Expired Drugs Found on Ambulance

[brentoli]

Expired Drugs Found on Ambulance

CBS Atlanta News has discovered DeKalb County rescue trucks carried expired drugs on board. Documents obtained by CBS Atlanta show they were common drugs paramedics use to treat life-threatening allergies like an EpiPin and nitro spray or calcium chloride to jump-start a heart.

What these drugs will do, buy you time before you get into the hospital, said Dr. Gaylor Lopez, Director of Georgia Poison Control.

Shoddy reporting. However. What procedures does your service have to prevent this? I know there is a large disparity in record keeping from service to service.

edit to fix quote tags

Edited March 30, 2010 by brentoli

[DwayneEMTP]

We check everything in our rigs the beginning of each month. Drugs, fire extinguishers, flashlights, everything. Also, each time a cabinet is opened when it's restocked each product in the cabinet is checked for damage or expiration and then the cabinet is tagged with the date of the next thing to expire on one side and the employees number that checked it on the other. And management does random spot checks a few times per month. (They pull the tag, check the items and make sure that the tag actually matches the next item to expire.) I've heard that there are pretty severe sanctions for failing at this, but we don't have the type of people here that are likely, from a professional point of view to do so, nor to risk sanctions on such a silly thing, so I've never heard of it being done.

It seems to work really well.

Dwayne

[Kaisu]

I check every drug in my box at the beginning of my 48. Pharmacies hire idiots too. We sign our drug box out at the beginning of the shift. If the next shift finds a discrepancy, it's my a$$.

[Don1977]

Truck checks are suppose to be done at beginning of every sift at my service.....but always isnt the case......

[brentoli]

I check every drug in my box at the beginning of my 48. Pharmacies hire idiots too. We sign our drug box out at the beginning of the shift. If the next shift finds a discrepancy, it's my a$$.

So do you check your box out from a pharmacy at the beginning of the day? Not just hand off from the last crew?

[Dustdevil]

Only at the very last place I worked street EMS did we ever use cabinet tags. It's a great idea in theory. But like CrapMagnet, everything is still getting checked, if it's not my initials on the current tag. I've seen the system fail one too many times.

[Don1977]

Only at the very last place I worked street EMS did we ever use cabinet tags. It's a great idea in theory. But like CrapMagnet, everything is still getting checked, if it's not my initials on the current tag. I've seen the system fail one too many times.

Exactly Dust..........can you trust that person that sealed that cabinet and "checked" it?

[brentoli]

Exactly Dust..........can you trust that person that sealed that cabinet and "checked" it?

I got burnt one time.

The check log said the truck was OK. Hadn't turned a wheel the shift prior. Got on a run and there was something missing.

Guess who's ass got handed to them?

It wasn't the person who had checked the truck before me.

[Dustdevil]

Guess who's ass got handed to them?

It wasn't the person who had checked the truck before me.

Yep! I feel ya, Bro. That is exactly what I have seen happen more than once. Someone else screws up the stocking -- or charting, or patient care -- and I get reamed for it. Forget that. Don't think for a minute that the other guy's initials on that tag mean he'll get the blame. If you want something right, you have to do it yourself.

Remember, most of the people we work with are in this job because they were too stupid, immature, or lazy to get a real job. Do you really trust them?

Edited March 30, 2010 by Dustdevil

[WelshMedic]

I can relate to this topic. We used to have tagged everything, jumpbags, airway kits, the whole lot. I hated it because I was never really sure what I was going to find upon opening them. Usually I did it at the start of a shift but on one occasion we were paged out BEFORE the shift had actually started. We went to a chest pain patient who didn't get enough pain relief from nitro so I decided to give him fentanyl. Well, that was the plan until I discovered it missing. Luckily this was at the doctor's office so I could borrow some from him (great advertisement for my service, NOT).

Back in the mess room later that morning I was bemoaning the situation to an EMT-colleague. He laughed bitterly and said: "Oh, that's nothing! I opened the airway kit last week at an arrest and there was no BVM!"

Suffice to say that tagging didn't last much longer after that.....

WM