I shouldn't be a nurse

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Have anyone ever made such a horrible mistake it almost killed someone? I did this week and can not stop thinking about it and feel like I should not even be a nurse! I'm a new nurse and feel like I'm too stupid to be a nurse :(.

Specializes in Pediatrics, Emergency, Trauma.

The point I'm making here is you have potential to kill people as a nurse without ever making a mistake, let alone when you do. Don't feel bad about your near miss. Learn from it, but don't let it paralyze you - you will have a lot of them, and some of them will be from doing your job exactly right. We have a stressful job. You can and probably will kill someone at one point. Being okay with that is probably the wrong term, but you do need to accept that it's part of the job in a lot of specialties.

^This.

I made some near misses and an error where I breach protocol; what was worse in the breach in protocol is the medicines used as a precaution the pt was allergic to the whole protocol. I did feel paralyzed, and it took me a while for me to "normalize" my nursing practice and my confidence, once I used it as a learning experience and it helped that I had a therapist in this process.

Get help and rebuild your confidence; read the post provided by Esme and find a plan to move forward.

Best wishes

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I gave 45 units of insulin one time. It was suppose to be 4.5 units. My saving grace was the client ate 3 Snicker bars (big size) prior to my mistake.

We all make mistakes. The ones who don't are lying or first day as a nurse.

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Sadly your post is funny, but I believe and hope non of us nurses would plan on go to work and kill people, circumstances makes us error. But as good nurses we should be ready to reverse and fix this mistakes so we don't kill anybody. Thank God for the sneakers

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