In nursing school our professors have told us to never chart a medication error. You do an incident report for quality assurance where you do identify yourself, you take proper measures to ensure there was no harm to the patient and continue to monitor, and you call the physician/resident if need be. However, I have been taught that you never chart it on the nursing notes for legal reasons.
Last night I was working with an RN (I am an apprentice nurse) and we had a young boy recovering from a repaired ruptured appy. He was on flagyl q8 and mefoxin q4 (I think.. cannot remember exacts about mefoxin). Well anyway, she ended up giving the flagyl when she was supposed to give the mefoxin. Thus she ended up giving 4 doses of the flagyl instead of 3. She realized her mistake a few hours after the infusion had completed, and she did an incident report and spoke with the resident on-call. There was no harm to the patient but we continued to montior. However, I was looking at the nursing notes and realized she charted her mistake and I questioned her about what I was learning in school about not charting medication errors and she said she has never heard of that.
So the very simple question after my long unneccessary story -- do you chart medication errors in your nursing notes?
