How big of an error would you consider this?

Sour Lemon · Apr 20, 2018

Earlier today, I was transferring out a patient, I printed out another patient's MAR, TAR and progress notes and hand it to the paramedics. Thank god that the wrong patient turned out to be end of life, and therefore was NPO, and had a DNR which the patient who was to be sent out had. On a scale of 0 to 10, how would you rate the severity of this error? And if you had a coworker who made such a mistake, how would you think of him/her? I am afraid that my reputation will go down.
Just to add, nothing came of this mistake because it was caught in the nick of time at the hospital.

That's not a great thing to have done, but I wouldn't think much of it unless my coworker did that type of thing regularly. I once faxed a med rec to pharmacy with the wrong patient's name on it. All the medications were profiled and added to the wrong patient's EMAR before I realized what I'd done. We all do stupid things once in a while and learn from them- hopefully.

Penelope_Pitstop, BSN, RN · Apr 20, 2018

Irregardless of how I would classify this error in terms of severity, I do think that this could be prevented easily in the future.

Had you slowed down to verify that it was the correct patient's information, this would not have happened. When you were gathering information as you were, you weren't performing any heroic measures and therefore had time to make sure you had the correct information. Things like this are much more likely to happen when you are rushed, and although it sounds as if time was a factor, the fact that you had time to print out info indicates that you also had time to, for lack of a better word, take your time.

Something tells me that no matter what, you won't make this mistake again!

vanilla bean · Apr 20, 2018

It depends on your supervisor/employer. If they want you out for other reasons, this could be the nail (HIPAA violation). If you're in good standing and have an understanding boss, they'll probably give you a good finger wagging and tell you to be more careful. Could be somewhere in between too; when I was a student in my preceptorship, I gave the wrong chart to a transporter for a patient going down to radiology and it was written up in an incident report.

psu_213, BSN, RN · Apr 20, 2018

And if you had a coworker who made such a mistake, how would you think of him/her?

I would think of him/her as a human who made a mistake. Humans make mistakes. It happens. Now, if this nurse made this type of mistake over and over, my opinion may be a bit more harsh. Either way, be more careful in the future.

AnnieOaklyRN, BSN, RN, EMT-P · Apr 20, 2018

Hello,

I work as a medic and only do 911 now, but I previously did transfers. I will say this happened quite often enough to us, and usually we didn't notice until we were half haw to the tertiary care facility and it was to late to change it. It could have reproductions if it goes unnoticed and the medic treats the patient based on the wrong information, or worse, the tertiary care hospital does it.

I would learn from this and move on, it does happen, people make mistakes. Next time triple check the paperwork!

Annie

LadysSolo · Apr 20, 2018

I find other patient's information misfiled in charts all the time - It is not unusual, so unless it is a habit, I would think printing out wrong MAR/TAR is an "oops!" And why did the paramedics not look at the name on the MAR/TAR before they left? I think the blame is not only on you.