I think I made a mistake! :(

[smak60]

I was passing meds tonight and a resident had an order for zyprexa 5 mg.

Well,,,,the meds come on roll packs.....and her zyprexa was for 2.5mg. Plus the packages have dates on them. Well,,,I called another nurse for her opinion...and she said I could either not give it ...or give 2 instead and then reoder.?? Well,,,I chose not to give...at the time there was alot of other stuff going on...this was a 9pm med. I was under alot of stress at the time...that I NOW know I should have given her two of the 2.5mg and then reordered ....!!! Now I am not going to be able to sleep tonight.!!! I feel so stupid. I was uneasy about this because of the dates not coinciding and the mgs. I am so new at this....but I did call a nurse thats worked there for awhile...oh well....I guess I will get in trouble for this.

you live you learn...but I feel like an idiot.

[qt2168]

If I am not mistaken zyprexa isnt a life or death drug. The patient was not really harmed by your mistake. Take it easy. Yes you made a mistake but you know about it and its not going to happen again. You learned from your mistake! Try not to feel so upset. Everyone makes mistakes. (except me, jkjkjkjk)

[nursemike, ASN, RN]

I can't imagine you getting in any real trouble over this one. As you state, it is a med error, but as the previous poster noted, it isn't really a life-or-death matter. If you think about it, the world could get to be a pretty crazy place if missing a single dose of a psych med was crucial.

Oh, wait. The world is a pretty crazy place...

Anyway, one thing I've found is that when I have to reorder meds, which seems to happen a lot more than it ought to, if I'm reordering because it was the wrong dose or the wrong med, I call the pharmacy and tell them after I reorder. I may be mistaken, but it sure seems like they get a lot more motivated to fix the problem when it's their mistake, as opposed to "dropped medication," or "medication missing."

I suppose it might also be prudent to call the doc to ensure that the dose on my orders is the dose they want given, although I can usually verify it by looking up the current MAR on the computer.

We recently had a pt who was off Zyprexa for several days because the docs wanted it that way. Pt did seem a bit manic, but I could well believe that was baseline behavior. Anyway, he didn't die from it.

The upside to an error like this is that you'll know to think a lot harder if you run into an incorrect dose of another med that might be more critical.