Parul

Thank you all! I will go ahead and find the policy about taking verbal orders from doctors in case of NON emergency and will post it in the nursing station. It will help me and all my fellow nurses to just point to that policy when the doctors are just being lazy or want us to do something that is non compliant with our policies. Where can I find standards about taking verbal orders in GA? Would it be available on the GA nursing board website? I tried to search that website, but nothing came up. May be I wasn't looking in the right place. Thanks!

Hello All, I am a relatively new nurse and work for a psych. facility. Many times, the doctors just ask us nurses to write the orders for them when they are right there..These are the orders when they are not very clear about what to do or they want us to do something that is against the policies. i.e. -- we had a patient who required many very expensive medications. Our policy says that we will only administer the medications that were ordered for the patient from our pharmacy and will not use any medication that the consumers bring with them from home. But there are exceptions when the doctors would give us an order to use consumer's medication. So, the other day when the case worker brought in medication for one consumer -- doctor just told me to receive the medication, identify them and confirm what they were and write an order on her behalf to use those medication for the consumer. My manager inter wined and said -- sorry doc, but nurses can not dispense the medication. So, the doctor gave us a nasty look and opened the bottles to see if the medications were what they said on the bottle. She also said -- well, how am I suppose to know what medications are these??? Lucky for her -- all the bottles were sealed, so she just gave all of them to us and said -- ok, you can write down all the medications and write the order for me now..CAN SHE DO THAT??? Can someone please tell me where can I look up the information about when are the nurses responsible to write the orders for doctors?? I will appreciate some guidance as if how to handle situations like this. ..thank you all.