Where are the supplies?

[makes needs known]

The other as night as I was working, a nurse from another floor came to me and asked if I had any extra bottles of 325mg tylenol, I went and looked I had no unopened bottles in my stock supply for my floor. I gave her my supply from one of the med carts I am responsible for.

I ran out of glucoscan strips and asked the SV to please find me some, he returned with 1 box he had to search all over for.

The other night we had some fleets enemas that were supposed to be given as part of our bowel protocol, and we had no enemas in our building. We contacted the Dr. and got an order to hold until the next day when we could get some enemas.

The next day we still didn't have any enemas. Thankfully our pts that had not moved their bowels, did move their bowels without any further intervention.

We might not have all the medical supplies we need, but we have a bowel- movement- load of paperwork to document on to prove that we are doing our jobs.

[Vespertinas]

Do you work nights?

[classicdame, MSN, EdD]

I used to work nights and the closests that are open all day would be locked at night. Could not access anything. As for Tylenol, we only use unit dose and the Pyxis. The House Sup can get into a special night cabinet if needed, but pharmacy leaves at 11 pm so sometimes it gets interesting.

[Vespertinas]

Right. So supplies are there. You just can't access them. Night problem

[Anne36, LPN]

Thats what I want to know. I was thinking this would be about LTC. God forbid you need to take an oral temp because I have never seen a probe cover since I have been at my current facility or an extra pair of sterile gloves. Its hard enough to find a working pulse ox or blood pressure cuff, have to get my own.

[MN-Nurse, ASN, RN]

We might not have all the medical supplies we need, but we have a bowel- movement- load of paperwork to document on to prove that we are doing our jobs.

Some facilities delay the purchase of supplies according to make their balance sheets look better. We regularly ran out of gloves, briefs, and just about every other essential supply at the nursing home I worked at.

[makes needs known]

I guess I could call and ask if there are medical supplies I could pick up at the drugstore/walmart before I come in.

[CoffeeRTC, BSN, RN]

Um, no. Don't go buying supplies. I've worked in a place like this. (I think you do rehab too?)

I know for a fact that sometimes supplies don't get ordered until the last minute because of the budget. We order supplies from a pre approved vendor and get them once a week or sometimes every two weeks. The problem is that a non medical person orders supplies and doesn't ask nursing for any input (we've since started leaving a notebook where we ask for supplies or tell them what is low) Sometimes this non medical person needs some info on why we might need a certain thing sooner than the next delivery..maybe we get alot of residents with extensive wounds and need more abds or 4X4s or it could be cold season and we are using more OTC meds like tylenol or cougy meds.

If we run out of a supply we can do an emergency request from the pharmacy (much more expesive than the other approved vendor) but when you need supplies, you need supplies. I've had to do this for test strips for the glucometer, syringes etc. We are supposed to get approval from the DON first. A few calls in the middle of the night asking for supplies normally get things ordered more efficiently.

[onetiredmomma]

Doesn't just happen in LTC...we had 3 pt with NGs this week and needed to replace one of the stay-guard nose things ( not sure of the name). Anyway, our floor had none and neither did the next 2 units I visited. A call to supply got the response "they are a low use item and I think we are out of them"/ Someone did finally find 2 and brought them to me...I thought about hiding the extra one in my locker but don't want to start doing that.

[Lynx25, LPN]

What supplies? There are no supplies.

You should know this by now.

Get your roll of duct tape and your scissors, and make it happen.

On a side note, I was told we "Might run out of briefs" this weekend. If we do, I will go to Walmart, get a truck load of them, and send the bill to the corporate office, and see what they think about those apples.

[yuzzamatuzz]

We run out of ambu bags, nasal canulas, and yankeur suctions all the time. Drives me absolutely crazy

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

The budget for supplies was eliminated to make room for the CEO's 6 figure bonus.

I worked at a nationally ranked "#1" institution for 5 years. We routinely ran out of things like suction canisters, suction catheters (can't even count how many times I had to suction a patient's trach with the wrong size catheter because we ran out of the right size), diapers, gloves, formula, you name it. My favorite was when we'd call for a bed and get told "there are none in the hospital"... um, how does a nationally ranked hospital not have enough physical beds to fill their bed spaces? What really made me mad was when the hospital would run out of feeding pumps... happened quite often that we'd call for one and get told "there's a waiting list for them". This hospital went out of its way to advertise its absurdly high ranking- painting the elevators to say "#1" putting "#1" signs all over the entrance etc. So they're spending money to advertise that but they won't invest in the equipment needed to feed the patients. Disgusting.