i'm a 3rd year nursing student and I failed my CPE II and i am not allowed re-entry into the nursing program.. i made a couple of bad mistakes in clinical. ie. med error and lied about it and didn't inform my clinical instructor or nurse.
what can i do?????
i believe I am a great student. i have a GPA of 3.53. i am conscientous and hard working. this is totally not fair =(
i'm having trouble focusing b/c my brother in law was recently dx with leukemia the day after my sister announced she was pregnant and another relative died yesterday from end stage ovarian cancer!! is this a not good enough reason to perform poorly?
would i be able to transfer to another school? would they accept me?
This incident should make you stop and think. I sympathize with you and the hard work you have done up til now, but this hurry up and I need to get into another program is not good. You make it so matter of fact that you had a med error and lied about it. I don't read any remorse into your post not even for the patient, the nurse, the instructor, facility etc. Your concern is how to move on because you had major issues at home. No consideration for the nurse you were working under. I have read on these posts in the past how nurses do get fed up taking on students....well....you can see why if a student just disregards the fact for that nurse's license and how hard that nurse worked to attain it. Also, it would seem obvious that teachers are held accountable. Do you think if an instructor has students making errors left and right that his/her teaching isn't looked at. Other people's careers were affected based soley on your lie not to mention the patient and family could sue if it ended up to be something serious. How do you know the nurse helping you that day didn't have some catastrophic things going on in their life. Like some have said this is a big learning lesson and IMO you need to take a hard look at why you lied. Perhaps you already had some med errors or mistakes that you knew one more and you were out. How would you feel if you were the patient or it happen to one of the sick family members you were talking about? I also wonder why you didn't double check with the nurse or instructor since it was a hard day and say I have these thoughts going on in my head, personal stuff, and just want to make sure I am thinking clearly and have someone check your work. I don't know maybe my thinking is in la la land because I haven't started the program. I hope you do take the time to really dig deap and figure out why you lied because all jobs require integrity.
i'm a 3rd year nursing student and I failed my CPE II and i am not allowed re-entry into the nursing program.. i made a couple of bad mistakes in clinical. ie. med error and lied about it and didn't inform my clinical instructor or nurse.
Well. doing it and covering it up - Don't you thing that the patient could have been harmed twice, i.e. by the original mistake and then by the cover-up??
"totally not fair =( " -- No, sorry. Seems totally fair to me. Would you be pleased if a nurse did this to you when you were a patient? Deaths, lawsuits, books, and movies happen because of stupid and irresponsible behavior like that.
"i'm having trouble focusing b/c my brother in law was recently dx with leukemia the day after my sister announced she was pregnant and another relative died yesterday from end stage ovarian cancer!! is this a not good enough reason to perform poorly?"
Well, they are all upsetting, but technically, not your problem, and outside of your control, to boot. When you are on the job, you need to be focused on the tasks for that job. These are sad and worrisome circumstances, but your worrying about them can achieve nothing. I don't mean to sound callous. But that's just the way it is in the real workworld. They may say 'family first" or whatever, but in reality, most employers mean "Don't let your personal life interfere with doing your job. "
The med error itself would probably not have gotten you kicked out, provided that the patient came to little/no harm and you had told someone about it immediately. You would not have been the first student to make a med error, nor will you be the last. I made one and I still graduated...but I also reported it ASAP.
What hung you was your neglecting to tell anyone about it and choosing to cover it up instead; that was a poor judgement call on your part. Patients are seriously harmed or even killed by medication errors. Perhaps your patient had no adverse effects--if that's the case, you got off lucky. But if they had been seriously harmed or died because you covered up a mistake, then what would you have done?
Since you can't undo that, all I can suggest is that you take responsibility from your mistake and learn from it...and if you are able to get into another nursing program, keep this lesson in mind.
I agree with you all. My dishonesty was inexusable. I shouldn't be allowed back. I have such a guilty conscience... i feel like a criminal.
If I did not feel so vulnerable during that day and during that situation, I would have thought much more clearly about what I had done and what nursing actions I should have taken after the incident. To disregard my patient like that and to not assume any responsibility for him after my medication error is clearly negligence on my behalf. Looking back, I know I should have stayed focused and provided care to the patient as best as I could to ensure that he did not experience any adverse side effects from the medications (ie. take vital signs, reported to my RN and CI immediately, told the patient what happened, called the physician, etc). I was negligent that day and I really should have critically thought about what best for the patient - and not have been so concerned about myself and my needs. I know it looks as if I did not show any remorse or empathy for this patient, but it felt like my world had crumbled that day and my potential career as a nurse seemed almost no longer possible which is why I shut down and failed to provide the necessary care. I should have put myself in the patient's shoes or put myself in the shoes of his wife, daughter, son, and other relatives in order to understand how horrible it was for me to just walk away and do nothing.
I know that I have shown to be completely incompetent at this level and you may have come to believe that I am too dangerous or unsafe to come back to the clinical setting to provide care. I really hope that this is not the case and its very hard to defend myself in a situation like this. All I can think to do is apologize and learn from this incomprehensible mistake. I know that there is nothing that I can say or do to make ammends. This incident is something that I will take to heart and learn from and will carry throughout my life.
Some hopeful news... at least for me.
I have actually been given a chance to write a letter to the progression committee so that I can tell my side of the story, my extenuating circumstances, explain why I lacked good judgement and did not uphold my responsibilites and duties as a student nurse, and to explain what I did to own up to my error. This is a letter that I will write that will probably determine my fate in the nursing program. However, I know most of you already know what my fate will be.
However, I am hoping that some of you will help me out and tell me what I could possibly write in this letter of appeal.
I just want you all to know that I am truly a honest, conscientous, considerate individual who made a HUGE mistake by lying on a particular day in my life that I totally regret ever happened.
Your second paragraph and the last four sentences of your third paragraph are on the right path, imho. Also, what you might do to recognize the signs of shutting down before you actually do (or some other way of preventing such a mistake again).
I just want you all to know that I am truly a honest, conscientous, considerate individual who made a HUGE mistake by lying on a particular day in my life that I totally regret ever happened.
Thanks for you words.
That's the issue. You still see yourself as being honest, conscientious, etc. The facts say otherwise. You need to own up to the fact that you are not consistently honest. When the going got rough, you couldn't handle it and compromised patient safety to cover up your mistake. People are being reasonable when they say they can't trust you.
If I were on the committee deciding your fate, I would need to see you admit that -- and that you have to change in order to earn the privilege of re-admittance to nursing school. You see it as "This one mistake and the lie to cover it up doesn't mean I am not a good honest person. I'm good and don't really need to change anything about who I am because my mistake was just this once." We see it as "This lie shows that deep down inside, you are not as honest as you think you are."
I recommend facing up to your integrity problem in your essay ... rather than saying that you have no integrity problem as this was just one "mistake" for which you offer excuses. I recommend saying that this has forced you to question your self-image and take a good hard look at yourself -- and that you have found some things that you don't like about yourself and are working to change.
Not to put you down, but do you really need to ask other nurses how to write the possibly most important statement of your nursing career? Do you feel that by copying other nurses' suggestions your statement will come across as more well-rounded or thought-through? Personally, I believe that the best way to write this statement would be for you to REALLY take a hard look at yourself, accept responsibility for your mistake without ifs, buts, and explaining circumstances, to figure out how you can own up to your mistake (actual things you will do) and to then write an honest, PERSONAL statement. Anything else will be a continuation of dishonesty.
we have all made medication errors, personally i have given a pt perc's instead of T3's, and oh dear god in heaven when i noticed my mistake i was going to die, first of all i had to make sure the pt was ok, checked the charts to see if there are any allergies, told the nurse, contacted the physician ... lol he wasn't happy at 3 am... to make matters worse he told me why i even bothered to call him ... jerk. and as a cherry to the icing the next day he changed the order to perc's because the T3s weren't working out for the pt anyway. when my CI came to see how my placement was going i could have not told her because nothing really happened, but that mistake was part of my learning process and i will never forget that mistake. it was my first ... and hopefully last mistake but we are human we make mistakes, what makes us stand out is our ability to learn from those mistakes, and if you had lied and got away with it, then it could happen again and the mental process is well i did it once and got away with it so why not again? ... trust me ive seen this happen ... on multiple accounts. so your best bet is to be honest tell them why you lied, how do you plan to change that in the future and how this mistake has made u a better nurse!!
atleast thats my 2 cents
Yours truly
lordERRORprone i love this name i wish i could get my name tag to say it !!!
i love this name i wish i could get my name tag to say it !!!
racquetmom
117 Posts
This incident should make you stop and think. I sympathize with you and the hard work you have done up til now, but this hurry up and I need to get into another program is not good. You make it so matter of fact that you had a med error and lied about it. I don't read any remorse into your post not even for the patient, the nurse, the instructor, facility etc. Your concern is how to move on because you had major issues at home. No consideration for the nurse you were working under. I have read on these posts in the past how nurses do get fed up taking on students....well....you can see why if a student just disregards the fact for that nurse's license and how hard that nurse worked to attain it. Also, it would seem obvious that teachers are held accountable. Do you think if an instructor has students making errors left and right that his/her teaching isn't looked at. Other people's careers were affected based soley on your lie not to mention the patient and family could sue if it ended up to be something serious. How do you know the nurse helping you that day didn't have some catastrophic things going on in their life. Like some have said this is a big learning lesson and IMO you need to take a hard look at why you lied. Perhaps you already had some med errors or mistakes that you knew one more and you were out. How would you feel if you were the patient or it happen to one of the sick family members you were talking about? I also wonder why you didn't double check with the nurse or instructor since it was a hard day and say I have these thoughts going on in my head, personal stuff, and just want to make sure I am thinking clearly and have someone check your work. I don't know maybe my thinking is in la la land because I haven't started the program. I hope you do take the time to really dig deap and figure out why you lied because all jobs require integrity.