I am just amazed how my coworkers covered up an incident that occured with so many witnesses and no one said a word about the true story. If I don't say anything, I'm just as guilty.
The story goes like this. Last Saturday morning about twenty minutes after the change of shift, we had a resident climb over the side rails and hit the floor. I was still around doing my charting on the computer when someone yelled, "------ is on the floor!" Myself and three other people ran to his room and there he was lying on his left side on the floor. We picked ------- up and put him back into bed. One of the other nurses did a quick assessment and said, "I'll go call the doc." I went back to finish my charting and then I left. It was their problem. I just helped put him back to bed on their shift. Sunday I was off. Monday we were so busy I hardly had time to go to the BR and really forgot about the incident. Today it dawned on me to look through his nurses notes to see what they had done for this resident. In the one note written by the nurse who said, 'I'll go call the doc!', she typed, "Mr ------ was trying to jump over the side rails.'' I couldn't believe what I was reading! nothing about him hitting the floor, but she typed that she got an order for restraints from the Dr. Now I'm thinking what if he broke a rib, or a hip or hit his head??? The nurse that found him on the floor arrived this morning and I pulled her aside and asked her, "Why didn't you make out an incident report or tell the doc he fell over the rail and hit the floor?" Her reply was, "Well I know so n so called the doc..." I said, "But YOU found him and YOU should have initiated the incident report. She went flipping through the 24 hour reports and found that the other nurse wrote the same thing...Dr notified, restraint order obtained due to him trying to jump over the siderail... I reminded her that he didn't try to jump over the rail, he DID jump over the hit the floor. And I recall her being the loudest when we were placing him back into bed that morning saying, "I've told ------- (the UM), that he needs to be in a low bed. If he were in one, this wouldn't have happened!" When I left this morning I told her she and the other nurse who is on afternoons today better rethink their story on what actually happened because if they don't I'm going to have to be the pt's advocate. I checked him out this morning and didn't see any bruises, lumps or bumps, vitals were good, but God only knows. I didn't want to run into the UM's office right away since he looked ok. .....OK,ok,ok,ok I know I probably should have, but I wanted them to change their story to the right story first so that I wouldn't look like a "Rat." I hate being stuck in the middle. How wrong am I? Should I even have gone there? If we want him in a low bed this documentation would only prove that he really needs one. I bet stuff like this happens more than I want to know, but why does it bother me so much? Because I know the truth! It surely didn't bother the other nurses, but it probably does now...It'll bother me more if I have to play the role of "The Rat." What does one do in this case???