pharmacy (special fax type machine), then stamp it with a stamp that says "scanned" so we know its been done.
someone on the other end will enter this med into the computer so we can get it out of pyxis and it shows up on hte mak. If, by chance, its one of the few uncommon meds that we dont keep in our pyxis, they'll use the pneumatic tube. (or bring it to us, if its a narc). If its a stat order, we scan it down with a big stat sticker on it.
Of course, sometimes I doubt that stat means anything to hte pharmacy. THey can be slow as snot. I've scanned it stat, called the pharmacy to put the rush on it, scanned it stat again.......
Thats when you use the override feature on the pyxis machine to get out certain meds before pharmacy puts them in.
WOW! I always said our hospital needs a tube for lab specimens. We have to take the elevator down and it would be so easy to make a little tube, the lab is directly below us!!!!
Yeah, we use the tube for lab specimens, too. Double bag them, and the tube has foam padding, too.
WOW!!! We'd have to find our unit secretary a new job. But that is awsome!!! I've always wondered Why Doctors don't just type all orders instead of writing them.
On days and evening shifts there is a pharmacist with his own computer who enters the orders into pyxis....and I will call him if I have a STAT med. On night shift we tube the order to pharmacy, again, with a call to the pharmacist for STATS.
:) 
Liann
131 Posts
If you are using the pneumatic tube system to get meds, you gotta remember to take the meds OUT of the tube before sending stuff elsewhere. I cant tell you how many times I open a tube to take out micro specimens or put in blood products and find someones MEDICINE in there.....