Pre op mistake.

Thanks for your kind words. 
I think I will have forgiven myself if I was a new nurse. I will keep my heads up on Monday. I appreciate your advice. 

Please go easy on yourself. (And no more negative self talk!) It was a mistake. If any nurse tells you they have never made one, that would just not be true! You were outside your usual setting, I can bet things were busy. We are always time-pressured. I'm not providing excuses, but calling out possible contributing factors. If your manager doesn't assign you there again because of this, that is not a good way to react. You learned. There was no patient harm. Now you will treat all preop patients as NPO until you can confirm otherwise. You learn and move forward. Your entire career will go this way. Take care of yourself. I'm sure you are a wonderful nurse. 

Hello, 

Don't be hard on yourself. We've all made mistakes. Never think yourself "dumb". The important thing is to learn from it and move on, wiser and stronger as a professional. The fact that you're even feeling something from this teachable moment tells me that you care deeply about your patients and your own professionalism and that in and of itself tells me that you're a good nurse. Some folks (and I've seen this happen) make mistakes or have near misses but don't even seem to care about course correcting in even little ways. Every mistake is a learning experience. And if you learn from it, you will emerge on the other side as a stronger nurse. 

Some hospital entities allow sips with meds and ice chips in the pre op period below a certain threshold depending on the procedure. I wouldn't sweat this too much!

Thanks everyone. I really appreciate the support. 

My husband just had hernia surgery a month ago and it's listed right in the pre-op instructions that patients can have sips of water to take their meds so I'm not sure why you or your facility even considers it a "mistake".. what is their policy, what does it say in the pre-op instructions? Please remember though, we are all just human and will make mistakes.

The only nurse who thinks they never made at least one mistake, is just unaware of said mistake...

Own it and learn from it. You will be fine.

Don't beat yourself up over this. Where I am doing clinicals, patients take certain prescribed meds in pre-op with sips of water before we roll them off to surgery.

I echo what everyone else is saying. We all make mistakes. Sometimes I think we as nurses feel like we have to be superhuman and perfect. What truly matters is what you learn from the mistake. Sometimes what we think are the biggest mistakes turn out to be the biggest lessons.

I remember one time, when I was in a huge hurry I accidentally hung an insulin drip where normal saline was going at 150ml/h (yes you read that right!).  I felt awful and thought for sure I was going to get fired but my supervisor gently reminded me that, as I said above, we all make mistakes. My big lesson was to slow down and double check.

Yes, you are right. What we learn from the mistake is very important and usually once mistake is made it is not repeated by most nurses. I only wish I could sleep at night when I do make a mistake. Losing sleep is my biggest struggle. 

That makes a lot of sense. Many nurses can understand a mistake logically, but at night the mind keeps replaying it anyway, especially when you care deeply about doing things right.

When sleep is hardest, is it usually the replaying that keeps you up, or the worry that comes with carrying that responsibility?