Reporting Errors

Thank you for all your responses so far.

if you are not the only one who knows about the situation, including patients or families, report it. If you are the only one, think twice. My opinion, of course.

If you feel that it is a system failure that is setting up the situation to fail (creating a med error) then you need to call "Risk Management" ASAP. A root cause analysis will be done to find out where and how a mistake can be made and how it can be averted before injury or loss of life is caused. Remember this injury is not only to the patient but to the nurse that may not catch the error in time as you did.

near miss...as in the 10 mile wide asteroid was a near miss to planet earth. it missed, we are here, nothing happened. but if its something that can be improved you should send an anonymous letter because if you dont then management will make sure you are not a near miss to be fired.

do what you think is right and necessary. pt gets 2 multivitamin-not a problem, patient gets 100units of regular insulin instead of 10-well somewhere along the the day like very soon, this patient is going to be foaming at the mouth and seizing, patient gets med that theyre allergic to-well they may or may not have reaction, i could go on and on. these patients trust you. their lives are in your hands, remember that. if you gave wrong med 1st time, i would talk to you maybe, maybe, even the 2nd time but after that you are a problem and we need to understand why. if it continues you will destroy yourself.learn from your mistakes. this is something i was taught, "bad habits become routine" dont get into bad habits.

Watch out:there are nurses that will hang you for the most trivial thing.

When reporting things there IS a difference between reporting it and going out of your way to tell on someone else.

here is my story- a nurse one time left me a patients crushed meds to give. it had a narcotic in it.(the nurse had a personal emergency) when i went to give it there was NO narcotic in the med crushed or otherwise. i've seen and given tons of crushed meds, it aint in there. so the next time i saw her again(next day) i told her never to lie to me, she knew what she did and did not lie. i am not going to have my co-worker lose their career or life even BUT i am not going to lose mine.some nurses would say i should have reported her and destroyed her life. if she had lied to me i would have made it known.it is hard... i certainly dont advocate stealing but i dont advocate destroying others lives.and believe me the patients are very important to me but so are my co-workers.

another story-i had 6of 14 patients all getting blood sometime within my shift and the next shift.variuos levels of consents and labs were done. 4 all had same blood type and 2 were getting blood on my shift in the same room. i went and got blood and checked it with a nurse but not at bedside.i walked to patient(the wrong one) and gave blood.management asked who i checked blood with. i would not give the name because it was my fault.i knew the policy and i hung the blood. we all knew the policy.it was busy, we each had 14 patients on night shift.that will never ever happen again. but one can never say never. did i learn from that? oh yeah very much!just do the best you can and never hesitate to ask for help! God bless!

FYI: go to any and all state board disciplinary actions and see what nurses get disciplined for, from the mundane to serious. it is the mundane that disturbs me.