Totally Offended!

[SweetBeliever]

First off, I am a long time reader of this board and I am so glad I finally became a member. Thank you all so much for all for sharing your knowledge and wisdome with me while I was a nursing student, and now as I enter my second year of practicing as an RN.

I just want to share something that happened to me during a recent hospital stay. I was in as an admit from the ED, I found out that my excruciating RUQ pain was caused by gall stones and I would need to have the gall bladder taken out. The ED started me out on morphine for pain, which was then changed to dilaudid because my pain wasn't responding. Once they got me under control, I was sent up to a room to await more tests in the morning. About an hour after I arrived, I asked for another dose of medication. The nurse said "Ok, I will give you more but I have to dilute it." I found this odd because as far as I know you always dilute these meds. He diluted the 1 mg dose in 10mL of saline and gave it to me IV push. I felt better for a while but I still couldn't sleep because the pain was still really bad. At 4:30 AM I rang my call bell and told the nurse that my pain was getting bad again. This is where it gets weird. He came back with the dilaudid and a 50 mL piggyback bag. He said "I don't know why but the doctor just changed your order. I have to give it to you this way and over 30 minutes." I didn't say a word and just let him hang the med. It did absolutly nothing to dull my pain. I started feeling really embarassed and self conscious after that. By morning I felt much better, had a few tests and went home to await the day of surgery.

I just want to know why he did that. He obviously thought I was seeking right? I wish someone could tell me I am missing something here. I really want to write a letter to the hospital about this incident. I know for a fact that my surgeon wasn't at the hospital that night, so why would he change my order? For the record, I wasn't overly sedated or anything like that, either. Was this nurse acting appropriatly? If he made that decision to dilute the drug that much on his own, is that within the scope of nursing practice to do something like that?

If I wasn't a nurse myself, I probably would not have thought much of it. This is really bugging me. Any insight would be appreciated.

[SweetBeliever]

wrong forum please delete