Old IV tubing from HIV patient hooked up to a new patient!

[RNStudy]

Just curious,

If you new of a nurse who "accidently" hooked up old IV tubing that belonged to a prevoious patient who had AIDS, to a new patient thinking it was that patients IV tubing, what would you think of that nurse?

In my opinion, if you do such a thing as a nurse I would deem you UNSAFE and would NOT want you as my nurse.

Does anyone agree with me that the nurse should have been fired?

[PMRNLOCO]

If the Pt and the tubing were in the room how was the nurse supposed to know if it was theirs or not. everything in the room from the previous pt should have either been cleaned or taken out of the room and that is the job of house keeping. if it was still in the room, the room was not clean and a new pt shouldn't have been transferred in. If the room was supposed to be clean why would the nurse think any differently???

[CaLLaCoDe, BSN, RN]

I would be scared witless, god help us all!

And please don't blame the house keeper!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[vanlo001]

this is projecting your anger about getting fired and it is not doing you any good. If you want to grow (and don't we all want to be the best we can be in life?) then stop dwelling on how you were wrong, how incompetent this other nurse was, and focus on yourself and what you can do to better yourself in the future. Let's see... the person that hooked up the old tubing..... unfortunately if you have someone else set up your admit room and this includes IV pump and tubing, and you see IV pump and tubing in the room and you are admitting the patient, I can see how this could happen. It is a collasol error, However, this is a multilayered error. An incident report should be done for sure, and the person responsible for discharging the other patient (and I presume taking out equipment and disposing of tubing), the person who set up the room, and the admit nurse should examine how this happened and how to prevent it in the future. This post did so little for your credibility I am afraid, really self-reflect...

[Scrubby]

This is a horrible mistake to make. I feel for that patient.

But I agree that it's up to management to decide how to handle the situation. I understand your feeling angry right now. Try not to confuse this issue with what's going on with your own problems. Focus on how you can work towards learning as much as you can and being a team player. Best of luck to you.

[Blackheartednurse]

Obviously there were many other factors that contributed to this mistake..first off the place should be cleaned before the patient was ready to be admitted .This scenerio was an accident waiting to happen and I can clearly see why it would be easy for the nurse to mix up the tubing,but to put the whole blame on her? No like you mentioned she is a new nurse and other people were involved in this accident as well..did you follow up on that particular pt,was there any complication or are you just seeking vengence?

[Scrubby]

Does your hospital have a policy for identifying iv lines? We have to attach a sticky I'd label to ours. Maybe your workplace needs to identify similar strategies to prevent similar occurances

[HealthShepherd]

Consider the following three hypothetical scenarios:

1. Nurse A sees an IV in the room, assumes it belongs to patient X, and hooks it up to patient X. It turns out that the IV really belonged to patient Y, who is HIV+.

2. Nurse B sees an IV in the room, assumes it belongs to patient X, and hooks it up to patient X. It turns out that the IV really belonged to patient Z, who has no infectious disease.

3. Nurse C sees an IV in the room, assumes it belongs to patient X, and hooks it up to patient X. It turns out that she was correct, and the IV really belonged to patient X.

Question: is one of these nurses more competent or more unsafe than the others?

I would say no - they all made identical mistakes. It's just a matter of luck that the consequences were different.

I'd guess that the OP would say that nurse A made a terrible mistake, nurse B made a less serious mistake, and nurse C didn't make a mistake. But I don't think this is logical.

It's very unfortunate that this patient was put at risk for HIV infection, but that was bad luck - it doesn't make this nurse any worse than the rest of us, who all make assumptions and mistakes from time to time. If we're lucky, we make our mistakes when the stakes are low.

[wooh, BSN, RN]

It takes a chain of events for a mistake to occur. Generally that chain involves multiple people. I can think of at least 4 in this case: 1) the nurse that hooked the IV up 2) the nurse who had the last patient in that room and didn't throw out the tubing 3) the housekeeper that didn't make sure the tubing was thrown out, either by themself or if they aren't allowed to touch it, by someone else 4) the person that assigned a patient to a room that hadn't yet been throroughly cleaned.

Should they all be fired? No. Should you have been fired? Who knows. But fact is you were, and not all of us are lucky enough to be cranky old ugly windbags. Some of us are beautiful and just have to make do. Worrying about who else was more deserving to be fired isn't going to get that job back, and isn't going to help you get your next job. Think about what you can do better at the next one so that you aren't a target. That will help you get the next job.

[Katie5]

The patient was transferred from another hospital. The nurse ASSUMED the tubing in the room was also transferred with the patient.

It had actually been left behind by the prior patient who occupied the room.

Actually, I would deem your whole floor unsafe(short of naming the whole hospital Lol) if one of you, could not ensure that the room occupied by a HIV patient had been thoroughly cleaned for the next patient.

What's your infection control person doing?Come to think of it, what were the other nurses doing?And when you hook up new tubing, isn't it sealed or at least some indication to show it's just been opened? And don't you have to restart tubing and all on a new admit at your hospital?

[Katie5]

The patient was transferred from another hospital. The nurse ASSUMED the tubing in the room was also transferred with the patient.

It had actually been left behind by the prior patient who occupied the room.

You talk with so much knowledge like you knew this was going to happen and refused to stop it happening.

Petty...very petty. Whatever grudges you may or may not hold against your colleague, your patient should and must never be at the mercy of it. If you in any way could have prevented this and you didn't then it's all on you.

Remember, when one finger points at someone else, four are pointing right back at you! Stop bemoaning the fact that you were fired and think of the next step from there. At this point, pointing fingers helps no one!

[Ms.RN]

why did you quote "accidently?". did she knew about this and deliberately do this? and how did somebody find out about it? did she actually saw this nurse doing this and what did she do about it? if i saw her doing this then i would immediately tell her not to hang it. its called patient advocate and also being team player. i dont see alot of it nowdays.

[Nursing_rules]

First of all - those of you that are saying the author is trying to redirect attention from her own shortcomings - irrelevant.

She could have logged in under another name too. Who cares?

Also, haven't you seen favouritism at work? Personal agendas? (from management side)

I believe that making the mistake w/ the tubing is a pretty serious issue. It depends on the hospital's policy, of course.

However, the attendance issue...well , that's also up to the hospital's policy. Has she been reprimanded? Was there any warning beforehand? Maria, just b/c others do it too, doesn't make it a good excuse.