So I'm supposed to graduate and march in 2 months from now. I'm currently doing my critical care rotation and I had a 7 hour observation/clinical experience in the ER tonight. The nurses were great, they were letting me start IV's (I was 1 for 2) and give meds with little to no supervision at all. I didn't feel like an outsider and the observation was going super. So one of the nurses told me I could give an IV push of morphine, and the order read 1-10 MG titration. She told me to go ahead and give him 3 MG, and that the full 10 MG was in 2 ML. So I was good to go, she left the room and I started to push the morphine and for some reason while I was pushing the med and talking to the patient, I was thinking that the 2 ML was 3 MG, not the full 10 MG
So, around 10 minutes later the nurse comes up to me and asks if I dumped the rest of the morphine out, since she told me to give 3 mg. I was like ohhh crap, I gave all of the morphine, and she started freaking out, but she said she would just tell them that we gave the 3 mg and dumped the rest out. Side note: the patient broke out into hives and we found out he was allergic to morphine, so she gave benadryl and it fixed the problem.
I then told her, "Should we file a medication error report?" and she said that she was afraid they wouldn't let me graduate if we were to do that. I then told her that, "Shouldn't we be okay, since the order said up to 10 mg of morphine is ok to give?" And she was like, ohh yeah you're right! You're right, we have nothing to worry about since the order does say to give 1-10 mg titrated. She also said that if anyone asks why we gave so much, she'll tell them it's because he was a big guy, and he uses meds all the time at home (which is true).
I feel TERRIBLE, and i've been beating myself up over this since I just got home a little over an hour ago. On one hand, I feel like I could have killed the poor guy, and on the other hand, I'm afraid the nurse is going to say something to another nurse and it will get back to my program and they'll kick me out or something. The nurse reassured me that I have nothing to worry about, but I worry about everything.. I have learned my lesson on the 5 rights of meds and I will ALWAYS remember this day. Please feel free to respond and advise...