Incident Reports

Wait...if the MIVF were piggybacked, then the blood would not have been running, and the blood would not have finished at all. You would have walked in to find a full bag of blood hanging....am I misunderstanding what you mean?

Interesting. Blood's not supposed to run with anything other than NS right?

Another thought. Blood tubing doesn't have a port for piggybacking, so how could the fluids be piggybacked?

Because that nurse also must have not used blood tubing is my guess....

Because that nurse also must have not used blood tubing is my guess....

But still the blood would not be running if the fluids were piggybacked.....

Maybe they did use blood tubing, and instead of the NS it was the MIV.

Still, it all sounds funny.

That makes more sense. It's not really "piggybacking", though is it? Still, it seems it would be tough to do, since those liter bags are so long and the blood bags are so short. The question is, does this have potential to harm the patient? Does it compromise patient safety in any way?

did this nurse put D5NS with 20mEq of K on the saline port of the blood tubing set? did he run the blood on normal IV tubing and piggyback the maintenence IVF.... bc like the other posters have said, if the IVF was piggybacked and the blood was primary, it would not have ran through the pump... or did he use the blood as a piggyback (since you said it ran in completely) and left the IVF as a primary?

i'm confused.

anyways, my boss makes us write up incident reports on each other too, which i think sucks and is unfair. if there is a nurse who makes a dangerous mistake like that, they need to be counseled by their superior. i had to put in a med error the other day on a nurse who worked the day before me and signed off orders for a bowel prep that was sitting in the patient's drawer but not given for 24 hours, and the pt had, of course an incomplete exam (and he was already gone from the room to the radiology unit when i got report on him). i felt bad, but it ended up going to her anonymously.... the doc was really po'ed and i really feel like my boss should have dealt with it.

Our blood tubing does have extra ports like regular tubing. not like OR blood tubing like you might be thinking. i do know what you mean though. because that would make sense. he had the MIVF thru another channel running at tko, pb'ed thru the blood that was running thru another channel. So both were running just fine and dandy.

And correct cass, NS and blood are ALL that is supposed to be together NOTHING else.

I did tell my charge, and i think it is being dropped at that. thats why it bugs me. I am not going to approach him i guess. but it really bugs the heck outta me, cuz this is one thing of several that he has been doing lately that has been either wrong, not done, not addressed ect... WHATEVER! right?

Thanks for letting me vent!! thanks for all the replies as well!

-H-RN

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY WKEND!

Where I work, specific names involved do not go on incident reports and copies do not get sent to the nurse involved. I can honestly say that on my unit, we don't maliciously fill out incident reports to spite each other. They get filled out to bring to light and track errors that could potentially happen again for whatever reason. Unfortunately, I know this is not the case everywhere. I've filled them out on myself before. If we do fill them out on something that happened on another shift, we usually inform the nurse who was involved by email or in person so #1) they are aware that they made the error and #2) they aren't surprised if the manager does ask them about it. Maybe you could email him to let him know that the error was found and that your charge nurse made you fill out the incident report.