I made a med error and feel so disappointed with myself

[barbzRNBSN]

Help – so I'm a fairly new nurse. I’ve been on an ortho/medsurg unit for a little over a year. I was giving phenergan 6.25mg to my patient. It was ordered I'm but I gave it IV. I realized right away after I did and told my clinical coordinator who called the pharmacist. they said what could’ve happened was vein extravasation but said it would’ve happened immediately. The IV site was fine, no redness/swelling. patient denied any pain. VS stable. NSS was running only at 80ml/hr and the patient had an 18G IV so it was diluted through the tubing.

My hospital is new to the epic system so I've been scanning the meds, giving them, then hitting accept/complete when really I've should’ve hit accept first AND THEN give them. If I would’ve done that then I never would’ve made this mistake.

Like I said the patient was absolutely fine, I notified the Dr and he ordered an EKG which was fine. But I just feel so stupid and so guilty. I should’ve realized because I've giving phenergan IV piggyback a few times but I just saw how low the mg was and thought it was fine IV push.

Anyone do anything similar ?? Help, I am just so mad at myself for this.

[Rionoir, ADN, RN]

I’m just curious how hitting accept first would’ve prevented giving the wrong route? I’ve been trained to give them then hit accept because if you drop a med or the patient doesn’t actually take them you can still remove them at that point?

[barbzRNBSN]

On 1/30/2020 at 7:20 AM, Rionoir said:

I’m just curious how hitting accept first would’ve prevented giving the wrong route? I’ve been trained to give them then hit accept because if you drop a med or the patient doesn’t actually take them you can still remove them at that point?

if I hit accept I would’ve had to put in the route in which it was given (it was a hard top) and then I would’ve seen it didn’t list IV sites only Deltoid and I'm sites.

my coworkers said they hit accept and if something falls or the patient refuses they just go back in and change it

[Shannon Faas]

We used to give phenergan IV all the time. Then they realized it caused issues so they switched. As long as you go slow, dilute it, it would be ok. When I was a new nurse, the doc barked off a bunch of orders of Pepcid, Benadryl, Epi. The doc walked out of the room with the chart so my 2nd and 3rd check were taking away. Another nurse pulled my meds as well. I gave the Epi IV, sent her into a tachy rhythm, gave her a massive headache. Doesn’t matter how good you are, it happens. Please don’t beat yourself up over it.