What is the most incompetent thing you seen a fellow nurse do?

[okihusker]

There were two patients in a double room on a 38 bed tele floor. One was an old fart with a sick heart an the other was a 35 year old male who was in an MVA being observed for a myocardial contusion. The old fart coded and died. During the code, the CNAs moved the 35 y/o to a private room. The charge nurse, thinking she was calling the wife of the old fart, mixed up the names and called the wife of the 35 year old gentlemen. She passed on the news that her spouse passed away and that she needed to come in. The wife had to be brought in by neighbors and brought to the floor by a wheel chair because she was too histarical to walk. She was wheeled into the room only to find some dead old guy she never met. She came out of the room yelling "That's not my husband!" "Where the #$%# is my husband? (!)" She found him in a private room down the hall watching Sunday football. She had to be restrained by her neighbors and the male CNAs and male Nurses from beating the crap out of the charge nurse.

[nrw350]

Hey dont feel bad, I dont understand anything other than pt, bp, and ativan lol.

Nick

[donmurray]

Supervising a nurse doing a drugs assessment, to enable her to pass medication in her own right, (different system then in UK) we got to the second (!) patient, who was prescribed Digoxin. After some prompting, the nurse remembered that she had to check the patient's pulse before giving the drug, and duly did so. She established that it was rapid enough, returned to the drug trolley, and offered the medication to the patient next to the one whose pulse she had just checked! I stopped the assessment there, and she failed.

[Flo1216]

This one is a biggie. Six years ago my mother was pregnant with her 4th child. She was labeled high risk from the very beginning because of her age, plus she was breech the entire time. Even so, she never saw her doctor, only a midwife and a c-section was never discussed. She also has a hx of precipitous labor and was borderline gestastional diabetic. She had 3 ultrasounds..the first 2 showed the baby was transverse(she would have had to have a c-sec anyway) and the last one(at 40 weeks) showed he was footling breech. My mom wanted to discuss a c-sec with the doc but the doc refused to see her b/c he said the baby " had time to turn".She was nine mos pregnant! The midwife told my mom that if the baby didn't turn by 42 weeks(!) that they would schedule a non-stress test. Of course my mom had a complete cord prolapse and of course there were NO doctors in the whole hospital, even though this hospital labels themselves a high-risk OB clinic. They rushed her to the OR so fast that they were banging the stretcher into the walls. They were paging overhead, " Any surgeon OR-STAT" "Any anesthesiologist-OR STAT"! No one came and then they changed it to " ANY DOCTOR OR-STAT! No one came. My mother's doctor wasn't called till 15 minutes after the cord prolapsed b/c the nurses wanted to "wait for the house doctor". A very strong male nurse held the baby off of the cord for nearly a half an hour until my mother's doctor finally arrived. By this time, my mom had gone into shock and we thought we would lose them both. When they got Matt out, he was grey and his apgars were 2,3. He was intubated and then airlifted to a trauma center. He is 6 now but is physically like a 1 month old. And did I mention that my mother was never even put on a monitor?A lawyer approached my mom and offered to take her case pro-bono and got a medical expert who is testifying for free. The trial starts in September. By the3 way, the doc who refused to see my mom in the first place has nine other lawsuits pending against him. One because he gave a woman who had had 3 c-sections pitocin and her uterus ruptured.Her baby died. All of this could have been prevented. I wasn't in nursing at the time, but I wish I knew then what I know now. THIS is why malpractice insurance for obstetrics is so high.

[finallyRN]

I can't belive your story Flo. I am so sorry for you and your family for what happened. That doctor definatly should not be practicing. That Midwife also should be in trouble for not standing up for your mother and getting things done.

[Flo1216]

Thanks.Well, that doctor mysteriously retired right after the incident. The doctor never even met my mother...just signed off on her charts. Never even read her charts or he would have seen the big red high risk sticker.HE said no one ever told him she was high risk or that she delivers fast. Plus she was post-term. It was all in the chart. And the midwife knew better than to not refer a high risk pt to a doctor..I almost think that she wanted to try and deliver a breech baby. If they had scheduled her for a section in the first place, Matt would be fine. If there had been DOCTORS in this "high risk ob clinic" maybe a stat c-section could have been done right away instead of half an hour later. I could go on and on. It makes me sick to think that these people got to decide the fate of a little baby. If it were there own child at risk, a c-section would have been scheduled as soon as the baby was found to be breech. By the way, the third ultrasound showed footling breeach and no one looked at the position of the cord.