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Success after IF
dana316
member
Nurses, any thoughts on this?
dana316
member
This is one of the saddest things about our career choice...and I can't imagine how she felt. I've never made an error of this magnitude, by any means...but I can't imagine committing suicide over it.
I also don't understand how she could give CaCl like this...why would she be pushing calcium on a baby that small, unless it was an emergency situation? Granted, NICU/PICU is not my area of expertise, but in even in adult ICU, we wouldn't do that. I can't remember ever pushing calcium unless it was a code situation...but cardiac is not my specialty, certainly not peds cardiac pts.
The medical details are too sketchy to be able to draw a conclusion, but I'm flabbergasted that she gave 14 GRAMS instead of 140 milligrams. Something about that just doesn't add up...thoughts??
With all the safety features we have these days, I'm just stunned that an error like this could happen...
Thoughts?
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Nurses, any thoughts on this?
Wow. That is making me sick. I have also made some mistakes (again not near this one) that I still think about and regret even though there were no real serious (at the time) or long term effects, but just knowing I had messed up made me physically ill. I agree I can't imagine killing myself over it, but I also can't imagine how I would feel if I had killed a baby (it died right?).
I also wonder how this happened. I wonder if the wrong dosage was stocked or something? I've worked NICU a several times but as a pull nurse from peds med/surg so I pretty much only got feeder/growers.
TTC #2 with PCOS since September 2009
BFP, Femara 7.5mg, Ovidrel, IUI. Beta #1 17dpIUI -495 Beta #2 19dpIUI-1031
Lovebugs2012
My Blog
I read that earlier today, and cried.
I consider myself a great nurse, and a smart lady. (sometimes, lol) And I don't know how that error could have happened. BUT.... it scares me that I could do that by accident. I've made one error I'm not proud of (NOTHING like that, and although not to blame, the series of checks and balances failed me.) and I can see something scary like that happening to the best of nurses.
I can only imagine that the existing cardiac issues the article mentioned werre behind this situation more than the article let on???
This is what I LOVE about my current job. The only med I administer is topical lidocaine, and I never have to call a doctor because we always have one in the clinic.
It makes me feel so much safer, knowing that the chance of a mistake is super low...and with my not being there very much, and having pregnancy brain on top of that, well, safety is a good thing. As long as I double check that they aren't allergic to the lido, then I'm good to go.
I've been sitting here thinking about all the big scary drugs I gave in the ICUs I've worked in, and it scares me to death. One miscalculation, one mistake in programming an IV pump (that was running levophed or dopamine or diprivan or whatever) and I might have a whole different take on this.
I think it's terrible. awful. I've made errors but not to that magnitude and not as serious. But I have worked with others who have made more serious errors. It's heart-wrenching. I remember one of them vomiting in the bathroom after realizing it (and it didn't even cause any adverse effects). terrible.
I do wonder if there's more to her firing than just the error. The hospital says they use the Just Culture model. Ours does as well and you wouldn't be fired for a med error alone. I wonder if she was using drugs or something....
Dana-Granted I'm ER but I have pushed CaCl on critical patients (not coding). More often renal. But I don't think that's out of the norm for a PICU (from what I hear from my friend who's a PNP there). Some of those kiddos are super unstable....