Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Naughty nursing homes

I got a phone call today from one of the nursing homes we look after:
'Mrs X has got four tablets in her nightime slot, she should only have three?'
Oh bugger....
'Ok, I'll send my driver out with a new tray and to pick up that one so we can figure out whats happened'

So we got the tray back later on. We eventually worked out that one of the members of staff at the nursing home had been tampering with the tray. This lady used to be on hydroxyzine (a sedating antihistamine), 1 or 2 at night when needed. These were supplied as they would be to any patient: we can't put them in a tray as we don't know when she would need them. Hydroxyzine was difficult to obtain a few months ago, so this patient was switched to zopiclone, another sleeping tablet.

Once we had figured out what had happened we spoke to someone senior at the home and explained the situation. This is a totally unacceptable situation: nursing homes shouldn't tamper with pre-packed medication provided from the pharmacy. The manager said they would look into it, and I would expect disciplinary action to be taken. I'm waiting to hear what happens.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home