I work at a small 20 bed hospital in a small town in South Dakota. About 2 months ago I was promoted to charge nurse and was feeling a little more confident in the ER. On the weekends the charge nurse takes care of the ER, and is in charge of the floor nurses.
This particular weekend we had an out-of-town doctor or a Locum tenon as they are called was covering the ER for the other docs and we had a 14 year old boy come to the ER with a laceration to the forhead from the scope of his hunting rifle. Hunting season was opening the next weekend and he was practicing.
Well, I prepared everything for the stitches he would need. As the doctor donned his sterile gloves and opened the local tray, I held the Lidocaine and needle for him to draw up. As I looked down at the tray I remember thinking,"where is the syringe?" I knew something was wrong when the doctor said,"I think this will be too small for this young man."
I looked again at the tray and realized that the tray had been mislabeled and was actually a circumcision tray. Boy, was my face red but we did have a good laugh over it and the boy didn't know the difference. I left a great note for the CSR girls!!!!
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