Greetings,

Has any healthcare facility addressed the issue of selling insulin syringes to patients who do not have a prescription for insulin?

We have a retail pharmacy in our hospital's main lobby and are concerned about how the needles may be used (illegal drugs) but also understand the community ramifications if dirty needles are shared.

What has your facility enacted?

Many thanks,
Carol

We have recently had an increased number of patients on U-500 insulin prior to admission with hospitalist orders to continue during admission. This has resulted in several medication safety events and near misses. Our diabetes counil would like to institute a protocol for pharmacy to automatically switch these patients to Lantus/Levemir along with a diabetic educator consult. Does anyone have a policy that would be willing to share?

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
Amanda

Can anyone offer advice about the use of staerile talc in the canister form? Can that be used as an alternative to the vial form which is dispensed in a syringe?
Our Thoracic prople are saying the aerosol form does not have mechanism to administer the aerosol through the chest tube at the bedside.
Has anyone had experience with this form?
Thanks
Susan

I work for a 15 hospital system and we are tackling standardizing heparin concentrations used in radiology for peripheral vascular procedures (e.g. catheter directed thromboplysis). The radiologists say that they need dilute heparin so there is sufficient flow rate in addition to the MOA of heparin to prevent pericatheter thrombosis.

My premises to this project:
- Minimize available heparin drip concentrations to 1-2 at most organziation-wide
- Use premixed solutions whenever possible

At our institution our nurses often use what I like to refer to as "cheat sheets." They use these sheets to help them organize what they have to do throughout their day (feeds, meds, dressing changes, etc.).

For those that store medications in patients rooms:

1) Who delivers the medications to the patients room?
2) Who removes the medications from the patients room upon discharge?
3) Do you store medications in patients rooms on all units or just units with high volume medication administration (i.e. ICU's/Oncology)

Thank you,

Randi

Would anyone be willing to share the build out in Epic of their sliding scale/correctional scale insulin careset? We currently are having nurses give the wrong strength of insulin because we currently have the correctional scale all built out under one insulin order with a dosage range 0-28 units and the doses to give in the comment section (low, medium, high scales).

Would anyone be willing to share the build out in Epic of their sliding scale/correctional scale insulin careset? We currently are having nurses give the wrong strength of insulin because we currently have the correctional scale all built out under one insulin order with a dosage range 0-28 units and the doses to give in the comment section (low, medium, high scales).