I have to start by saying I'm feeling so depressed, that as I write this, I feel like tears will soon stream down my face. I have been an LPN for 7 years, and just recently (4 months ago,), got my RN license. The truth is that as an LPN I didn't get too varied an experience, as I only worked at two nursing homes. Well, I got this new job about two months ago, working at a ventilator/telemetry unit, which is almost like a long term, step down ccu. I was so excited with this job at first, the pay is awesome and the staff appeared to be nice, but things are just going terrible. For starters, the unit manager is just rude and juvenile, she almost tries too hard to be stern, to the point that she is just rude and offensive, and I feel like I can't even talk to her. Anyway, to get to the point, the WORST thing happened to me a few days ago and today she reprimanded me over the phone and I just felt my world fall apart. What happened was that a few days ago I had a patient with a platelet count of 50k and the doctor gave the charge nurse T/O for one unit of platelet transfusion. When I saw the order, I went to secretary and stated that the patient had just received an order for blood product and if she had already printed out the labels for type and cross. She proceeded by saying "He got order for blood? He just had blood three days ago, let me call the lab to see if the last type and cross is still valid." While she was doing this, I went into the patients chart and confirmed that indeed, two days before he did have blood, so I went ahead and handed the chart back to her. She told me that blood bank said the previous type and cross was good, so she was going to order the blood and pick it up for me (which in my facility she is permitted to do). When I came back about 15 minutes later, she told me she had already picked up the blood for me and when she was about to hand it to me, the charge nurse said "no, what are you doing, that's blood, the patient needs to get platelets", and I said "yes the order is for platelets, not blood, ill return it to the blood bank now and get the correct product", and then the charge nurse starts complaining telling me I need to be more attentive. As I explained to her, Ive never given blood so I dont know that physically, platelets looked different from blood, but I wouldve noticed when reviewing the orders because the slip says "packed rbcs" vs "platelets" but she kept rambling on and so forth. SO TODAY, the evil witch of my unit manager who is so rude, said she had to speak to me regarding this error and that I was the one with the license and not the secretary. I explained to her that the responsibility of putting in the order of what kind of blood product was needed, was the secretary's and that she was the one who picked it up and as soon as she was handing it to me, we realized it wasnt platelets. She says she was told that I had asked a nurse to co-sign with me, and this nurse knew it was platelets and caught the error and stopped me, which was not the case. I think the charge nurse made all of this up and when I told her it didnt get that far, she said "Oh, if thats the case then its not your fault, but i need to speak to other people to get the story straight". Now I dont know what to expect, and Im very scared. I feel like this charge nurse, who I thought I could trust, misconstrued everything and I almost got in big trouble. What can happen from all of this? What can I do? Will I be written up or reprimanded? PLEASE HELP AND ADVICE FROM EXPERIENCED RN'S ...THANKS
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I have to start by saying I'm feeling so depressed, that as I write this, I feel like tears will soon stream down my face. I have been an LPN for 7 years, and just recently (4 months ago,), got my RN license. The truth is that as an LPN I didn't get too varied an experience, as I only worked at two nursing homes. Well, I got this new job about two months ago, working at a ventilator/telemetry unit, which is almost like a long term, step down ccu. I was so excited with this job at first, the pay is awesome and the staff appeared to be nice, but things are just going terrible. For starters, the unit manager is just rude and juvenile, she almost tries too hard to be stern, to the point that she is just rude and offensive, and I feel like I can't even talk to her. Anyway, to get to the point, the WORST thing happened to me a few days ago and today she reprimanded me over the phone and I just felt my world fall apart. What happened was that a few days ago I had a patient with a platelet count of 50k and the doctor gave the charge nurse T/O for one unit of platelet transfusion. When I saw the order, I went to secretary and stated that the patient had just received an order for blood product and if she had already printed out the labels for type and cross. She proceeded by saying "He got order for blood? He just had blood three days ago, let me call the lab to see if the last type and cross is still valid." While she was doing this, I went into the patients chart and confirmed that indeed, two days before he did have blood, so I went ahead and handed the chart back to her. She told me that blood bank said the previous type and cross was good, so she was going to order the blood and pick it up for me (which in my facility she is permitted to do). When I came back about 15 minutes later, she told me she had already picked up the blood for me and when she was about to hand it to me, the charge nurse said "no, what are you doing, that's blood, the patient needs to get platelets", and I said "yes the order is for platelets, not blood, ill return it to the blood bank now and get the correct product", and then the charge nurse starts complaining telling me I need to be more attentive. As I explained to her, Ive never given blood so I dont know that physically, platelets looked different from blood, but I wouldve noticed when reviewing the orders because the slip says "packed rbcs" vs "platelets" but she kept rambling on and so forth. SO TODAY, the evil witch of my unit manager who is so rude, said she had to speak to me regarding this error and that I was the one with the license and not the secretary. I explained to her that the responsibility of putting in the order of what kind of blood product was needed, was the secretary's and that she was the one who picked it up and as soon as she was handing it to me, we realized it wasnt platelets. She says she was told that I had asked a nurse to co-sign with me, and this nurse knew it was platelets and caught the error and stopped me, which was not the case. I think the charge nurse made all of this up and when I told her it didnt get that far, she said "Oh, if thats the case then its not your fault, but i need to speak to other people to get the story straight". Now I dont know what to expect, and Im very scared. I feel like this charge nurse, who I thought I could trust, misconstrued everything and I almost got in big trouble. What can happen from all of this? What can I do? Will I be written up or reprimanded? PLEASE HELP AND ADVICE FROM EXPERIENCED RN'S ...THANKS