New med admin system and paranoid pts

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Wondering if any of you are using the new med admin systems that require pt's ID bracelet to be scanned before giving the med. Are you running into trouble getting paranoid patients to allow the scan? I have a few times and most of the patients with psychotic disorders require more encouragement to take their meds with this laser scanner involved. I almost thought my director was joshing us when she told us we were getting this system. Administration people who don't actually work with psych patients don't understand the finesse that is involved in getting these patients to accept their meds.

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Work for the VA & yes we have been using the "wonderful" BCMA system for years now. In a word it sucks. I couldn't agree with you more that scanning a paranoid schiz patient's armband is ludicrous. Most of the time on our unit, locked psych admissions, we keep extra armbands of all patients on hand & during med administration we simply scan those. It is not a problem for those of us who work the unit all the time but for a covering nurse it could be extreemly difficult. Of course it violates the med administration policy but hey you have to do what you have to do to get them to take their meds.

Another thing we have discovered with this wonderful system, the armbands are junk. After 2-3 showers the bar code fades so badly it can't be scanned. That is if you can even get a psychotic patient to keep an armband on...

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I haven't heard of that! We still use the old "what's your name and birthdate" routine when giving meds. From the sounds of your experiences, it doesn't sound like fun!

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Our paranoid patients have, for the most part, been willing to carry their ID bands (with bar codes) in their pockets, and bring them out when there's a need for staff to see (or scan) the ID. For the extremely paranoid patients, we keep the ID bands near the computer, to scan when administering meds. Because of hospital policy, we have to have an order from the MD for this.

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