Screw up

Published

For the past year I have been administering the insulin flex pen without priming pen prior to... The pens are new to me as these were not around when I was in clinicals.. I did not know I had to do this (prime) but now I feel like a complete idiot that I "missed the memo" on something so simple and looking back it makes sense to do this..I'm not sure if I was trained wrong or I did it out of bad habit... With larger doses of insulin I usually used a regular needle because I don't really trust the pens... Anyway nothing came from this, my patients were not affected that I know of (but May or may not have gotten insulin) but just bugs me that I let it go on this long without knowing I was screwing up, makes me wonder what other stuff I've been messing up on... I find that I always ask a lot of questions if I don't know something so I don't know how this happened : / Does this make me an incompetent nurse, any similar screw ups? Help!

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My understanding of the insulin pens is that you only need to prime them with their first use!! Not every time you use it. Guess we both will find out!! Learn from your mistakes and move on. If there was no patient harm then just remember to ask more questions next time. You were most likely trained while you were taking care of patients or working on the floor----not the most opportune time to learn a new task. You said you were avoiding the pens, so perhaps you thought you were not ever going to use them. Surprise!!! technology keeps "improving" our lives, so there will be many changes at any time. Now that you know you need to pay attention when new things are being introduced, learn from this experience and correct your technique. Move on!!!

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No biggie. I personally always prime insulin pens. Force of habit I guess.

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Specializes in Progressive Care Unit.

We don't normally use flex pens, so I needed to check on their website for that. You were probably off by around 2 units or less on the actual delivered insulin. But like what the first comment said, learn from that mistake and move on. :)

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Thanks guys :) My OCD kicks in and I dwell on everything. Learning from this and moving on!

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