Recently my dad had to be placed in a NH. We understood why the NH had to take over the meds for his extreme stomach pain but his face cream? He has excema on his face and scalp which he has always been able to treat with his cream. Within a few days of moving to the NH, they took the cream, saying they had to dispense all prescription medications. That would have been fine except they lost it or misplaced it. Now he's left with this itchy rash on his face. He obviously can't get out and go to his own doctor. Is there anything we can do?
This can seem like just one more frustration in the transition to nursing home care, but the three smart people who provided insight already gave a pretty complete picture of why this happens.
Since the skin cream seems to be the only medication issue, it's possible that the doctor in charge is not well versed about how necessary this is for you dad's comfort.
They do try to keep prescriptions to a minimum because of side effects (yes, skin creams are absorbed and can cause non-skin-realted side effects). I'd start with the floor nurse and move forward to having his previous doctor follow through if necessary. It may take some pushing on your part, but I think that they will follow through. The cream will likely be kept by the nurse to safeguard other patients.
Please keep us updated on this. Your question and the answers that follow will help others.
Take care,
Carol
That's just a guess; I suspect there are others who'll post and provide more insight into this aspect.
If they removed the eczema cream, it should have been replaced ASAP. There's no excuse for that.
You can go directly to the Director of Nursing if you've already talked to the RNs and the issue hasn't been resolved. I wouldn't give them a lot of time to resolve it, as in: I want this resolved today! If the DON doesn't act, go directly to the Administrator.
If your father was placed on a script from a doctor, contact his/her office and see if they would be willing to contact the facility, or contact his dermatologist and explain the problem. If either of the doctors emphasize that this is an urgent situation, the nursing facility should act.
In the meantime, document all your contacts with them and efforts to get this resolved.
If you continue to have problems with the facility staff and admins, demand an immediate meeting to discuss resolution of the issue. It wouldn't hurt to bring family or friend reinforcements and politely emphasize how disappointed you are in the handling of this issue. That usually gets them moving if they think they'll lose a patient to another facility.
If you have any photos of your father's face when on the medicine, bring them, and if you have a camera (not everyone does), take photos of the breakout so you have evidence to present. That will also demonstrate to the facility staff that you're approaching this in a logical (and documentative) way.
Sometimes knowing that a family member is documenting shakes them up and gets them moving.
Good luck; please let us know how this works out. I know it can be very unsettling and fearful that your father isn't getting the treatment he expected.
Once you're there long enough, you will observe many of them roaming around the halls and entering other peoples' rooms without supervision.
These folks don't necessarily understand that they're not in their own room and, when they find something, they think it belongs to them, so they get into it.
Getting into another patient's foods, lotions, hair products, medicated creams, etc, is at the very least a potential mess for staff to clean up, and could be medically damaging, even deadly.
When it comes to confiscating a needed prescribed medicine, whether an Rx or OTC, you may need to be more on top of pushing them to bring it in from their own pharmacy. They may even require that it be prescribed by the doctor who is the medical director of the facility before they can even order it from their pharmacy.
If YOU still had it, you could take the responsibility of applying the cream, but if they've taken it and lost it, unless you can get a refill from his prior doctor, you're going to have to be a squeaky wheel.
At Medilodge, rooms were outfitted with dressers (as is typical), the top drawer of which was a locked medicine drawer. All the meds for the patient were kept locked at all times except when a nurse administered them. Unless someone stole a key or had lockbreaking knowledge, it was impossible for a resident to wander in and take someone else's meds.
It also was a lot safer than a nurse using a cart and going up and down the hallway to pass meds. That always made me nervous - it could be so easy to become distracted as I frequently saw patients' families go up to the nurses and ask questions.
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