MLE164

I agree, there is no reason to make fun of a situation that is making this girl upset. Try to remember your first mistake as a new grad... We all had one. It's very upsetting and fear of the unknown when you have never been through this before is hard to handle. She is doing the best she can and she will be a great nurse. Learning from her mistakes she will gain confidence and become more confident with time, like we all did.

I work 3 12 hour shifts in a row, but have done as many as 6. It is doable. Not ideal, but I think 8 hour shifts should be fine. Just be sure to get plenty of sleep.

I am a float nurse. I cover PP along with many other units. I am not trying to be pompous or rude, but I would encourage you to think hard about this decision. Medsurg is very high stress. Even with decent staffing and management, acuity is high and you are working with 5-7 sick patients. I think of my PP patients as healthy, just healing. It is minimal skills utilized and low key. If you are willing to make a jump into very busy atmosphere with constant ups and downs and stress, then that's awesome. It is great experience and I personally love medsurg. Just be sure to find a hospital and unit that will give you ample orientation so you will not be thrown into the mess before feeling prepared. Good luck!

Every nurse has made a medication error. If they haven't they probably are just too embarrassed to admit it. I have found that through various mistakes med related and otherwise, I have become more careful and viligent. Believe me, you will never make that same mistake again! Don't beat yourself up over it. You did the right thing by not covering it up and filling out a report and telling the doctor. Mistakes make us human and we grow from them.

About 3 years into my nursing career I had gotten by without a patient fall (although I managed to fall and bust my elbow tripping over a patients IV line) that story for another day. When the dreaded day came and I had my first fall, I was devastated. I kept blaming myself and couldn't sleep. I realized that a mistake was made, but I fessed up immediately and didn't try to cover anything up. It was just prior to change of shift and I had left my tech in the room to finish some AM care. She forgot to replace the bed alarm on the patient. He managed to get past the side rails and slid his way onto the floor. Luckily he was unharmed, but a huge mess was made as tube feeding disconnected and an accident leaked into the floor through the loose depend. I had to forgive myself and learn from the mistake. It is always my responsibility to remember to follow up and make sure that my techs place bed alarms on and put bed rails up. Call bells need to be in reach and I can never become lazy on these points. Don't beat yourself up. I was not written up, I wasn't even reprimanded for the incident. I simply filled out the fall incident report and emailed my manager about what happened and included a side note about how I would handle a similar situation in the future. She appreciated that I was learning from the experience and we moved on. Unfortunately, we are humans and make mistakes, just be sure to learn from those mistakes and you will become a better nurse because of that! Good luck!

I am a float medsurg nurse. I was recently put on light duty due to surgery and was placed in Outcomes Management for light duty. I have had my eyes opened to a world behind the scenes in the hospitals which work to keep the patients safe and the hospitals compliant which results in reimbursement. It is somewhat of a joke that Outcomes Management in our hospital are a pain in the butt to the floor nurses. We try to be nice and helpful, but in the end, our job is to ensure that proper documentation is completed on vaccinations, pain, and VTE prophylaxis. I never appreciated these things as a floor nurse. Of course I always did my best to document as completely and thoroughly as possible, but what I didn't realize was that if certain documentation wasn't completed within particular time frames, the core measures are failed for the hospital. Core measures are directly linked to hospital reimbursement, and if you want to look at the big picture, this means our wages and raises depend upon things like this as well. I had no idea how much time is spent on spread sheets, chart audits and phone calls back and forth to the floor nurses to ensure that complete compliance was met during a patient stay. I just thought I would share this because it occurred to me that as a new grad, this would have been a great part of orientation. It would have allowed me to know the seriousness of completing things timely and completely. Even if it meant digging for information or calling POA's for information to help my hospital out.