Would you take a patient's blood sugar without an "order"?

1 Especially if the patient asked you to because they were on solu-medrol and a diabetic? I would.
Is it that hard to get an order? Insurance willnot pay if it isn't ordered indicated. Our glucometers are wifi and automatically download to our EHR so we can't get away with a random under the table glucose.

I've done it before. Never thought it could be an issue. This is interesting.

working in long term care, yup. if you call the doc with symptoms of hypo, and you haven't done it, he/she is going to ask "why"?It should be covered in the P+P.....

At my hospital we have a policy that says we can do it at our discretion. We can also order FSBG to be checked BID for known diabetics if the doc didn't order AC/HS

I would check the sugar and get an order after or enter the order myself since this is allowed where I work.

I check BGL on my little babies on postpartum without an order if I feel they are showing signs of hypoglycemia. I also do the same for adults. In the OP case I would get an order first because the patient is not symptomatic. Besides if the patient is a diabetic he may require some type of order for BGL.

When patient is deteriorating are you calling for MD order? I never do that...When I am concern about patient status it is part of my assessment. I've done that on many occasions and never had any problems because of that.

The only reason I would take a patient's blood sugar without an order is if they were exhibiting signs of hypoglycemia acutely, and I have reason to suspect they might be- ie, not eating, on insulin, history of low blood sugars. High blood sugars due to solu-medrol are not an emergency, but something the physician should be aware of and address with a proper order in a timely fashion.

When I worked critical care, I had patients on solu-medrol and if there were no orders to check BS ac and hs, I would get orders. It's a steroid so it'll increase BS, so important to get orders to get it checked.Other than that prn checks if objective assessments warrants one.Sent via iPink's phone using allnurses

Quote from Nola009Especially if the patient asked you to because they were on solu-medrol and a diabetic? I would.

Well, I work at a small hospital on a Med-Surg floor and our manager has been really wanting us to discuss the purpose and one side effect of one current medication with each patient q shift. Well, I just so happened to be doing that with an older patient who had a few questions/concerns early this morning when I was giving them this med. I was really busy at the 2100 med pass, and it didn't come up anyways. Since my shift was almost over at 0500, I passed the info along in report. I took the bs just because the patient had asked me to and I had time. Pt. was asymptomatic with a bs in the 200s. Since it wasn't critical, I didn't call the doctor about it. But, since it was well over 150, I thought I should pass this info along so that day shift might get a sliding scale order when this doctor made rounds in the am.

yea - checking BG is fairly innocuous - its not like you're giving insulin coverage and it makes a good tool to GET the orders you need.