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Is your hospital taking cues from a medical satire site?
Hospital Mandates Nurses Wear Yellow Safety Belts While Checking Out Pyxis Medications | GomerBlog
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I've heard of do not disturb signs etc. for the med nurse in LTC, but in a hospital? There isn't a formal med pass. That sounds like a behemoth pain in the butt to keep taking the sash on and off, and like you said other members of the team need to talk to us. They are busy too, and communication needs to be timely.
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My hospital did this it was a complete fail. We did it for around 8 months, but even though we were not supposed to be interrupted they constantly interrupted us anyway. Then they started saying it was required to take phone calls, so everyone was given our phone numbers and it rang constantly. It literally was hated by all nurses one of the few things we all completely agreed on. Ours was red. Not one person found it helpful.
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We had lanyards that were supposed to be put on if passing meds. I never saw a single nurse use them. Some did find their way to hanging on the side of a couple of the WOWs but otherwise were completely ignored. We also have the (nasty, ripped, dirty) taped box at the pyxis for a quiet zone. Should be changed probably at least every couple days for infection control!
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Have heard of this being done in hospitals in the UK.maybe check the UK forum?
Yup, in ireland we have red aprons... BUT, it's slowly dying a death. It's more so the patients don't interrupt us rather than docs etc. There's posters up everywhere to educate the patients and families etc. I'd love to see some evidence based research as to whether it's any good or not.
amoLucia
7,736 Posts
Sorry that I can't answer your concerns. But I would venture that any studies would be interesting reading.
Just to comment - where I last worked, our nurses wanted something similar (the 'DO NOT DISTURB the med nurse' sign for the med cart) for all the typical reasons. We were shot down by admin.