She got fired...

Nurses General Nursing

Published

I was in my Ethics class today and one girl started talking about how her friend, an RN was with a patient when they started to bleed out. She said that the patient needed their vein sutured up or they would die. They called the dr and it took him over a hour to get to the room. She knew that she needed a dr in the room, but knew that if she waited the patient would be dead. She saved the patient and her and the dr both got fired.

How is it possible that she saved someone's life, but she gets fired for doing so?

Specializes in Med/Surge, Psych, LTC, Home Health.

If you're in a hospital... you call the ER doc, you call

rapid response, you call code blue...

If you're in a nursing home, you call 911...

I don't know the whole story, but I'm guessing that

the nurse deserved to be fired. She either didn't do

ANYTHING that she SHOULD have done, or she did

something outside of her scope of practice that she

SHOULDN'T have done.

Or both.

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Specializes in Oncology.

This sounds like a story she made up for the class.

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Specializes in Ante-Intra-Postpartum, Post Gyne.

#1 she probably did something out of her scope of practice

#2 if the doctor was not getting there ASAP she should have called the ER doc; or even went to him first...a patient bleeding out? I am not waiting for the doctor to get in his car and drive to the hospital...I am getting the one in house.

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Specializes in Orthopedic, LTC, STR, Med-Surg, Tele.

Sounds like the ends didn't justify the means. Of course, I'm not really clear on what the nurse did, there's some details missing here.

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Poop.

I wanna know what she did!

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This sounds like a story she made up for the class.

Agreed. Nothing in this story adds up.

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Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.

I'm picturing a panic-stricken nurse in a completely deserted hospital with no means of communicating to the outside world suturing up a vein with -- I don't know . . .dental floss? If she can't leave the patient's room to call someone she can't grab sutures either, right?

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Specializes in Trauma, ER, ICU, CCU, PACU, GI, Cardiology, OR.

unquestionably, i'm not trying to defend anyone however, the op maybe can't give any further information regarding this issue. therefore, the story is missing some facts on what exactly did happened and what was done outside the nurses scope, in addition, why did the doctor was fired as well. in my humble opinion as a seasoned nurse i have never heard of such drastic measures taken by administration & management to fire both parties involved for saving a patient's life!....just saying.

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Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.

Or it could be a version of the telephone game - the OP here is a student who heard the story from another student who heard it from her friend who is an RN . . .the facts will likely remain unknown due to too many degrees of separation.

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Out of the RNs scope of practice...........

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You mean the Zombie takeover?

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Specializes in PACU.

I heard it was the vena cava that was leaking. It's generally frowned upon when an RN does a bedside thoracotomy.:thankya:

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