We have to COUNT drugs like lisinopril and Claritin

1 Yesterday.....was pulling meds. The pyxsis asked for a count for lisinopril and claritin. I called pharmacy to see if they had these drawers programmed wrong. Nope. People have been stealing it. WTH? I believe the pharmacy said, "large quantities of it." Prilosec too.

Does this happen at your facitlity?

Do people steal things from your break room, too?


just a curious!
Yeah. I was floored one day when pregnant and c/o of heartburn when another nurse told me that protonix is really hard to tear, that second one just comes out of the pyxis all the time. WTH?! I mean its not like our primar hospitalists won't give you a Rx for a day or two till you can see your own doc or the pharmacist won't give you a OTC dose of something.

Heck, we had to count Colace in our's, LOL...

Hospitals now want you to count anything that is expensive. A great use of very expensive nursing time, oui?I may be dumb, but doesn't the PYXIS already monitor that?

Gotta keep them bean counters happy! Even saw one place requiring plain Tylenol be counte in the Pyxis! Large hospitals can put stuff out for bids, and pay a fraction of a cent for a Tylenol tablet to make sure that brand name gets in the patients face, but heaven forbid a staff member take 2 tablets to get through a 12 hour shift vs going home sick.Sorry about the rant. The old phrase "your money or your life" seems to be more and more common in hospitals lately.

Yep...we have to count colace, too. I don't know who is taking large quantities of that one!! LOL!

luckily our counts are good and we do not have to count non control meds. Hope it never comes to that.

We don't have the routine drugs like lisinopril in the pyxis. We get our day's supply of meds in individual bed-numbered drawers that the pharmacy delivers in the AM. For prescription changes they have runners who update the drawers every few hours or in a pinch they tube them to us. Mostly narcs and other painkillers in the pyxis as well as stuff like heparin drips and cardizem drips etc.

Ah, the good o'l days when Staff was allowed to take meds out for Personal Use! But let one Nurse decides she needs some Soma and another Nurse mistake a Potent Psychotropic for Tylenol and Personal Use goes out the window.But what are ya gonna do?Dave

I know somebody who was medicating herself for high BP! ended up in a real mess with heart problemsI know I have never medicated myself from the pyxisThe hospital I worked at would send you tylenol, brufen and anti acids up to your floor if you needed them

Our pyxis is set up so that you don't have to count most of the meds, just the controlled substances. Likewise, we have a default "personal" category from which we can pull anything for ourselves that is over the counter. If it's not in the pyxis and it's over the counter and we have it stocked in our main pharmacy, we can call a pharmacist and they will send it over for us.If you pull something for yourself that is a prescription med, you'll be getting a quick write up.Don't you have to log into your pyxis? How can they not know who is stealing meds? Why not discipline those particular people, rather than punish everyone and waste valuable time by making everyone count every med?

We've had to count lactinex lately. What a pain when almost every pt is on it! Seems large quantities werre disappearing. By counting it, they can pinpoint who is taking more than they are supposed to. Say nurse A counts and gets 25 and is supposed to pull 1 and pulls 4 by mistake. Nurse B comes in and counts 21--they know Nurse A pulled too many or nurse B is lying. LOL Seriously? It's a pain in the butt!

The only non-narcotic we have to count now is Nexium, which just happened a few months ago. Apparently that is a popular med to steal in our hospital. Things like Tylenol and Maalox are kept as floor stock so we can just grab it from the cabinet, and I have taken a Tylenol if I forgot my personal travel pack of Motrin, but that's it.