Report of the Joint Sub-Committee on the Control of Dangerous Drugs and Poisons in Hospitals.
- Great Britain. Joint Sub-Committee on the Control of Dangerous Drugs and Poisons in Hospitals.
- Date:
- 1958
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Report of the Joint Sub-Committee on the Control of Dangerous Drugs and Poisons in Hospitals. Source: Wellcome Collection.
19/36 (page 11)
![between Schedule I poisons and other drugs. We think that the advantage of securing for the most potent drugs of all a degree of care which one could not hope to be accorded to every medicine outweighs the possible disadvantage of nursing and other staff inferring that the remaining drugs are less potent than they in fact are. We finally agreed that each ward or ward unit ought to have five cupboards or combinations of such cupboards: a Dangerous Drugs cup- board, a Schedule I poisons cupboard, and a medicine cupboard, all situated in the ward; a cupboard for reagents, and a cupboard for general disinfectants and cleaning materials. The two latter cupboards should be situated wherever is most convenient to those who have to use them. All the cupboards should in our view be locked, but while the keys of the Schedule I poisons cupboard and the Dangerous Drugs cupboard should be kept on the person of the sister or nurse in charge of the ward, the keys of the other three can be kept wherever seems convenient. 48. We were at first disposed to recommend that for the sake of uniformity of practice the “‘poisons’’ cupboard should be used for Schedule I poisons only. We learned however that the Poisons Board had recently adopted the phrase ‘“‘other dangerous substances” (quoted in paragraph 46) in place of the phrase *““poisonous substances”? and we understand that the phrase “‘other dangerous substances”’ was adopted so as to enable the storing in the same cupboard of other substances which were not technically poisons but were equally dangerous, and we think on reflection that advantage ought to be taken of this freedom. We therefore recommend that the cupboard should contain only (a) Schedule I poisons and (b) other substances which the pharmacist marks “Store in Schedule I poisons cupboard.”’ (See paragraph 71). 49, The purpose of the remaining cupboards is self-evident. It should be noted that all poisons, except Schedule I poisons and others which it is considered by the hospital pharmacist should be treated in the same way as Schedule I poisons, will be in the ordinary medicine cupboard. We suggest that if a particular substance is used both in ward cleaning and in treating patients, or both as a reagent and in treating patients, a suitable quantity and strength should be kept in each of the cupboards concerned. Medicines containing Dangerous Drugs or Schedule I poisons dispensed for an individual patient should be stored in the appropriate cupboard along with the ward stock. 50. In the Dangerous Drugs, Schedule I poisons and medicine cupboards preparations for internal and for external use (as defined in paragraphs 58 and 61 below) should be stored on separate shelves. 51. The siting of the cupboards in the ward (see paragraph 47) is a matter of some importance. They should be placed in such a position that the nurse can still keep an eye on her patients while she is at the cupboard (this may present some difficulties where the ward unit is divided into a number of cubicles), should be in a good light, both natural and artificial, at a suitable level and over or near a table or flap on which medicines can be prepared. We are in general against the keeping of medicines in a separate room so that the nurse has to go out of sight of her patients to fetch or prepare drugs although we do appreciate that there may be special reasons for this in mentaJ hospitals. We are also opposed to the permanent storage of medicines and particularly of Dangerous Drugs in any portable form of container such as a trolley. 1]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b3217861x_0019.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
