Uncle Harold

Thanks for all the replies guys! Tests / clinical / paperwork / work, you know how it is. Still, I was rude not to reply again sooner. I realize it's the nurses' responsibility and not mine, but I still don't like it. There were still consequences on the nurse, the patient, and bad "PR" for the hospital. It wasn't my fault, but if I'd been sharp I'd have caught it. Just trying to learn how to be sharp. I don't feel bad about it. I'm just appalled that it's so dang easy to make a med error, and perturbed that there isn't better protection for the nurses. I was just hoping I was overlooking some "trick" to get around this scary little pothole and still save time. I've got a quality improvement report coming up, I just found my topic. Thanks so much guys for your support!

I'm a RN student with questions. I had a med error today. That scares the CRAP outta me. I am very smart, and I am (and was!) very very careful and there is absolutely no excuse for medication errors. Here's what happened: I was assigned the role of LPN today. Each patient has about 20 pages of doctor's orders, with adding and D/C'ing meds in some sort of sanskirt they call "handwriting." Somehow, I'm supposed to check through this entire thing against the MAR and come out with the right orders in time to give meds at 0730. My first thought when opening those charts was "this is one big med error right here..." UGH. Long story short. The patient's been getting Regan q4hr, and it was D/C'd four days ago. I gave it yesterday and I gave it today. I checked the MD's order yesterday, and I checked it today. I personally overlooked it because it was buried under ten pages of other orders and I had about 50 other meds to check. The night nurse signed off on it all four days, and the day nurse gave it too. Pharmacy even overlooked it. Ok, no harm done, but what if it was an antibiotic she was allergic to!? Holy crap guys! Reasons for error: 1) Because the stupid MD's order was crammed at the bottom of page and very hard to read. It looked like the tail end of a dressing change order because of where it was. 2) Because I checked the MD's Orders against the MAR instead of the MAR against the MD's orders. I knew as soon as I did it I may not catch a D/C'd order and sure enough.:uhoh21: That is what the nurses and my instructor told me to do (cause I was taking way too long), and I trusted the night nurses to have checked properly. SO: This would have been caught if I had started at the very beginning of the chart, which is over a month long, and built the MAR from scratch. I simply CANNOT do that on every patient every day I show up to clinical! However, there is no other way that I can think of that is not foolproof. Even that is so complicated that I'm bound to overlook something -- I gave approximately 30 meds today and I only had three patients. So what do you guys' suggest? Because if it's this complicated, I will not give meds because I will make errors and I guess that puts me out of nursing school...and well, I gotta get through nursing school. Thanks