Med error- manager told everyone at meeting and made me explain

[veronica123]

Need advice from seasoned nurses on how to get past a med error when others won't let me. I'm a new nurse of 7 months. I accidentally gave humalog instead of humalin N. Followed all the protocol afterwards and the patient was fine. The nurse manager then called a meeting and made me explain to the other nurses on my floor what happened. Its embarrassing enough to make a med error...but then to have to tell my coworkers what happened was humiliating! I just want to quit now. I feel she handled it completely wrong. I have beat myself up for the last 2 weeks...and this just makes me feel worse. How can I get past it, when she has announced it to everyone, and now they treat me differently. I wondered if she will put it in the hospital newsletter too, so the whole hospital can know about my error. Should I just quit?!

Thank you,

V

[tobesmartt]

She should be fired!! what kind of manager is she? One you can not trust!

[tobesmartt]

The manager should do meds for 2 weeks without any help...it'll shut her up. Since she thinks she is so perfect. YOU hang in there ok. Inform her boss how this is not professional . YOU are an adult. things like this should be private. Blabber mouth poor of excuse manager.

[CSARmedic]

Gee, another lousy nursing manager. Man, how rare!

[Dean7]

Yes I agree with the other poster who said the manager could have created an anonymous presentation of this error so that everyone will still benefit from learning from the error, yet spare you any unnecessary spotlight. The manager herself probably has made a few med errors in her time. But of course wouldn't volunteer to humiliate herself. Does the extra humiliation really help make people learn more from the event, or just disturbs and upsets people so much that it does more harm? That is the question. And obviously you weren't making the mistake on purpose, so the extra humiliation by public outing is a bit too harsh of a response.

Sometimes there is so much going on that similar sounding medication errors happen. In fact once pharmacy put in the med cart a med for hydro-something when the med was hydrochlorothiazide or something like that...so even pharm makes mistakes!

Maybe look up a search on "med errors made" and learn that many others have made med errors..and that will make youserlf not feel like your'e the only one. Because you absolutely aren't the only one!!

[EmergencyRNBSN]

This is a terrible approach by your manager.

It completely discourages staff to feel comfortable admitting medication errors that may happen in the future.

I would definitely suggest talking to your manager about it and saying that you felt disrespected by her actions and see where that conversation goes prior to just up and quitting your job though.