You must watch me!

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Specializes in ER.

A new nurse to our unit seems slipshod with various things. Today, when I asked her to waste a narcotic she wanted to rush out of the med room without actually watching me waste. I said "No, I want you to watch me!".

She protested, saying she had things to do. It takes 10 more seconds. I think adhering to this strictly is most important.

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Specializes in Community Health, Med/Surg, ICU Stepdown.

It is! If you don’t watch and someone is diverting narcotics and you signed a waste for them you can be liable as well.

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Specializes in Psych (25 years), Medical (15 years).
6 hours ago, Emergent said:

A new nurse to our unit seems slipshod with various things. Today, when I asked her to waste a narcotic she wanted to rush out of the med room without actually watching me waste. I said "No, I want you to watch me!".

She protested, saying she had things to do.

Like, maybe, report you Emergent, for not allowing her to not watch you waste the narcotic.

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8 hours ago, Emergent said:

A new nurse to our unit seems slipshod with various things. Today, when I asked her to waste a narcotic she wanted to rush out of the med room without actually watching me waste. I said "No, I want you to watch me!".

She protested, saying she had things to do. It takes 10 more seconds. I think adhering to this strictly is most important.

I had trouble with this as a new nurse and I brought it up as a collective complaint to my manager. She sent out an email to everyone, without calling anyone out, that people are to waste when asked and to finish watching the waste. She said it was for everyone's protection and any write ups would be final ones.

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Our facility placed a security camera directly over the pixis in the med room where the wastes had to be recorded in the system. Didn’t have too much of a problem having a true witness once that device appeared on the ceiling.

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But what are you wasting? 1/2 of a Lisinopril or 1/2 of an Oxy?

She can watch, but a true diverter isn't throwing the Oxy down the drain...

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Specializes in ER.

I think a camera in the med room should be mandatory these days.

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You are saying the witness, needs a witness. I myself .. did not give a rat's patooti. The witness documented the waste. Now it's all on them.

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On 2/2/2019 at 12:21 AM, Emergent said:

She protested, saying she had things to do. It takes 10 more seconds. I think adhering to this strictly is most important.

More important than urgent issues, when a new nurse is likely feeling high stress and overwhelmed in dealing with their own patients? --If you seemed to the new nurse to be a narcotic thief, maybe watching you waste is more important. But the new nurse probably has no doubt you aren't going to steal the narcotic so does not want to waste precious time whether it's 10 seconds or more than 60 on somewhat senseless waste protocol.

I call it somewhat senseless because if someone really wanted to steal narcotics they could. I think it's ridiculous that with all it takes to become a nurse, and the background and drug tests, and the fact that practically all nurses are honest hard-working people who have a true desire to help others, we can't trust them to pull a narcotic and waste it without a witness. Seriously, if we can't trust nurses to do that then how can we trust them to administer the narcotic without a witness and do all else we do with multiple patients everyday? I'd rather do a regularly scheduled drug test then to make a patient wait on a much-needed pain med due to not being able to find a witness because lack of sufficient staffing and being assigned too many patients.

Think about it. Multiple patients are lying in agony crying for their overdue pain meds and a nurse can't run and grab it quickly because the nurse can't be trusted to pull the pain med alone. It's absurd. Now, if it were a safety issue such as finding another nurse to double-check giving certain medicines, that makes sense to me. But the trust issue just doesn't; we ought to find ways to weed out the drug thieves BEFORE they're working on the floor as nurses, and once they are, then we can TRUST them. Or at least find ways to audit nurses' integrity that does not cause patients harm (by making them wait)!

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If I trust you, I don't want to watch. Besides, I don't know what we're really wasting, anyway ...unless I also have to witness for you to pull the medication.
If you have an interesting story about something, then I might stick around for ten seconds and pretend to care. So ....do you have an interesting story??

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Specializes in Care Coordination, General Surgery, Oncology.

If I don't have an extra 10 seconds to actually watch the waste I just "witnessed," I tell the other RN to find someone else. When I need a witness, I make sure to ask them if they have time to both witness it in the omnicell and watch me waste.

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Specializes in Psych (25 years), Medical (15 years).
On 2/3/2019 at 1:12 PM, Sour Lemon said:

If you have an interesting story about something, then I might stick around for ten seconds and pretend to care. So ....do you have an interesting story??

This has been a paid commercial message from Sr. Sour Lemon of the Order of Perpetual Impatience.

We now resume our regularly scheduled program...

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