Made a med error

[Jessica28]

I gave an extra unit of insulin to two patients because I looked at the wrong sliding scale each time. I am so mortified. The patients were ok.

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

Welcome to AN! The thing about med errors in nursing is that it is extremely likely that each nurse will make a med error at some point during their career. Those that say they haven't either never realized it, are lying, haven't yet passed many meds, or have never worked at the bedside. You may find some good advice and discussion in this thread: Please help, I'm new & made a huge med error, I'm devastated.

The takeaway is that you should learn from this experience and realize what you can do to prevent the same error from happening in the future.

[VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN]

You are not a bad nurse. A bad nurse would have covered up the error and not followed through with continued monitoring.

I know med errors are tough. But any nurse who tells you they've never made one is either fresh out of school, or lying. Lucklly it was only a single unit of insulin, but I'll bet you never make that same mistake again because you'll be more vigilant. Learn from it, but don't beat yourself up over it. You are only human, after all. (((HUGS)))

[blondy2061h, MSN, RN]

A single extra unit? Not to make light of it, because insulin is a high risk med, but in most hospitalized adult patients that probably barely made a dent on their blood sugars.