I'm a CNA/Med Tech in an alzheimer's unit. I'm also a nursing student- I'm about halfway through my RN program. After the events of Saturday night I'm very worried about my job, and potentially my license.
Our unit still uses paper MAR's. On Saturday evening when I went to pull meds for a resident, I noticed that he had two separate orders for Warfarin. One was for 7mg, which had started five days prior, and one was for 5mg, which had been held but then resumed. They were both initialed every day for the last five days. I was concerned, and took it to the nurses on the skilled nursing unit. The nurse on the skilled unit and I looked at his orders, and the nurse in skilled nursing determined that an error had been made. She called the on-call doctor, who DC'd the 5mg order, and I was told to write a statement of what had happened for the DON and put it under her door. The resident was fine, his vitals were fine, and he was alert, so I left it on the 24 hour report and went home.
I got a text this morning from a fellow CNA to "warn" me that the unit coordinator, who is also a med tech, is very upset with me. When I asked why that is, she claimed that I should not have had the 5mg DC'd, and that I shouldn't have called the on-call doctor, because he uses an outside doctor. She also said that everyone else knew to only give him the 7.5 mg...but the order for the 5mg was being signed off on as well. I only work weekends, so I had no way of knowing that's what everyone was doing, and even if I had, I'm not comfortable signing off on something I didn't give.
I'm terrified to go back to work on Friday. I called the DON and left a message asking her to call me back, and I plan on asking her if I did anything wrong, but I'm extremely anxious and wracking my brain to try to figure out if there's anything I could have done differently. I guess I could have noticed that the nurse was calling the wrong doctor, but frankly I was a little panicky that 12mg of warfarin had been given instead of 7mg for over five days.
Is there anything you would have done differently in this situation? I don't want to get this attitude in my mind that I know better than the other girls because of nursing school, but I'm very upset that this happened at all, and also very upset that I'm hearing from other co-workers that the coordinator is upset with me. I feel like if I did do something wrong, that should be between myself, the DON, and the unit coordinator. Do you think there's anything that I could say or do to fix the situation?
