feel guilty about a client fell because of me

[sherry9286]

Hi there,

Has anybody experienced any mistake or unexpected things that make yourself feel guilty and bad? I would like to share a story if anyone is willing to read. Well, briefly to introduce myself, I am a RN student in uni while having a PCA causal job and think it will help to be familiar with this field coz I really dream of being a healer and supporter to make difference for people. Anyway, I have worked in this nursing home facility about 5 weeks. Yesterday I had an afternoon shift. It was great before clients had their tea.

In our facility, there is a wing where far away from main kitchen, so we supposed to take a big heavy trolley from kitchen before every meal and put it back after finishing tea. There is a corner that I need to go through before towards to kitchen. I checked nobody in front of the trolley so I tried to turned it towards to the kitchen direction. However, a resident stood in another side of corner, and I just pushed the trolley to that client! And when I realized, that client had fell. I was blank when it happened all of a sudden, however I still quickly seeked for help and checked the situation. Luckily, she didnt hit the head, but a small bleeding skin tear @ L) arm. Almost at the same time, another client was experiencing a stroke! I felt like I increased other staff's workload and all of this is my fault!

This resident has dementia and has difficulty in talking. She always walks around the whole wing from the morning until late, this is a risk that they may have a fall somehow. So nurses had to ask me how this happened so that they could fill in the incident report. I was really panic and nervous. Then the nurse reached the resident's family and they chose to forgive me. I nearly burst into cry. Thanks god! The people working there are amazing and the resident's family are so kind.

It is not just that. I sometimes feel like I look silly because I still am not quite familiar with some clients' routine so always need to check with other staff firstly and then performing my duty. Everyone working in this nursing home seems like known everything and behaving professionally and even having some casual communicating about personal life. I dont know how they do this. I always try to learn, and even kept the handover ( I knew it's not right but I wanna do some studying about residents' Phx and care plan and such), but I still felt like I didn't behave as effective as them.

I think I may be just hopeless. If you want to make a laugh at me or blame me, I will take this, coz I even cannot let it go myself. I nearly cannot sleep overnight but keep thinking this incident. extraordinary guilty embarrassed. Luckily, it was my last shift before having my 5-week nursing placement. It means I dont have to face any gossip directly until 5 weeks later. I do know the done thing cannot be undone. I do like this job and wonder if I will get fired because of this fall? Any advice you can gimme regarding to preventing fall and effective communication at the same time making closer relationship among other staff? Honestly, I havent started working too long basically a full-time student in my previous life. will appreciate if somebody offer good tips for me.

[unDaunted]

Well, first of all, relax, mistakes happen. It is very understandable that you would feel guilty / bad about what happened, but these types of things happen even among the most experienced CNA's and nurses, and if you've been at it any length of time then yes, we've all made mistakes that we've felt bad about and hopefully learned from. Often times we tend to be our own worst enemies when it comes to things like these and we beat ourselves up more than anyone else would or is. It's hard to tell from what you're describing in pushing the food cart if it's taller than you or difficult to see around. Maybe the facility should consider installing some of those dome safety (blind spot) mirrors if something like that could have prevented this incident or future incidents. The fall report incidents you speak of aren't necessarily intended to be punitive in nature, although I'm sure depending they could be; but they are more to determine how something like that happened so it can hopefully be prevented from happening again. I'm glad the resident ended up being alright and the family was understanding. Nursing homes are tough, they're often understaffed and the staff who are there are generally pushed to the limits of safe nursing staff to patient ratios.