Almost fired for med error

[mellybelly27]

I've been a nurse for nearly 9 years now, working in ER, Urgent care and NICU. A couple days ago I was working my shift in the ER and I accidentally gave a patient oxy/acetaminophen instead of hydro/acetaminophen. I told the charge nurse and the Dr right away. The Dr made no big deal and changed the order. The patient was fine, thankfully. I did an incident report and talked to my director. This went up to the CNO and she wanted me fired! My director went to bat for me and I'm now on probation for 90 days. I have no history of write ups, unprofessional behavior, NOTHING. I'm so upset over this and just don't want to go to work anymore. Feel like I'm walking on eggshells now and that's not good when you're working in the ER. I'm looking for a new job but that might look even worse. Any input would be appreciated. I don't know what to do.

[Ankh]

This is so upsetting. This is the kind of thing that creates a culture of fear and which leads many nurses to not report incidents (as I've seen so many times). Your CNO is way out of line and going against research which supports the idea that reporting errors helps prevent additional ones from occurring and that errors are seldom the fault of a single person so the blame approach should not be used. Despite your harsh CNO, please forgive yourself and try to push forward. I feel like knowledge and awareness of errors that don't hurt patients help us avoid errors that do hurt people.

[amzyRN]

Wow that sucks. I've made a med error before and all my employer did was tell me to be more careful next time. I've only worked in environments where telling the truth was encouraged and mistakes weren't penalized. Everyone makes mistakes, it is inevitable. Definitely look for another place to work. That should not happen. People should be encouraged to be honest if they make a mistake, that is how we learn and how safety improves, not by covering things up out of fear.