[oramar]

My daughter was telling me she made a serious mistake at work. She works in business not in healthcare. The error occured because she failed to follow their protocol to prevent such things from happening. There were reasons why she did not follow the protocol but they are not pertinent here. What I want to talk about is how differently managment handled her mistake than what I have witnessed in my world. She was called to her manager's office and informed of the error. Her bosses attitude was not nasty or condeming. It was merely one that mistakes happen and we need to find out how this happened, correct it and see how to prevent it from happening again. I was amazed at how everyone rallied around her and some of her fellow employees even attempted to take the blame on themselves. It just contrasted so much with what I have witness in healthcare. In healthcare, managment is usually spends most of it's time trying to distance themselves from the mistake.(truth is that usually they are to blame, usually they allow short staffing that virtually guarantees something bad is going to happen) They want to make sure that the person who was closest to the mistake is blamed not themselves. The person who made the mistake is made to feel very isolated and abandoned. Most fellow employees will not be supportive either. Even here, when a person post about a mistake, some people will write very caustic, non theraputic remarks. If you want to know what it feels like to be completely and utterly alone just make a mistake in healthcare. Now I know there is a movement to consider mistakes in healthcare a system problem. Sadly it has not been widely implemented, I certainly have not seen it practiced.

[DutchgirlRN]

Originally Posted by oramar

My daughter was telling me she made a serious mistake at work. What I want to talk about is how differently managment handled her mistake than what I have witnessed in my world. She was called to her manager's office and informed of the error. Her bosses attitude was not nasty or condeming. It was merely one that mistakes happen and we need to find out how this happened, correct it and see how to prevent it from happening again. I was amazed at how everyone rallied around her and some of her fellow employees even attempted to take the blame on themselves. It just contrasted so much with what I have witness in healthcare. They want to make sure that the person who was closest to the mistake is blamed not themselves. The person who made the mistake is made to feel very isolated and abandoned. Most fellow employees will not be supportive either.

The hospital I work for believes in full disclosure to the patient and patients family for any mistakes made. Likewise management and fellow employees are supportive if a true error has been made and not one caused by laziness or disrespectfulness to a patient. It is in direct contrast to the policies of the employer that I recently left.