Med pass tips from a med surg nurse

If your med pass feels like chaos, I have some tips to make it a little bit more efficient. Walking rounds. We do walking rounds at the hospital that I'm at and if you don't do walking rounds, I highly suggest you do so. While I'm in the patient's room at this time, I'm asking them if they need pain meds, if they need something to drink at the bedside. After I say hello to everybody, I'm going back, medicating those people, then I'm sitting down and I'm looking at everybody's chart. My checklist is my lifeline. I'm a checklist girl, rider die. This is my little cheat sheet that I made for my shift from 7 to 7. I'm writing down all my patients meds here and also looking at their PRNs. So when I go in the room, before I get the meds, I'm asking, do you want your Advil? Do you want your Xanax? A lot of my patients always have meds 8, 9 and 10. So you don't want to be going in and just giving your patients their meds 8 times. If they have meds at these hours, go see them at 9. That way you do the hour before rule and the hour after rule for the majority of them. You're good. If it's time sensitive, like a narc or antibiotics, stuff like that, then no. But while I'm getting the patients meds, I'm getting flushes, alcohol preps, caps, whatever I need, I'm putting it in the patient's room. Stock your wow/cart. If you use a wow or a cart, stock that baby up, okay? Make sure you have everything that you need when you're trying to figure out who to medicate first, you should prioritize your patients, go from highest acuity. Any abnormal vitals, you want to adjust those immediately before it spirals into a bigger problem. Stay on task. Sometimes these patients can be chatty cathies. Be polite, tell them that you got to go, but don't get stuck in a room. Most importantly, I want you to take your time. Speed comes with experience and this is not a race. You're dealing with people's lives. What matters is accuracy and your license. Please drop your favorite med pass tip right in the comments and engage with my video.