I guess I just wanted to post this to vent because it is very upsetting to me. I am a new grad who was hired a couple months ago by a ltc. I was "oriented" for a couple weeks and have been on my own for 3 weeks. Since I'm new i have no idea who is and isn't competent and whos report should be questioned. There's an rn there on days who I have learned is sort of flaky. She's given me report and not told me patients were loa or she tells me orders are "all set" and they arent. She isn't new, she's been an rn for years. What kills me is she doesn't know how to use or program a kangaroo feeding pump. No one ever showed me how to use one and I figured it out because it prompts you. Once before she came up to me because one pts pump wasn't working. I looked at it. The machine prompted me to enter rate and vtbi and it was fine. So on to last night. She's giving me report and tells me a different pts feeding pump isn't working. She left to check and returned saying oh the pt got it to work its fine. The pt is quite good with his GT so that made sense. Now here is my mistake. I should have specifically looked at that machine when I made first rounds, but you know I'm new, never worked in healthcare, crappy orientation, 24 patients and things were going nutty with some other pts. So after 3 hours he's due for meds. Mind you this man's feeding was supposedly turned on at 1 and now it's 6. I go in and look at the pump. He's supposed to get 70 ml/hr for 20 hrs. It was set to a 70 ml bolus q 20 hrs!!!! So I easily fixed it because I'm sorry the kangaroo pump is self explanatory if you know what bolus means, but the pt probably didn't so he thought he did it right. So he's short 350 mls and I just imagine what if I had never looked, what if he had gone the whole night without food. I wasn't even sure how to report this. It's the first time I got teary about the job. I ended up telling the night nurse and the other nurse that was working with me. They were like, well now you know never ever trust her, apparently this nurse that always gives me crappy report is like this. So at least they helped me make it right and do what needed to be done. I feel so upset with myself for not checking the numbers on my first round, but what makes me more upset is thinking about that poor man with cancer who's feeding was 5 hours late and could have gone a whole night without food. Idk, it feels better to write about it and that's my spiel.
