Broken spirit.... - Page 2

this reminds me of my first (of few!) medication error, made only a few months into my first job after graduating. it was a very minor thing, i gave a narc a little too early with a patient that was on a pretty heavy load of narcs. no ill effect for the pt. however, i was convinced i was going to be fired and deservedly so, and i was the worst nurse ever and who was i to think i would be good at this job? because omg i could have overdosed the pt. and killed them! i ran crying to my don, told her what happened and told her if she wanted to fire me, i understood. she looked at me and started laughing. she explained the procedure for medication errors (which were a common enough occurence for there to be a pre-printed form for reporting them...), helped me fill out the report and sat with me as i called the md and poa. she told me nurses are human beings, and as such, make mistakes sometimes. as long as we learn from these mistakes, and make a sincere effort to avoid them in the future, then it's part of the learning process. she told me that if i had tried to cover up the error, or denied it if it was caught, then termination would be an option. but since i'd made one mistake, took responsibility for it and made an effort to fix it, all was well. the moral of the story is good nurses make mistakes sometimes too. it's ok. nothing bad happened to the patient, you caught the mistakes and attempted to rectify them. you obviously have learned from them, knowing now that you need to triple-check and be more prepared when calling doctors. this is a lesson many nurses, including myself, have learned the hard way.
also, doctors are humans too. and like any group of humans, some will inevitably be jerks. the doc you talked to is not the first jackass md and will certainly not be the last one. don't take it personally, and don't let one db md with a chip on his shoulder break your spirit. he's probably a turd to his patients too, so they need an especially good nurse to advocate for them! you'll learn how to tiptoe around certain doctor's idiosyncracies, and when to call in your supervisor. all of this is part of the learning process, it does not mean you suck!

Oh my gosh! You sound just like me 30+ years ago! My house sup made me call a doc for a SHOWER order at 3am because a patient was threatening to leave AMA if he didn't get a shower. Of course the doc was rude to me and then he showed up in the morning before I left and asked who the iddiot nurse was that called him. My supervisor was there and never spoke up in my defense! Soon afterwards, I got transferred to ICU, where I never wanted to work. It was myself and another graduate nurse - no license between us yet! One night we almost killed a guy - and I mean it literally.
Just learn from your mistakes, keep your head and your chin up, and a smile on your face. Some day you can look back and laugh at these days. Good luck.

If all the nurses who've made mistakes or who've gotten screamed at by doctors quit, there would be no one left to take care of the patients. We all make mistakes. You did the right thing. I do think it's a bit unrealistic for us to think the doc is going to remember every med he's prescribed for a particular resident,but his response to you was inappropriate,unprofessional, and uncalled for.It gets easier.

i'm glad your situation is resolved. for future reference, your hospital has a risk management department. one of their responsibilities is to decrease risk to the hospital...and harassment by a staff member is a risk, because the harassed person could have grounds for legal action against the facility for not preventing it. if any physician behaves like this to you, write it up and send a copy to the risk manager. they are very good people who will know just what to do.

I'm so glad it worked out for you!!! I'm a new nurse too and doctors like this need a swift kick of the rear!!

I always try to think what goes around comes around. As nurses I think this brings up the important issue that we need to make sure that anyone who disrespects us gets disciplined. Whether that be doctors family etc. I would like have been like "excuse me? I'll just hang up now and call your boss to let them know your not giving orders for this pts bp abd acting like a 4 year old"

By the way I always try to remember that most doctors were the nerds who had no friends in school and now that they've reached "doctor status" after so many years they feel like they can get their revenge.

Yea, no. This may have been true a few decades ago, but certainly isn't true anymore. Are there still a lot of nerds who make it to med school? Absolutely. You have to be smart and, more importantly, have a strong work ethic in order to survive the difficulty of med school, residency, and beyond. Just because we're nerdy doesn't mean we never had friends in school. Who says that being smart is equivalent to being socially awkward/stunted? That's a ridiculous statement to make, with no substantive evidence behind it. Nor are we "out for revenge." Attitudes like yours only work to worsen the relationship between physicians and nurses -- trust me, I encounter enough nurses with these types of attitudes and it certainly doesn't endear you to us.

To the OP, I apologize on behalf of the doctor that yelled at you. Saying that he'll get your home phone number and call you in the middle of the night to hassle you is incredibly unprofessional and I do hope that he gets written-up/talked-to about that. That kind of behavior is simply unacceptable. With that being said, learn from this mistake and absolutely make sure you have all pertinent patient info on hand before making a call in the middle of the night. Nothing sucks worse than being woken up in the middle of the night and having the person on the other side have no objective data on hand or be struggling to explain why they called us in the first place. Be ready with your clinical reasoning (whether it's lab values or your subjective assessment of the patient) when you call in the middle of the night so you're not fumbling around during the call. To those who think physicians should memorize the lab values, vitals, medications, etc, of the huge volume of patients we have on service, that's completely unrealistic. Just because you're carrying only 10-15 patients during your shift doesn't mean the attendings are -- they're generally responsible for many times that number of patients when they're on call. Heck, the interns easily cross-cover 80+ patients on night float and our service alone has maybe 40. And considering the laundry list of medications each patient comes with these days, it's pretty unrealistic to expect us to memorize all of these and recall them quickly after being woken up at 3 am.

When I became a new nurse, I made up acronyms for when I gave report and called doctors, I still do it. It's how I make sure that I don't forget anything. You could do the same, not an all inclusive list, but just something jotted down to answer questions quickly.
Something like:

P-pt's name & problem
S-status post ???
A-Allergies
M-Meds that are pertinent to problem
V-vital signs

You may not need all of this info for that particular call, but in case you do, you'll have it. You can custom make it for whatever you need, but as you get thicker skin, you won't give a rat's a** what the doctor thinks, as long as you're keeping your patient safe. Good Luck to you.

No matter what career path your on your going to have moments where your spirit gets dented. Write on the wrong chart, make a pattern for production thats 3/32" off. No matter how perfect you are there will be something. In fact the more perfect you are the more they'll try and find your mistake

You'll be fine and even if your not you'll be fine