Camillemm

I am sorry this happened. But please realize nursing is a human driven profession. Humans make mistakes. Your director 's response goes against everything we are taught as nurses about medication errors...... honest errors are ultimately learning experiences and should not be responded to in a punitive manner. You want nurses to do what you did, report the error right away and safe guard the patient. Responding punitively will make errors less likely to be reported. Every institution knows this. There has been study after study documenting this. Of course you feel terrible, we all do when it happens. But you did the right thing, by recognizing and reporting your error. I do not think that this is something that needs to be reported to your state nursing board. Your director is using intimidation. If it needed to be reported that is something the hospital would do. I would guess you will never make this type of error again. God bless you.

1. I never answer a phone call from work when I am at home. Never. 2. When at work and am asked to work overtime I say no. I don't give excuses or explanations. Just, "no, sorry, I can't." 3. Never volunteer for extra shift. Ever. 4. Practice the first 3 and eventually they stop asking you. Works for me. I never work extra or do overtime. But I am dependable, do a great job when I am at work. Rarely call out. I just don't want to work any extra. 40 hours a week pays my bills and supports my lifestyle.

Just give your body time to adjust. I guess it depends how old you are too. In my 20s and 30s my schedule was 6, 12 shifts in a row and then had 8 days off. I did that schedule for years (ICU) While working those shifts I would just work, eat and sleep, nothing else. Occasionally a 12 hour shift would turn into a 16 hour shift. If I tried to do anything like that today it would kill me. I'm lucky I make it through an 8 hour shift today. It does depend how old you are and how much you like your job.

Been a school nurse for 26 years and an RN for nearly 40. It happens all the time. We often joke about how we are going to send the students back to class with a note about how to teach math. Let it go. What's it really matter? You let the parent know your assessment, you cannot control what others do. Don't let your ego get in the way.

As an experienced RN I have to say that the 2 examples you gave are pretty basic skills and should have been taught in nursing school. The Epipen has directions right on the packaging, as most who administer it are lay people. I would think their concerns were that as a nurse, you were expected to have had those skills. I am not saying this to be mean, but nursing is a profession, so there are certain expectations that employers have and that we are held to.

No I don't. But California is a state that spends recklessly on programs that ultimately keep people dependent on the government to survive; and as a result has no money to fund things that the government should be focused on for the good of all. That state is in financial despair, you have to ask why? California is a gorgeous state with tons of natural resources, an enormous tax base, why are they in dire straits? California is all about big government and maybe that's what people there want? The money is going somewhere. You cannot deny the mess they are in, a pandemic only highlights it. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan...the scariest words anyone will ever hear are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help".

California aught to be it's own country. I've been a nurse for 40 years and have never seen rationing of care. When I worked at a large teaching hospital in VT, years ago, we always would get patients from Canada, because under socialized medicine health care is rationed. Now to hear California is doing it. People do not realize when they wish for a government that takes care of their every need, free this and free that, this is what happens. Some body has to pay for it, and now that somebody is a patient. It's only going to get worse. Glad on on the downhill slide.

I've been an RN 40 years, did 10 years in ICU and still it was my absolute favorite speciality. Loved loved loved working ICU at a major teaching hospital, never had more than one patient, all our patient were obviously critically ill, intubated, swans, multiple lines and drips, chest tubes, you name it and I've seen it all. RNs were very much an integral part of the team, doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, medical students, residents. What I learned there I still use to this day. Best nursing experience I ever had. It's ironic because I originally wanted to go into psych nursing but there were no openings at the time so I accepted an ICU position, going in dreading it, and it turned out to be one of my best career choices.

No worries, us old timey nurses remember when it was routine practice to flush peripheral IVs with heparin. Don't be so hard on yourself.

I would suggest looking into the Indian Health Service. Some stations are quite remote...the bottom of the Grand Canyon, Canyon De Chelly to name a couple locations. When I was looking to move to the southwest from VT 30+ years ago, the Indian Health Service flew me to New Mexico ((all expenses paid) and toured me all around the southwest; they were aggressively recruiting RNs at the time. I would imagine they are still in need of RNs, especially the southwest, northern plains, Alaska. I didn't end up working for them (a little too remote for me) but I recall the pay and benefits were fantastic, even gave a housing allowance. Good luck.

All nurses make mistakes, we are human. You recognize when you've made an error so you obviously know what you are doing wrong. Concentrate on the task at hand, without thinking about what else you need to do. I have been an RN for nearly 40 years. The nurse who tells you they haven't made a mistake in decades cannot be telling the truth. We are human. And good hospital will not treat a medication error in a punitive way. They will assess the situation and look for ways error can be avoided in the process. If an institution treats the nurse who makes a med error in a punitive way it only teaches that nurse not to report the next error.

This is why documentation is so important and why it is stressed in nursing school. Document everything and just the facts. As long as it's documented and you notify your supervisors of what the doctor said, then it is out of your hands and I would drop it. And now you are forewarned if you should ever have to deal with that doctor again., sounds like he was covering his own a**.

Why did you go into nursing to start with? What changed? Maybe you are not working in the right place. When doing acute hospital nursing the hospital you work for makes a huge difference. Are you in a teaching hospital? I did bedside acute hospital nursing for 13 years before going into school nursing. I never could stand working in small community hospitals. I would last a week. I had to work in large teaching hospitals. The atmosphere, the knowledge, the respect nurses get etc is at a whole different level at large teaching hospitals. You have to be someplace where you are constantly learning something new with passionate coworkers. If it wasn't for my experience in those hospitals I never could have been the nurse I am today (going on 39 years as a RN). If you just plain hate being a nurse, then leave. Life's to short. Find your passion.

I have been a RN for nearly 40 years. Spent the last 25 years in school nursing. You need to quit and find your passion. I work with nurses who hate their job, it's stressful for everybody in that situation. I have been blessed to have had a great career. of course I have had nursing jobs I hated, but I have never stayed in a job I hated. That's the key. Get out. I've done everything from medical units, dialysis, float, ICU, recovery room, NICU. I haven't worked in a hospital in 25 years. Things there might be different today. When I did work in hospitals I only worked at large teaching hospitals (Mass General, Strong Memorial, MCHV) I do believe that made a difference. I was never disrespected as a nurse in those hospitals. We were equals. When I worked at Mass General the president of the hospital would walk through the wards every day and thank us nurses. I tried a small community hospital just once, I lasted 2 weeks. Nurses were treated totally different there, doctor's were different there. Life is too short to stay at a job you don't love. I did ICU for 10 years and when I got the job I didn't think I'd last, it wasn't what I set out to do, but I ended up absolutely loving it, and to this day I tell people it was the best nursing job I ever had. I am so sorry you haven't had good nursing experiences, you haven't been a nurse that long. You haven't found the right fit. Don't waste your life being miserable, it will kill you.