Incident report happy nurse

[ohbet]

When do you right up an incident report?

Lets say the patient was not harmed and it is the first time the error has been made,should an incident report be done or should you discuss it with the nurse who made the error?

Some Nurses seem to be incident report happy.

[Agnus]

The purpose of incident reports is NOT SUPOSED to be punitive. It is suposed to be to track and solve problems.

I realize in some places it seems it is punitive. Fortunately at my hospital it is not punitive. Yes I have been asked about things that either I have reported on myself or some one else found and reported, I was never disaplined for these. I have written many more reports on myself than anyone has written on me and more than I have written on anyone else. I do not mention names except my own in these reports.

If I thought the reports were being misused i. e. to punish people, then I would be inclined not to write them.

A "write up" on an employee and an incident report should not be the same thing. It is sad that often they are. Consequently we cover up things more instead of working together to find a solution. I would hate to work where I had to be afraid to report unsafe occurences because it might reflect badly on someone or on me. I have heard the horror stories of nurses getting fired because she wrote herself up too many times. My experience with writing myslef up has been that things that contributed to the incident were looked at to improve the situation for the future.

Have I done a report when no harm occurred. You bet! These were dangerous situations where it was by By God's grace that no harm was done. So why do I continure to write (on myself and others) in these cases? Because the next time harm could be done. I not willing to waite until someone is actually injured to do something about a problem. Again if this was punitive then that might be another case.

[moonrose2u]

we have two pencil sharpening, holier than thou, incident happy nurses who write up whenever they can...its ridiculous...

personally, i do not write up if it can handled diplomatically and in private without harm to the pt.

moon

[mario_ragucci]

Yesterday - in my Health Occupations class (for nursing students) I really grew up. The lecture was about legal issues. The instructor did a wonderful job of explaining the tip of the iceberg of legal issues.

I understand from the lecture that in the past, nurses were judged on how well they cared for people, and the accuracy of their care. Now I am learning how important it is to write everything down accurately. Charting. This was explained and emphasized because of potential legal issues.

My eyes opened wide, and the impact of this lecture has not taken a form in my mind yet.

[NurseDennie, BSN, RN]

I thought charting had *always* been the be-all and end-all. No?

If it's not documented, it didn't happen. If it's not documented correctly, it didn't happen correctly.

Love

Dennie

[OBNURSEHEATHER]

Originally posted by moonrose2u

personally, i do not write up if it can handled diplomatically and in private without harm to the pt.

I agree. I only like to fill them out if the doc is unyielding in his request that I do so, but even then I sometimes think it's silly.

We do have a new, very incompetent nurse on our unit. We've discussed our concerns with management to no avail (surprise, surprise). So now we're covering our a**es with incident reports. Her personal record is 3 in one night shift.

Heather

[canoehead, BSN, RN]

One weekend it got to the point where I passed out incident reports to each nurse on nights in report because the previous shift had neglected their patients so badly. One mistake is different from a pattern of poor care. So things that we would not usually write up sometimes get written up because you spend the whole shift cleaning up after the person that went before you.

Last time I worked as a staff nurse on that floor I had 2/3 of my patients with inadequate pain control, and spent the first half of the shift calling docs and titrating meds. Wrote a whole page of new orders on one woman.

[willie2001]

I rarely write an incident report, but I sure did today and it was on a physician. He admitted a renal failure patient several days ago. The patient had been doing CAPD several times a day for some time, assisted by her husband. She developed an infection and had been prescribed an antibiotic to be administered in one dialysis exchange per day. The husband had been doing this at home. When the patient was admitted to the hospital there were no orders written for this treatment. I was taking care of this patient yesterday and found out from the patient's daughter that the patient's husband has been administering the medication to his wife in the hospital. No order, no dosage, nothing. Evidently other nurses who had taken care of her knew of this, but did not call the doctor on it to find out what was going on. I called the doctor and his comment to me was "oh I know about that", but he also was unable to be specific with me about the dosage, etc. I called dialysis and got the whole thing straightened out by talking with them. I then wrote the appropriate order and nursing staff are administering the medication. I discussed this incident with my nurse manager and she also felt that an incident report was appropriate in this case. I wrote up the doc because I felt he was the one who dropped the ball in the first place:rolleyes:

[NicuGal, MSN, RN]

Incident reports and writing someone up are two totally different things! An incident report does not name names...it only documents what was found, no blaming. If you write someone up, it is about that person. I know in our institute, incident reports are all gone over by risk management and if they aren't a "true" incident report, they are pitched into the circular file. These incident reports are used for legal purposes, not to rat on another person. If you have a beef about someone, then you write an anecdotal about that person's behaviours, etc....personal feelings should not be in there. Just state the facts.

I have to say about hanging the NS without an order...we would have been most likely suspended...you could have gotten an order, even if you had to go above that particular doctor's head. You have to see it from his legal standpoint...what if something did happen to that patient? You would have been in deep do-do. What you thought correct, well, that is not always our call.