goody goody nurse gets in trouble ??

[Rendered]

Hello! I am a three year nurse. Worked in LTC And was recently fired from an ICU (working nights)for wrongful delegation. I left the unit for a break, had an aid sit and watch the call lights. This is a very small unit(5beds) and the medsurg nurses were 10 feet away watching the monitors. They have terminated me and said they are going to contact the ohio board of nursing. What should I expect? I have returned to the LTC but don't know if OBN will contact them about my case. Please help. I've never EVER been in trouble

[Guest343211]

One incident is enough to get you fired? Is this normal in Nursing? If so then "We're a team" is nothing more than a catch phrase in nursing, huh? I only say this because I've read so many times on AN about "Teamwork" being so important as a nurse, yet posts like this tell me that your "team" will just throw you to the sharks...

Great coaching, management

Well Pricharilla, I hate to tell you this, but you don't even need to have any incident in order to be fired--unless you are under some kind of contract. That's the reality. Unless something is stated in such a ways as to be construed as a contract, in an At-Will-Employment state,you can be fired "for cause or no cause at all." Happens A LOT in nursing, and it has for as long as I have been a nurse. :)

Anyway. . . my question to the OP is this. Did the nurses covering for you accept your sign-out (temporary or not), and were they, well, "eligible," to take your sign-out? That is to say that if you were in some kind of ICU setting--even a tiny one like you describe, the standard of care is a bit different when someone is assigned to an ICU bed.

I mean maybe your patient/s were well enough to be transferred to the floor; but until you have the order and the nurses that can receive them, you have to treat them as ICU players. That means that unless any of those Med-Surg nurses were also ICU nurses--and validated as such within that institution--they may not necessarily be able to take sign-out responsibility for your patients.

Yes, life as a nurse can get tricky. But in reality, say, for example, your patient has an intra-aortic balloon pump in, and you sign-out to someone that hasn't been educated, practiced, and signed-off on it, how is that nurse supposed to deal with, say, a drop in augmented pressure, other than calling the resident/fellow on call???? I mean if she calls the doc, and she or he says, titrate up on the epi or dopa, and the nurse doesn't know what she is doing-- or even receives a questionably safe order and follows it, well, you have a problem Huston. See what I am saying?

[SionainnRN]

OP, I guess I don't understand your title, how are you a goody goody and what does that have to do with anything. If you didn't follow procedure then yes you are fired for cause and not much you can do about it. You need to let your boss know. If the BON is going to contact you they will do it by certified mail, and it could take months.

[Inori, BSN, RN]

ok i think you do not realize the seriousness of your actions. In otherwords you did (patient abandonment, improper delegation, negligence, who knows what else) . When you left the unit to take your break without a handing off proper.ly to an RN that is assigned there you just did (. so what if they are sitting next to you did you report usign SBAR? i have pt 1 in room x situation xyz, etc I am reporting handing of fot you i willb e on break for x mins. If all you said was i'm gonna go on break brb in 15 mins then that's not reporting off and that nurse has not accepted your patients. Telling PCA to watch your pt lights is like telling her to be nurse for a while which is out of her scope of practice so you delegated wrongly,

For a nurse with 3 yrs experience this should not happen .. hence the charge of negligence. Even I as a new graduate knows that I am never to leave the unit unless I have incoming shift to replace and accept report. I missed a few lunches because of that however I let my manager know, billed for it and always bring 2 nut bars exactly for situations like this.

good luck and hopefully this works out and you've learned a vaulable lesson. Review your states board of nursing guildines, nursing books shore up your knowledge on legal, ethics, deletation. What others do may not always be right and when it comes down to it the law only cares about whta you did in relation to standard of practice, nursing state board guidlines.

Get an attorney expereicned with nursing board stuff before you go before a board, anything you say and write will be used against you and only an attorney retained and paid for by you will have your best interests at heart. and get medmal insurance if dont have already.