Not enough equipment

[Rexie]

I can't tell you how many times I've had to hang IV fluids and/or meds on a patient only to realize he doesn't have an IV pole and/or pump at the bedside. There will be none in the equipment room so then I'll have to go search. Sometimes an empty bed will have one. Sometimes, if I ask, another nurse will have a patient who is no longer receiving IV meds and I can have theirs (after I clean it of course). There have been really tough days when I've had to delay giving antibiotics because I had to wait for one patient to finish receiving his IV meds so I could then clean the pole and pump and use it for the other patient.

There are times when we can't find the bladder scanner or the clippers or the otoscope or something else that we need to do our jobs. It make me angry and resentful that it can be so difficult to find the tools I need to take care of our patients.

It's been brought to the attention of management. They keep telling us that they're working on it. It might get a little better and then we're back to where we were before. Does this happen to other hospitals? I've never seen anything quite like this before.

[calivianya, BSN, RN]

Oh, definitely.

And then when the supply people bring up a new set of IV pumps, and the first two that I try give me error messages and I have to send them right back, that just makes me want to throw them out the window and onto the concrete sidewalk below.

Maybe I should actually do this. It would get the broken pumps out of circulation instead of having them just go to another floor so some other nurse can lose her temper at them, too...

[mindofmidwifery, ADN]

This happens to me all the time (I'm a tech). When I transport patients, I can never find a portable monitor. When I take patients to the bathroom I can never find an IV pole and so fourths. It's mainly because people transport patients and never bring our supplies back down.

[middleagednurse]

Did you know you can use a safety pin to hang an IV bag from the curtain?

[Here.I.Stand, BSN, RN]

Did you know you can use a safety pin to hang an IV bag from the curtain?

Could be a useful idea for fluid boluses (although for that, a hook and a pressure bag work great.) For titrated drips, not so much. Sounds like a sentinel event waiting to happen, at least in calivianya's case.

[iluvivt, BSN, RN]

It does not take that long to other and get equipment as I order ours.What is difficult is keeping it.It must be labeled that it belongs to your floor and that it should be returned to your unit.It really does help and helps if everyone is accountable and takes care of the equipment. There is no excuse for not having what you need and it will not change unless you all start complaining and point out it could have been paid for several times over in all the lost time spend on hunting down the items.Actually calculate how much time you waste per week looking for things and multiply that by the number of nurses on a shift

[iluvivt, BSN, RN]

Supposed to say order. Not other

[Rexie]

We don't have safety pins, either I was discussing with the manager the other day, and she mentioned calculating drip rates. I think she was kidding. Now I'm wondering if I could actually do that or if it would be a liability.

[Nonyvole, BSN, RN]

Some meds, I do calculate drip rates. But the really finicky ones or the ones I'll need to titrate, I'll hunt down a pump.

[~PedsRN~, BSN, RN]

I feel your pain. It's so frustrating.

[brandy1017, ASN, RN]

I feel your pain! This is a constant battle on my floor where we have to share basic equipment with other floors because year after year we are told its not in the budget! Just one of the many joys of nursing. lol

[Karou]

I'd suggest writing an incident report anytime an IV medication is delayed or has to be ran off of the pump because you can't find enough equipment.