1st med mistake....feeling :'(

[kantuta]

I am soooooooo depress and feel super stupid, more than stupid. The thing is that I am 3 weeks into my orientation and yesterday I gave my pt Aldactone PO without even checking his K levels and I just realized about that today (which is my day off) The worst part is that I can't find out if he is ok because he was transfer during my shift to another hospital because the procedure that he needs (CABG) couldn't be done at my hospital. He was transfer around 2 hours after a gave him the med and he was fine, and his vitals were HR 60 and BP 98/56. I feel horrible...I just hope he is fine...I have being praying all day for him and wanted to kick myself over and over again....tomorrow when I get back to work to my unit I will tell my error to my manager and my preceptor. I guess I just need some words of support...or maybe some of you chewing me up...I just DNK why, why in the world I did not think in checking the K levels before given the med....I am for sure not make this dummy dummy mistake again....

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

If this is the worst mistake you ever made you don't even make the top 100 dumb-ass things we have all done. There are many threads about this on AN.

The good news is that you have done what we all did-- beat ourselves up and resolve never to do it again.

Go forth and sin no more. :)

[amzyRN]

It's not that bad and aldactone is K sparing. It will drop them a bit, but not like lasix. At least you didn't give heparin when a patient had low platelets. Now you will be even more careful. Your patient is probably fine, his K probably wasn't critically low. Docs check the labs too, or at least they should, so someone probably caught your mistake.