supplies after discharge

[acenab4jc]

We waste so much - I saw a previous post that mentioned sending supplies to a charity after a patient is discharged - just wondering how to start doing that, now we just toss it.

[qcumba]

Why dont you just send it home with the baby? Thats what we do.

[acenab4jc]

I mean IV's, saline flushes, ETT, etc

[Love_2_Learn]

We bag ours up and keep them in our nurse practitioner's office. We just put them in small bags and place them in their room. One of the practitioners goes on mission trips to Central America a lot so she takes them with her when she goes. They are very appreciative of everything, including tape, etc.

[qcumba]

sorry for being obtuse, but are you talking about used supplies?? if not first of all why would you have more than one ETT, specifically for one child, surely they are ward stock? as should saline flushes and IV's, if this is not the case surely you could credit the supplies, so that the patient doesn't have to pay for some one in central america who is using something they were charged for, or have I got it wrong if so set me straight.

[Love_2_Learn]

Our patients are charged based on their diagnosis and length of stay rather than each exact item they use. This keeps us from having so many lost charges and requiring more employees to tally up items and charge for them. I don't understand it completely but our management has worked it out and this has been the way we have done things for several years.

When we put something like a syringe in it's original closed package in the baby's drawer we do not place it back in the stock room. This is for infection control purposes since we are touching the baby and then touching items in their bed drawers. The disposable items that are not used and are not needed by the family at home are the ones we send on mission trips. Rarely is there an ET tube still in it's package at the bedside. The only "used" item would be rolls of tape that we had in the baby's bed drawer. I hope this helps clear things up for you concerning my previous post.

:)

[qcumba]

thank you love 2 learn, sounds interesting, wish they would implement that here, the constant charging is quite tiresome especially when you have other more important things to do, we usually have trays at each bed space, with a few commonly used supplies eg syringes, saline, saline wipes etc and as these are used they are charged, and these trays are filled each day. so there very rarely are any supplies left over at discharge