Med Errors

It depends on the med and on what I had to do about the situation. If I had to call and notify the doc about it, it's getting written up. If it's a Colace, well, I can just give that on nights and no harm, no foul. I always check the pyxis to see if the med was pulled or not first.

Sometimes I just ask the nurse about it and sometimes I will filll out an incident report. For example, I found a narcotic drip programmed wrong and the nurse fixed it before she left. I still filled out the report because 1)I had found a similiar mistake a couple weeks prior (not the same nurse) 2)at the time, we weren't required to have a dual sign off when initiating narcotic drips, PCAS, etc. and I strongly believed that two nurses should be signing off when initiating medications like that. Incident reports should not be looked at as a way of getting your coworkers in trouble. They should be seen as a way of improving things. By this I mean, if there are certain errors getting reported more often than others (as in me finding these 2 drips programmed wrong within 2 weeks), then I would think that is a sign that something in the process needs to be changed. Why are the mistakes being made? What is wrong with the process that this nurse made this mistake? Another example is finding IVPB meds clamped and find they never infused. (I know every nurse has seen this) If this is never reported, nobody would know this is a problem and therefore would not look at reasons why it is happening and what can be done to make sure it doesn't happen. So my point is, incident reports should not be feared by nurses and I believe facilities should not be using them as "punishment" for nurses. Because if this is the case, nothing will get reported and nothing will get improved on. Now if there are multiple reports that involve the same nurse making mistakes, well, that is a different story. Oh, and we are now required to have a dual signoff when starting narcotic drips, PCA's, and heparin drips/boluses.

Unless it's something major....I just speak to the nurse.