As I was reporting off the the next nurse at 10 pm the cna's told me they needed me in a room asap. An air mattress had somehow become unplugged and had deflated and the resident had fallen down under the mattress and it was over her head. When they found her she was cyanotic and I had my doubts if she would pull through. We put her on O2 and she pulled through ok. when I left she was back to baseline.
Here is my problem.
I was called into the DON's office a couple of days later and counseled and they really came down on me for making a nurses note about the situation. The DON said that I should've called her at home and asked her if she wanted that documented or not. The counseling is for not calling her. She said that it looks really bad and that a "seasoned nurse would've known not to write something like that".
I don't understand how you can not document something so serious. Since then they are on my case really bad for a lot of stupid things and the company just offered a raise for all nurses and they upped the shift differential for afternoon shift. She called my into her office on monday and said that she is with-holding both raises from me because of this counseling.
Specializes in LTC,Hospice/palliative care,acute care.
I remember reading about this situation (or a similar one) To the OP-did you call your maintenance department? I would have charted exactly what I found,completed an incident report and then followed my protocol for equipment failure.The purpose of the incident report is to prevent the same thing from happening again..It would take minutes for the maintenance staff to replace those faulty outlets at a cost of pennies.Did you check the rest of the outlets on your unit? If you did not do these things then you are as guilty as your don.....Also-you can always place an anonymous call to your state department of health to alert them anytime you think you know of a problem that is endangering residents,staff or visitors...
I can't BELIEVE they would try to cover something like that up!!! Shame on them!!
I would look for a new job and REPORT your boss. That just does NOT seem right to not document something. Seems to be the consensus here. Good for you for documenting it!!
I'm just a student, but we had a lecture specifically about this type of matter. Our instructions were to document everything that happens. Then turn around and write up an incident report. Do not include in your nursing documentation that you completed an incident report. But everything that happened to that resident, you NEED to document! So, I would've done the same thing.
ktwlpn, LPN
3,844 Posts
I remember reading about this situation (or a similar one) To the OP-did you call your maintenance department? I would have charted exactly what I found,completed an incident report and then followed my protocol for equipment failure.The purpose of the incident report is to prevent the same thing from happening again..It would take minutes for the maintenance staff to replace those faulty outlets at a cost of pennies.Did you check the rest of the outlets on your unit? If you did not do these things then you are as guilty as your don.....Also-you can always place an anonymous call to your state department of health to alert them anytime you think you know of a problem that is endangering residents,staff or visitors...