Pyxis in Never wrong?

[BlearnRN]

So, at the hospital I work at they have pyxis for all meds. They do not do a narcotic count every day. To make a long story short there was a discrepensie.There are 2 missing pills and it is pointing back to me. I told pyxis man that when I got them out, the the 2nd drawer opened. He said that the front drawer should have opened cause there were suppose to be 2 pills in there,that it should have only opened the one in front. I told him that there were no pills in the front drawer only the back. I explained it to my supervisor and she understood. I told her that I had tried to administer 2 pills to 2 different people and they did not want them, so I returned them. Those pills were found in the return bin by the pyxis man. I also told her that I had administered 1 pill to one person and is documented on the mar. Pyxis man was standing right there when I was explaining this. Then he said in th 14 yrs that he has been using pyxis that it has Never been wrong. ---I am soo worried, what if they don't find the mistake? This Sucks! I am ready to tell them to take my blood and test it!!! Or whatever sample they want!!

[BlearnRN]

Unfortuately, they did not find the discrepensy . My supervisor told me not to worry. She had been involved with discrepensies before and she was not worried about it with me. She said to just take my time at the pyxis. One time is not a trend and not to worry. I am going to try not to use that pyxis to get narcs out again. I think it may have a glitch in it.

[peaches49]

In my experience, the counts in the pixis is wrong a lot, not just with narcs, but all meds, and especially with the confusion of things such as: taking out one when you meant to take two, then trying to go back and get the second one without charging the pt. And, returning meds not wanted by the pt. There are so many reasons for counts to be off that can usually always be traced back to human error somewhere down the line. So, no worrys.. They should be able to figure it out eventually. Good luck!

Hi glad a few of you posted. My proiblem was that the pyxis asked for a count of all the meds i was taking and put me down for taking that many. The count might be 10 on aspirin and would put me down for taking 10, and they said this was wrong because the pyxis should not be asking for a count of all meds, and the ones I drew yesterday--- the machine worked fine. ANd I had no errors. But I also was standing there and my teacher seeing all this, she confirmed aldo what the machine was doing.

Anyway they wanted a little inservice on the pyxis, then they were going to put me back into the system. It's all the nasty talk from nurses that we hear about that causes the poblems.

thanks for posting back.

[nghtfltguy, BSN, RN]

wow!!

i have never heard of a pyxis man.... he must be like the tooth fairy.... or even santa clause.... i do know the pharmicists and their techs....

if it was a narc.. the pyxis/ omni cell.. whatever... asks you for a count

it is your responsobility to count what is left in the drawer....

you never know how much of an idiot the last nurse that was in that drawer is..

welll... sometimes you do.... and just trust em....

either way.... if this dude found the 2 missing pills... then what is the problem?

im confused...

[nightingale07]

The pyxis can definitely be wrong. It is not beyond a pharmacist or pharmacy tech to make a mistake. I have known of our pharmacy miscounting and stocking drawers with incorrect meds/doses. Our pyxis has a profile for each patient. I once got a scheduled xanax 0.25 out for one of my patients, went to give it and realized that I had a xanax 1mg. The only drawer that opened when I selected the med. was the drawer with what was supposed to be only xanax 0.25mg. I went to return the med. and find the problem. The drawer contained both 1mg and 0.25mg tabs. Although this was the pharmacist's mistake, had I trusted the pyxis and given the med. the error would have been on me.

[araywa63]

Hi Mig , I need all the information that you hv from installing pyxis to complains . our hospital is in the process of installing one and would like as much infor as poss from you . will appreciate much . thanx

aray.

[Booty Nurse, BSN]

I have found mistakes during narcotic counts that were clearly a result of pharmacy putting pills in the wrong pocket. The PYXIS is only as accurate as the humans who use it. Sorry you had to go through the stress of a narcotic discrepancy! It sounds like everyone understands that it was a simple mistake, so try not to worry.

[hopefornursing]

One of my nursing instructors made a big point to us students that humans fill the Pyxis and therefore is always room for an error from the Pyxis. We are taught to always double check everything out of the pyxis for this very reason, so no the pyxis is NOT never wrong.

[flightnurse2b, LPN]

just the other day i found two tablets of metoprolol in the misoprostol drawer. the pharmacy fills them, and errors happen. usually they can trace back every person who filled/pulled meds from the station and find out where the error was....