I'm a new nursing student and I recently lost one of my patients pills. I have to write a paper about what happends when you lose your patients pills. However, i dont know what kind of things would happen in the hospital. Here is my list
1. Patients medication is now late potentially causing there life/ health in jeopardy
2. Someone may find the missing medicine and take it
3. You may be accused of stealing the medicine
4. If its a narcotic you may have to be drug tested.
5. Your credability as a nurse may be diminshed
6. You will get written up.
7. File out an incident report
Thats all I can think of can someone please point me in the right direction
If there is one time in your career when you are the least responsible for your own errors, its when you're a student, not even licensed yet let own fully trained. Your instructor is the one with the overall responsibility for your work, and they should provide sufficient instruction and oversite to maintain safety. Your responsibility is to take advantage of this situation, with less workload and much better back-up than you'll ever have later on, to learn, ask questions, and build a routine that will render you better able to function independently later on. Worrying and ruminating about errors helps no one - but strong motivation, conscientiousness to learning, developing, and consistently practicing strong reliable routines serves everyone.
By the way, I'm a Clinical Instructor and I have also worked with many students voluntarily assigned to shadow me while I work. I've seen lots and lots of instructors at work, and unfortunately they are often neither present or available much of the time, often for reasons beyond their control. Student, Instructors, and other Nurses helping out all need to work together to make sure this situation remains workable and safe, similar in some ways to other delegation scenarios involving nonlicensed staff. Everyone in such a scenario shares responsibility for the work of the nonlicensed staff, esp. when such staff are people paying their supervisor (indirectly but still true) for an educational experience.
Part of succeeding as a Nurse is taking responsibility for yourself and your work, but also not letting others shirk their responsibility to dump the blame on you. Its a hard aspect of our work, but important.
Inconvenience to the pharmacist that has to send a new one?
Delay in treatment?
Delay in discharge?
Having to write a silly paper over a mistake?
You ahve to write a paper in this? How many meds are we losing? Jesus. narcotics is one thing, but other pills. many times, our lopressor packages were always hard to remove pills from. They usually got flung across the room. So I would call pharmacy and get another one. no delay, meds don't have to given on the dot.
Gee, do pharmacists write a paper when they forget to bring up meds or deliver them to the wrong unit? it happens.
did you take them out of the packaging then lose them? I hope are smart enough not to give meds she didn't personally pour....
You ahve to write a paper in this? How many meds are we losing? Jesus. narcotics is one thing, but other pills. many times, our lopressor packages were always hard to remove pills from. They usually got flung across the room. So I would call pharmacy and get another one. no delay, meds don't have to given on the dot.
Gee, do pharmacists write a paper when they forget to bring up meds or deliver them to the wrong unit? it happens.
did you take them out of the packaging then lose them? I hope are smart enough not to give meds she didn't personally pour....
Gee, do pharmacists write a paper when they forget to bring up meds or deliver them to the wrong unit? it happens.
I agree. I'd like to see a pharmacist write me a paper for every error of theirs that I've caught. Like when I catch them put potassium replacement on my patient's eMAR when the patient's K was actually HIGH (almost critical) that morning.
Popwhizbangz, LPN
115 Posts
If there is one time in your career when you are the least responsible for your own errors, its when you're a student, not even licensed yet let own fully trained. Your instructor is the one with the overall responsibility for your work, and they should provide sufficient instruction and oversite to maintain safety. Your responsibility is to take advantage of this situation, with less workload and much better back-up than you'll ever have later on, to learn, ask questions, and build a routine that will render you better able to function independently later on. Worrying and ruminating about errors helps no one - but strong motivation, conscientiousness to learning, developing, and consistently practicing strong reliable routines serves everyone.
By the way, I'm a Clinical Instructor and I have also worked with many students voluntarily assigned to shadow me while I work. I've seen lots and lots of instructors at work, and unfortunately they are often neither present or available much of the time, often for reasons beyond their control. Student, Instructors, and other Nurses helping out all need to work together to make sure this situation remains workable and safe, similar in some ways to other delegation scenarios involving nonlicensed staff. Everyone in such a scenario shares responsibility for the work of the nonlicensed staff, esp. when such staff are people paying their supervisor (indirectly but still true) for an educational experience.
Part of succeeding as a Nurse is taking responsibility for yourself and your work, but also not letting others shirk their responsibility to dump the blame on you. Its a hard aspect of our work, but important.