I had patient B, another nurse had patient A. Our tech sucks so I answered a call light (as she sat there doing nothing) that had been going off for 10 minutes. When I go in patient B's visitor tells me patient A's IV pump alarm was going off so she silenced it. I told her not to do it again and checked on patient A. He was very upset, asking if she was authorized to touch pumps, did she do anything she shouldn't have. I assured him no harm came from touching her pump.
15 minutes later he called saying how uncomfortable he was, wanted his wife called. We ended up calling security, patient A was moved to a private room, doctors called, and the visitor was asked to leave and banned for the night. I even had to write a statement.
The next day the visitor told the RN that she was sorry and she didn't mean any harm. She has "medical training" which is never good. They always think they know best.
I at first didn't think it was a big deal but I do get that there are a lot of what ifs. What if she turned it off instead of silencing it, what if it was a critical drip, and so on.
I recently told the mom of a 6 day old in the ER that she could hit the silence button, and showed her where it was, but told her to make sure she hit the call light to let us know. It was important for the 24g IV to not blow, hence keeping it at TKO, but it was also important for the mom and the baby to get some rest.
On the other hand when working in the trauma ICU there was a family who extubated their loved one cause they thought the ETT was choking them and they couldn't breathe. Sigh. Pt ended up dying cause they couldn't get them reintubated or trached. Very sad. This is why I would always tell the family not to touch anything. But with the long term patients the familys did get really good at helping us out and being part of the team.
msjellybean
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