advice needed

This seems ridiculous over a lidocaine patch. I agree with other posters that something else is going on. Best of luck to you.

Call your malpractice carrier for guidance. If you have a union, have discussion with your delegate to keep them in the loop.

And I agree with the pp. Going forward, have the day nurse show you where the patch is as part of report. And it should be initialed and dated by the nurse who put it on--which would also could help you see it better.

Just to also throw it out there, most lido patches are 12 hours on, 12 hours off. Maybe the time to remove the patch is when you come in at 7pm if the patch has been on for the 12 hours? Another thought is that you both put the patch on at 7am?

I am not sure what the answer is, but it does seem really weird. I would not put anything in writing until talking to your insurance company.

Well to make a long story short, they said I made the day shift nurse feel like she wasn't doing her job because I was circling my initials since the patch wasn't there. What's even more messed up is on the mar, the day shift nurse is supposed to document the site she placed the patch. Instead, she was just putting check marks. A copy of that Mar page was shown to me at the meeting I had with the don. I later went to work that night (I picked up a night shift.. And they took me off suspension) and someone went back over the Mar to the past days in question, and wrote lower back under that nurses initials. Like really? That's falsifying documentation..

Well that's just plain ugly. I'd run.

Well to make a long story short, they said I made the day shift nurse feel like she wasn't doing her job because I was circling my initials since the patch wasn't there. What's even more messed up is on the mar, the day shift nurse is supposed to document the site she placed the patch. Instead, she was just putting check marks. A copy of that Mar page was shown to me at the meeting I had with the don. I later went to work that night (I picked up a night shift.. And they took me off suspension) and someone went back over the Mar to the past days in question, and wrote lower back under that nurses initials. Like really? That's falsifying documentation..

And the plot thickens. You made the day shift nurse feel bad (waah-waah) and they cover her tracks and suspend you?!

Did you lose work over this? You need to move on stat, cover yourself first.

This is all so messed up. I echo what everyone has said, call your malpractice insurance & get another job. Someone wants you gone & they are trying hard to do it. I'm sorry you're going through this huge mess!

This could be a learning opportunity. Have the RN reporting off SHOW YOU THE patch during report. With all I've heard recently about nurses diverting, it's the prudent thing to do for this very reason.

This does sound sketchy to me.

I can't say how important it is to double check the outgoing RN's work at shift change. It may stink because they just want to give report and leave, but whatever you didn't check becomes your mistakes.

I have only seen one side of the story, but has anyone ever read Silas Marner by George Eliot? Sounds kind of familiar!