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Discussion

placing medication the drawer

Hey everyone! I have a quick question to ask all of your nurses!

I'm a second semester nursing student, and I saw something during my clinical rotation that made me question whether or not what I saw my nurse do was okay.

We had an elderly patient who was very hard to wake up. She was very sleepy, and didn't really respond when we were speaking to her. It was time for her morning medications (about six pills). My nurse tried giving the patient her medications one by one, but she ended up chewing one of them! After trying to wake the patient up so she could take her medications for several minutes, she placed the medications back in the drawer (they were all left in the little plastic medication cup). Later on, maybe a few hours later, she was able to give the patient her medication. My question is, are you allowed to place medications back in the drawer like that? If you realize that your patient is drowsy to the point where they ignore you and continue sleeping, what do you do?

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    You are not supposed to do this but many nurses do. It is called "prepouring". Nurses will do this to save time but will follow proper protocol if they expect state surveyors or a particular supervisor to be around.

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    The textbook answer is no, that's not allowed. The meds should have been discarded or wasted and new ones ordered from pharmacy.

    In the real world, the answer is like caliotter said--no, but nurses do it. I've done it. We keep our meds locked in our carts. If I think the patient can or will take them later, within a couple hours, I'll put the meds back in his or her drawer. The only exception is narcotics--I would waste those once I found out their administration isn't appropriate.

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    "Back in the drawer" like in the patient's bedside table or in the patient's individual drawer in the med room? Technically you're not supposed to do either. I wouldn't leave meds in the patient's room but would put them back in the med room. I wouldn't open the packages before I was sure the patient was awake and going to take them though.

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