New nurse errors/feeling down

[abrights3d]

I've been off orientation for almost 2 months. This is my first month back on days. Our pediatric floor is really heavy right now. There was a patient with surgery and trauma to her LLE. The wound care nurse had been to see her Wednesday and taught me how to dress the wound and said it looked good. Thursday I did the dressing change. Friday evening they saw redness (probably cellulitis) when they did the dressing change. Then the patient started a fever. I've been beating myself up that I missed something or did something wrong. How does everyone deal with these feelings??

[TeddyBer]

Don't beat yourself up. The complications can occur regardless of how perfect you did the dressing change. It sounds like you are very conscientious and watched as the the wound nurse did the dressing change and I'm sure you did fine. Wounds are tricky and hit some bumps in the road when healing. Please don't be hard on yourself.

[annabanana2]

The truth is there's absolutely no way to know for sure if you did miss something or didn't; or if you somehow infected the wound. We will never know. So why beat yourself up about it? All that'll do is make you nervous and distracted the next time you have to do a similar task. If it would make you feel better, maybe you could do some additional reading on wound assessment. I go over these modules (https://www.clwk.ca/communities-of-practice/skin-wound-community-of-practice/eLearning_Module/) every once in a while to refresh myself. They were designed for nurses in the community but it's all relevant. Maybe you could have a look at the wound assessment one.

And seriously, let it go. At some point you will probably make a legitimate error (we all do) and THEN you can feel bad. But for now, let it go.

[nursel56]

I'll just add my agreement with the others. My first job was in peds and I think there may be a little more tendency to obsess over setbacks that occur just as they do in other patient populations. You'll always review your practice in your mind, but speculating and beating yourself up over "maybes" is a pretty fruitless process (do I still do that sometimes anyway? yes) but I try to recognize that once I'm certain I followed proper policy and procedures, the rest falls into recognizing and letting go of things I cannot change.

[HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD]

COB (crusty old bat) here. I can empathize with your situation. It's such a horrible feeling to think that you may have harmed a patient. Been there, done that. But unless you have a time machine to go back and do it over, you can only move ahead.

It is exactly these types of experiences that will make you a great nurse... if you can learn from them. No matter what the issue, we can learn much more from our failures and negative experiences than our successes. This is actually a good thing, because unless you're a very unusual person, you are going to have much more of the former than the latter. I encourage you to take the time to reflect - think about your actions & what you will do differently next time. THAT is the type of powerful learning that produces expertise. If you don't believe me, talk to an "expert" and you will discover that he/she engages in reflective learning on a regular basis.

Be kind to yourself. You're going to be a great nurse.