First med error

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Hi, I have been and LVN for a year now, and unfortunately, I just made my first medication error. I was in the middle of my med pass, and getting the medication out for a new resident. I had flagged some injections that I had to do that morning, and I went back to getting the new resident's meds in order. During that moment, I somehow got it into my head that this particular resident was to receive one of the injections. I gave her an injection of 40mg. Lovenox. The minute I gave it to her, I got a funny feeling. I went to sign it out on her MARS, and of course, it wasn't there. I immediately went to my charge nurse, and she told me it was alright, to call the DR. and go from there. Well, the DR. wouldn't talk to me, he was so mad. He spoke with my charge nurse and told her to send me home. I then flipped out, I thought that I was fired. My charge nurse told me, no, to just calm down and go home, and they would call me. Before I was a block from work, my DON called me and calmed me down. I was able to go right back to work, but she wanted me to go home and think about what happened, and report back to work in a few hours. The rest of my day and the next day were fine (I work 32 hours on the weekends). On Monday morning, I received a call from my DON, and I had to go in and meet with her and the administrator. I had to go through telling them step by step what happened again, and they reminded me how serious this was, and even though the resident wasn't harmed, this was pretty serious. I have to take a med pass refresher course, and I have to do a med pass at work, and I may not be able to pass my own meds for awhile. I am so sick and upset, I don't know what to do. I'm so worried that they don't feel confident in me now, and I am making myself so upset over this. Does anyone have any advice for me? I guess I just want to feel that I can come out of this, and that I am still an asset to nursing.

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Specializes in Education, FP, LNC, Forensics, ED, OB.

I commend you on your honesty. You are an admirable person. :balloons:

A medication error is frightening in itself, but, thank goodness, no harm was done to the patient.

You have and will learn from this experience and believe me.....you are not alone. You will never forget it.

Please just fall back and regroup. You will get your bearings back and will trudge forward.

Try not to be so hard on yourself.......do the remediation and continue to be the great nurse I know you are!! :balloons: :balloons: :balloons:

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Specializes in Telemetry, ICU, Resource Pool, Dialysis.

From now on, you will always check and double check your meds. That's what you need to take away from this experience. We all feel terrible when we make a mistake - but you need to let go of the guilt and focus on what you learned. Figure out what broke down in your process, and fix it! There are so many things I do in my daily practice that are habits developed from various mistakes, or hard lessons, or things I've heard about that I don't want to do. Some of them are almost obsessive compulsive now that I think about it! But it's my way of preventing mistakes. Mistakes do happen, but learning from them is the important thing.:)

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Is the doctor able to make you go home or fire you. Only asking b/c I am a sr. nsg. student and I am horrified at him saying this even though the med error was a very serious issue. Maybe I am missing something.

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Dear Sunny,

This is a hard lesson, but it sounds like you are an honest, caring, nurse who deserves the good luck you are having with this situation. You will get over this, and come out on the other side a better nurse for learning this very critical lesson. You can count your blessings that your patient was not injured and that you are being given the opportunity to do better in the furture.(Good job to the charge nurse and DON). I can say this from first hand experience having made a med error in my first year of nursing too. No matter what type of error we make as nurses, because we care, it will be a life altering experience. I think that is the part of the job we have to struggle with, so keep on caring, just remember to care for yourself too.

Good luck, and keep on caring.

mcdmomhttps://allnurses.com/forums/images/icons/icon7.gif

Hi, I have been and LVN for a year now, and unfortunately, I just made my first medication error. I was in the middle of my med pass, and getting the medication out for a new resident. I had flagged some injections that I had to do that morning, and I went back to getting the new resident's meds in order. During that moment, I somehow got it into my head that this particular resident was to receive one of the injections. I gave her an injection of 40mg. Lovenox. The minute I gave it to her, I got a funny feeling. I went to sign it out on her MARS, and of course, it wasn't there. I immediately went to my charge nurse, and she told me it was alright, to call the DR. and go from there. Well, the DR. wouldn't talk to me, he was so mad. He spoke with my charge nurse and told her to send me home. I then flipped out, I thought that I was fired. My charge nurse told me, no, to just calm down and go home, and they would call me. Before I was a block from work, my DON called me and calmed me down. I was able to go right back to work, but she wanted me to go home and think about what happened, and report back to work in a few hours. The rest of my day and the next day were fine (I work 32 hours on the weekends). On Monday morning, I received a call from my DON, and I had to go in and meet with her and the administrator. I had to go through telling them step by step what happened again, and they reminded me how serious this was, and even though the resident wasn't harmed, this was pretty serious. I have to take a med pass refresher course, and I have to do a med pass at work, and I may not be able to pass my own meds for awhile. I am so sick and upset, I don't know what to do. I'm so worried that they don't feel confident in me now, and I am making myself so upset over this. Does anyone have any advice for me? I guess I just want to feel that I can come out of this, and that I am still an asset to nursing.
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I made my first ever today.....i got all through nursing school w/o an error and today i had one lukily it was the better error to make....i had a pt who had very simular names and my one pt had an order for a mag sulfat IVPB and 2 po pottasium tabs becuse of low pottasium and low mag levels......i gave it to my other pt not realizing it because of the simular names ......i realized it only moments later and stopped the infusion immediatly and got 1 1/2 of the pills back because i had cut them in half for her .....everyone said it was fine and luckily it wasnt a narcotic and working on an oncology floor most of my pt have low mag and pot levels ........i got the right pt her meds and evryone was ok......the funny thing is a few hours later the resident ordered the pt id given the wrong meds to the exact same medications i started to give her in error so she got them anyway .....it was a good lesson to double check even if everything else is crazy because next time i wont be sooo lucky .....ure not alone

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Everyone makes mistakes, just thank God it didn't harm the patient. I am sure the Dr and your DON have made their share of mistakes also.... we are all only human. Good for you that you were brave enough and smart enough to catch your error and stand up and say what you did. It is the nurses that make mistakes and cover them up that is really scary, and you know some really do that.

We are all proud of you! and yes, you will be a better nurse because of this.

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