Submitted by Meghan Mullen on January 28, 2014 - 9:23am
Last revised by Web Producer on March 13, 2014 - 12:43pm.
Idea Status:
I am a nurse in Labor and Delivery which, to my understading, is an expensive unit to run. If perhaps we could establish a relationship with a lower resource community that was in need of clean gloves and sutures and laps etc so when a patient needs to have a c-section and a labor and delivery pack has already been opened for her, the unused materials would not be thrown away but donated. Perhaps they could be then counted for charity and written off? In any event we would be caring more wisely and would be reducing so much waste of materials.
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Comments
I totally agree with this and
I totally agree with this and have, in fact, with permission from my supervisor, donated certain items to the Rescue Mission and they have been most grateful for such donations. It would be nice to see this done on a hospital wide basis. Like you, I find it extremely disturbing to see items discarded that we know would be so very welcome in countries the world over!
In the past, I was able to
In the past, I was able to donate expired supplies to a staff member who in turn donated the supplies to an overseas medical group. Now he has stated that it is against his department policy to do so. ( expired supplies such as gauze,sutures, tape, bandaids.) What can we do to help direct these supplies to needy organizations?
Also, I would suggest that we purchase supplies that have no expiration dates wwhere appropriate. For example, I've seen packaged gauze that has expiration dates and some that don't.