[jerseyRN]

There's other options in nursing than acute care. The profession needs your caring & integrity. Come back! You have a lot to offer.

[nurseholly421]

Originally Posted by BabyRN2Be

As a student-to-be, my worst fear is making a ...medication error. I haven't even started school and I've been reading chapters in nursing books about drug calculations, and I practice these calculations when I can. I can see myself as a nurse triple, quadruple checking to see if I've got the right ...medication, delivery route, right dose, and most of all, right patient!

hello student to be.im holly an lvn. in response to your biggest fear i say this.yes do all your 5 checks but also know this that u will make a med error at some point.it is inevitable the thing is that u have to be honest after the fact and make sure dr is made aware so that u can fix it if something does go wrong from ur mistake.everyone will respect u a whole lot more if ur honest and fess up that just means u really care about the patients safety. good luck to u!!!!!!

[nurseholly421]

my biggest mistake was second guessing my first thought and taking to long to make the right decision. at the time i was a ...medication aide in a nursing home and that night i was in the med room auditing the carts for reorders. when i came out i saw ems and i had heard nothing inthe med room. soo i went to go see what was going on and found that a res had coded.emts were doing cpr to res and the nurse in charge was standing at the door to room. i approached her to find out what had happened and she said that the aide just found her that way. i asked her if she had initiated cpr and she told me hell no i aint puttin my mouth on that thing. and a few minutes later i had asked the cna what happened and she told me what she found and that when she called the nurse she called 911 and that she just stood there lookin at pt and when the cop that was first to arrive on scene he did the same thing .the res never recieved cpr until ems arrived .had i heard anything i wouldve done it myself but what the problem is that i didnt report it right away to administrative staff as i figured what good would it do it was my word against hers. and at the time i was in nursing school so the next day when i went to class i wanted to get my teachers opinion about the situation so i mentioned the scenario to the class leaving names out.and the next day i got called into the office at work as they said that i broke pt confidentiality by saying what happened and mentioning names which i didnt what happened was that one of my classmates worked at the hospital that the patient was taken to and this was small town so was easy to find out specifics and she called my job saying i broke pt confidentiality.so when i went inthere i explained exactly what happened the night of the code and why i was talking bout the incident and that i hadnt mentioned any names.of course they didnt believe me so i called my teacher and she verified that i never stated a name.anyways the place let me go saying that i endangered the pts life by not telling administrative staff right away(i was getting ready to quit anyways so that didnt bother me)but what bothered me the most was that even after all that i had told them that happened and they had statements from cnas and police and emts the nurse was still working there. some of the cnas tried to cover up for her but all the other peoples statements coincided with mine. sooo my point is to the whole horrible ordeal is report anything and everything even the minute stuff cause in the end it will come back and bite u in the butt.by the way the pt did die and she was a full code. ps sorry bout the spelling and such just tend to get lazy when ur on the comp.

[cantoo]

1984. Fresh out of school. First day on the job. Report for duty and I am handed a tube of vaginal cream and told it is for pt. So and So in room number such and such. I go in to the room and approach the pt. I explain why I'm there. She protests, saying she has no vaginal problems. I just assume this pt. is comfused since she's 150 years old, and give the med. Yep. Wrong pt. The poor little gal was allergic to the cream and her poor little vagina swelled up like a colliflower. Couldn't sit down for a week. I felt horrible. Of coarse, the nurse that handed me the med denied giving me the wrong name and room number, but it didn't matter anyhow. It was ultimately my mistake for not double checking. Never again. Every once in a while I still run into a nurse that worked on that floor all those years ago, and she never fails to remind me of that incident. We laugh about it now, but it sure taught me a valuable lesson.

[CyndiW35055]

I am fixing to graduate LPN and yesterday I was doing a clinical on the med/surg floor. My patient, a 42 yof had an iv in her left hand. Of course, most pt.'s that I have seen myself are afraid to use the hand with the iv and have it propped on the pillow. This one did also. Her fingers were swollen a little but not at the iv site or below below the site. There was good blood return and everything was fine. My clinical instructor went to check it for me to verify because the pt. kept saying she was worried because of the slight edema in her fingers. She explained to the pt., just as I had, that the swelling was because of lack of use and keeping it propped up.

About 10 minutes later, the RN in charge went to give the pt. her meds, demerol and phenergan iv, pt. told her she was worried about it. After RN gave her the meds, she proceeded to tell the pt. that the iv was out and that I was "just a student and didn't know what I was talking about" and changed the iv to the right hand. I didn't have the RN tell me what happened, I had the pt. who very quickly informed me that since I didn't know what I was doing, she didn't want a student if they couldn't tell what was going on.

My clinical instructor and myself went to the RN to ask about what happened, and I apologized for not "recognizing" and infiltration just to be told that I was right in the first place, the iv was fine, there was good blood return, and she was just pacifying the pt. She also said it was easier to tell the pt. that I just didn't know enough yet and that I couldn't tell what was going on. So, how do you cope with that type of thing? HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[gwenith]

I still think one of the classic mistakes of all time was the poor yound student nurse who decided to clean everyone's teeth so, in the interests of efficiency she collected all the false teeth and stuck them in the steam sterilizer - now comes to redistribution................... Took a dentist 6 months to sort the mess out.

[LT Dave]

Though its not a good thing to happen... infultration of blood is a lot less harmless then so many other thing we push via IV. Relax if the MD had some brains they would have sedated the pt so her would not have to suffer with DTs! Lucky he did not have a sezure from the DTs!

Originally Posted by mwcia12

Here's mine:

I was working a night shift, which to this day I truly detest. When I got report, I found I had a patient in acute alcohol withdrawal (which in and of itself makes me furious, because there is no excuse for a hospitalized patient to suffer DT's if someone knows what they're doing, but I digress.) Anyway, back to this unfortunate soul. Because he was delusional and combative, he was restrained so he couldn't yank his IV out for the 10th time. They had also wrapped his IV site with kerlex as an added precaution...maybe if he couldn't find it he'd leave it alone. He was also being transfused with a couple of units of blood. When I got there, he was nearly through the first unit, and I was to finish that and hang the next one. Well and good. Or so I thought. I started the second unit, but I had one hell of a time infusing it. I literally forced it in with the help of a pressure bag, and I am not kidding when I say it took a good 6 hours to get that blood in. Meanwhile, the patient was getting more and more agitated, which I attributed to his withdrawal. Finally, mercifully, the blood was in so I opened up the saline to flush the line. But it wouldn't run. All of a sudden I realized, with absolute horror, what had happened. I cut off the kerlex covering the IV site hoping against hope I was wrong, but alas, I wasn't. Yes indeed, I had infiltrated a unit of blood. I hadn't even bothered to check the site. No wonder he was so agitated, it probably hurt like hell. An hour later my manager showed up, and I told her what happened. She was probably the most easy going person I've ever known, and she told me not to worry about it. I said "Listen to me, I infused an entire unit into his arm, go look at it." She did, and came out and told me to go home. I expected consequences, but never heard another word about it. But I am here to tell you I learned from that mistake.

[nursemjb]

Originally Posted by CyndiW35055

I am fixing to graduate LPN and yesterday I was doing a clinical on the med/surg floor. My patient, a 42 yof had an iv in her left hand. Of course, most pt.'s that I have seen myself are afraid to use the hand with the iv and have it propped on the pillow. This one did also. Her fingers were swollen a little but not at the iv site or below below the site. There was good blood return and everything was fine. My clinical instructor went to check it for me to verify because the pt. kept saying she was worried because of the slight edema in her fingers. She explained to the pt., just as I had, that the swelling was because of lack of use and keeping it propped up.

About 10 minutes later, the RN in charge went to give the pt. her meds, demerol and phenergan iv, pt. told her she was worried about it. After RN gave her the meds, she proceeded to tell the pt. that the iv was out and that I was "just a student and didn't know what I was talking about" and changed the iv to the right hand. I didn't have the RN tell me what happened, I had the pt. who very quickly informed me that since I didn't know what I was doing, she didn't want a student if they couldn't tell what was going on.

My clinical instructor and myself went to the RN to ask about what happened, and I apologized for not "recognizing" and infiltration just to be told that I was right in the first place, the iv was fine, there was good blood return, and she was just pacifying the pt. She also said it was easier to tell the pt. that I just didn't know enough yet and that I couldn't tell what was going on. So, how do you cope with that type of thing? HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This kind of thing exemplifies the saying "nurses eat their young". I'm sorry you had to go through this. Thank you for becoming a nurse.

[ahsweeney]

Wow! Glad to read that I'm not the only one who has made a mistake or two. I've always known that, but you always feel so alone when you do make a mistake. One way I have tried to prevent a medication calculation error is to double check my math not only with a co-worker, but with the pharmacy. In the hospital where I used to work, they were very good with me, especially when I would call down there and ask, "Is this the stupid question department?" They would laugh and say "Hi Alison, what do you want to check". I figure that yes, both departments are busy, but we all would rather spend a minute or two to double check than spend hours filling out reports, etc. Besides, their job is to do those calculation day after day after day. They can crunch those numbers with more confidence that I ever could. The previous advice about admitting the error/mistake quickly is the best. For the most part, you won't get into that much trouble.

[cannoli]

Originally Posted by CyndiW35055

I am fixing to graduate LPN and yesterday I was doing a clinical on the med/surg floor. My patient, a 42 yof had an iv in her left hand. Of course, most pt.'s that I have seen myself are afraid to use the hand with the iv and have it propped on the pillow. This one did also. Her fingers were swollen a little but not at the iv site or below below the site. There was good blood return and everything was fine. My clinical instructor went to check it for me to verify because the pt. kept saying she was worried because of the slight edema in her fingers. She explained to the pt., just as I had, that the swelling was because of lack of use and keeping it propped up.

About 10 minutes later, the RN in charge went to give the pt. her meds, demerol and phenergan iv, pt. told her she was worried about it. After RN gave her the meds, she proceeded to tell the pt. that the iv was out and that I was "just a student and didn't know what I was talking about" and changed the iv to the right hand. I didn't have the RN tell me what happened, I had the pt. who very quickly informed me that since I didn't know what I was doing, she didn't want a student if they couldn't tell what was going on.

My clinical instructor and myself went to the RN to ask about what happened, and I apologized for not "recognizing" and infiltration just to be told that I was right in the first place, the iv was fine, there was good blood return, and she was just pacifying the pt. She also said it was easier to tell the pt. that I just didn't know enough yet and that I couldn't tell what was going on. So, how do you cope with that type of thing? HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think it was inappropriate for the RN to say that about you to the patient, particularly since she agreed that the site was fine; even if it wasn't it was still inappropriate, she could have addressed it without putting down someone else and destroying the patient's confidence in her caregiver.

If the RN wanted to "pacify" the patient, she could have restarted the IV without that type of commentary.

Don't let the turkeys get you down!