Nursing Homes are restarting the ‘don’t send the MAR’ game

For a primer, from 2007, here. Another patient, another absent MAR (if you don’t know that acronym, you didn’t read the lead in article!). Usually they send when we call, but not recently. Here’s an amalgamation of some cases: Calls are made by the nurses at my behest. The MAR Will Not be Sent. Per nursing, whom I work with daily and trust implicitly, here are the objections proffered: 1) It’s illegal to send our signatures Really? No, it’s not. 2) It’s our policy not to send MAR’s Good luck with that policy. It’s going to get you in trouble. 3) You don’t need that. As it’s a patient who has a) gotten meds from you and b) that timing is a question and c) we don’t know what the timing is, yeah, we and the patient you sent to us need that. 4) We sent you a med list Yes, you did. That’s a List of Meds, but we don’t know what’s scheduled, PRN, given, held, parameters, etc. That’s a dodge. Allow me to quote me: This is outrageous. A chronically ill patient is sent to a higher level of care for an acute problem, and without a complete information base; but not just that, information crucial to the care of the patient that’s being intentionally withheld. It is a situation that makes me, frankly, nuts. When did intentionally withholding critical patient care information become acceptable? Seriously, have these people not learned from history? The coverup is always, always worse than the crime,...
Source: GruntDoc - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Emergency Nursing Source Type: blogs