I'm glad to see that this issue of discarding perfectly good supplies bothers someone else.
I have collected boxes and bags (and bags!) of tubing, gloves, needles, etc and kept for the Mercy Ship...but it stopped coming. When I hear about someone in our community going somewhere on a mission or even just personal travel, I ask them if they would like to take a box over to donate. I have collected and sent supplies to Fort Lewis (army base) because I heard they were having shortages of everything. They wrote back to stop because they didn't need anymore. I take over bags of stuff to one of our physician clinic's oncology and short stay nurses because they have had to cut back spending so much (and down river of that, less incease in nurses wages) and they really appreciated the supplies. But this one is very, very tricky because in our case, the hospital is only supposed to donate to non-profits. I've even gone so far as to put art made out of medical throw-aways in our hospital's annual art show. (That's embarrassing to confess, but they're actually pretty cool and people certainly comment on my entries!) It truly bothers me that all these wonderful and costly items just get tossed. I'd LOVE to hear others ideas and/or addresses of places they know of who would use them Thanks again Ann, Barbara Van Slyke, RN, BSN, OCN, CRNI Outpatient Infusion Bay Area Hospital Coos Bay, Oregon
