No pharmacist at night?

[blondy2061h]

I've seen a couple people mention lately that their hospitals don't have pharmacists at night. This seems crazy! How exactly does this work? Who do you ask if you have a question about a med? Who clears and dispenses new drug orders? Who do you call if you're missing a med for a patient? Who restocks crash cart meds if someone codes? What if your pyxis is broken or out of a med?

I just cannot imagine running a hospital with no pharmacist available 24/7.

[GeminiRNmom]

Our pharmacy staff leaves at 10p on weekdays and 7p on weekends. We have a night locker full of meds that the RN's can go and override meds. If you are stuck with a question you can call the pharmacist at home, but you are mostly on your own. They keep multiple crash carts in night locker to resupply with. This is the first hospital I have ever been at that does this and it has been very weird. I am still trying to get used to it.

[uscstu4lfe]

we can override medications on the pyxis system too. however, this is SUCH a big ordeal. we have to have 2 nurses verify the order, and have certain signatures in certain places. we had an incident a while back where an RN was overriding medications that were not even ordered, and one of the patients ended up dying after receiving a med. i never heard if the patient died because of the medication, or if it was a just coincidence. anyways, those were the days when you could do the override yourself.

[ChaosRN777]

we can override medications on the pyxis system too. however, this is SUCH a big ordeal. we have to have 2 nurses verify the order, and have certain signatures in certain places. we had an incident a while back where an RN was overriding medications that were not even ordered, and one of the patients ended up dying after receiving a med. i never heard if the patient died because of the medication, or if it was a just coincidence. anyways, those were the days when you could do the override yourself.

this is part of the reason why it is such a big ordeal, errors. And it is part of the reason why there should be a pharmacist on. however I learned to not trust any one person with medications. I received Prochlormozine 10mg amps for a single dose of 50mg of thorazine, when i realized that it would take 5 amps to give the dose, i called. the answer i got back was "aaaahhhh what's the big deal?" so i always double check and double check that last double as well.

But i beleive that it is truly outside our scope of practice to be doing this.