stranger

I am more than happy to oblige here. Cause of death? I'm not sure as far as the official cause of death, but since he was found sans pulse and respirations and was eventually intubated, I'd have to guess that MI/AAA/CVA would be possibilities. (There was a history of CHF, but isn't there always?) How often did I assess him? Once, when I first got him. (I did the standard issue assessment, did some education re: assisstance with BRPs, etc.) and again approximately 4 hours later at about 23-2400. After that, I found him at around 0500, dead on the can.

Hey everybody. I'm new here, but this just happened to me last night and it's been eating at me. Alright, the facts first. I have been a RN(BSN) for about a year now. (I went through a SDO/accelerated program, I already had a BS in medical technology.) Anyway, here it is superbowl weekend, I'm working 7p to 7a, the census is 21 (out of 30), so they cut one of our nurses. (This brings us to 4 RNs and 2 nurse assistants.) Great. This isn't a new occurrence, happens all the time. Only this time, there's some confusion as to who is in charge. At about 2330, I find out that that is me. I've been dealing with a pretty ****** assignment (I had 7 patients, 4 of them were very acute) for the last four hours, so admittedly staffing was kind of a backseat issue at that point. The long and the short of it is that one of my (7!) patients died last night, and I'm willing to take some measure of personal responsibility here. It was partially because I wasn't able to assess him more often. (We found him on the can, Elvis-style.) How much of the blame is mine? I've gotten nothing but **** from the house manager about this. (Apparently, it was my responsibility to adjust the assignment more appropriately at 2300, my argument being that it would have been nice for me to actually know I was in charge!) I've only been practicing for a year, I don't know everything, and I'm the first to admit that. Help me out guys, how much of this is my fault?