Am I being too hard on myself

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I am three weeks from completing an LPN program and up until a few days ago was really excited about completing it. The reason I've been so anxious and depressed the past few days is because at clinical when I was doing charting for orthostatic hypotension on a patient I hadn't gotten the patients heart rate and I was the last student to be done charting and my instructor can be rather harsh at times I didn't want to admit that I hadn't gotten the patients heart rate so I just put some values in the chart. I felt really guilty about it later thinking how I was falsifying medical records that I went back into the chart and updated it by typing after the false numbers, "error, did not obtain". Do I have a reason to feel horrible about this or should i just move on. I know I will never do something like this,again and have felt because of this doubts about whether I even deserve to be a nurse. I also feel guilty because my instructor doesnt know what i did and will give me a grade based on my performance and I have doubts about whether I deserve a good grade on the clinical because of this. If she knew what i had done, well im not sure what she would do and maybe id get kicked out of tbe program. I don't know what would happen. Do I tell my instructor what happened or would that be unnecessary. Please give me some guidance about this.

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Specializes in Adult Primary Care.

I hope you learned something from this. I'm not sure what you should do as far as your instructor, but I have a feeling you will not make this mistake again. In our practice we measure the pulse Ox too when doing Orthostatics!!!!

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You corrected your mistake and know better than to ever do it again. I would not advise that you point it out to anyone at this stage.

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So I'm ok? I still deserve to be a nurse? I just feek si bad about it. Maybe because im feeling extra stressed right now because I'm doing a,semester of school in 8 weeks!

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So I'm ok? I still deserve to be a nurse? I just feek si bad about it. Maybe because im feeling extra stressed right now because I'm doing a,semester of school in 8 weeks!

I don't know what you "deserve" because I don't know anything about you ....other than that you screwed up and made some attempt to fix it.

You're going to have to decide if nursing is the right path for you, or not. No one here can do that for you.

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People make mistakes all the time. You felt the pressure and made a bad call. What matters is you immediately fixed it. Sounds like you won't let it happen again. Don't beat yourself up too much. If you care this much I'm sure you will make an excellent nurse.

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Thank you! I needed to hear that! God bless you!

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Specializes in Med-Tele; ED; ICU.

I don't think that this ethical lapse means that you have no business being a nurse though it is concerning the ease with which you chose to falsify the medical record.

I have to say, contrary to the prior posters, you didn't "fix" your mistake because you didn't enter accurate numbers... you simply stated that the logged data were invalid. Depending on the timing between when you falsified the record and then amended it, it's quite possible that the physician had reviewed the data and made clinical decisions based on the falsified record.

Notwithstanding the last paragraph, I see no value in telling your instructor and facing the possibly severe consequences. Such notification would be highly unlikely to make a difference in the patient's care or outcome so there's not much upside but a huge potential downside. Personally, rather than expose yourself to the potential of being made an example of, I'd prefer you face the humiliation of your ethical lapse and resolve (as you have) to have no further such unethical lapses in the future.

I'm a big believer in compassion, grace, and mercy... things which we are rapidly losing in our culture.

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Specializes in Psychiatry.

Part of being a nurse is making judgment calls.

You know what you did was wrong, and also it didn't lead to poor patient outcomes. Do not tell on yourself! You're making yourself look bad.

Nurses make mistakes in the field but they debrief and talk about how to make it right; they don't go shouting it off the rooftops.

Move on from this and let this be a big teaching moment for you.

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Learn by your mistakes , sometimes mistakes are the best learning tools ....If you make a mistake(all nurses have made mistakes) , own it , correct it if you can and move foreward but learn from that experience....

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