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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?
Maybe the nurse actually stabbed the patient, and that's what caused the vein to rupture, and that's why she got fired. And then she saved him, kind of a Munchausen's by Proxy thing.
Sounds like the kid on Modern Family last week. He started a fire in the chemistry lab, put it out, then got a medal for it because the teacher thought he had innocently come upon it.
Only in this case the nurse didn't get a medal.
psu_213, BSN, RN
3,878 Posts
I don't mean to be rude, but I think you got taken for a ride by the person telling the story. I just cannot envision this nurse standing around for an hour and then deciding to suture it herself. (If she did suture it herself, did she perform proper prep on the site? Did she use 100% sterile technique the whole way through? Was she certain not to damage this vein? Surrounding vessels? Nerves in this area?)
If it happened exactly as you were told, then nurse should be fired for not realizing she was in way over her head, and she did not ask for help (when most every hospital has lots of help available for emergency situation). Not to mention the whole "out of her scope of practice argument."