Week 16 as a level 3 nursing student

This week was one of many learning experiences! I was able to practice so many skills but also work on teamwork and things really started to 'fall together'. I also had my first incident report filed! Tough day, but the show must go on More details to follow!

My patient this week had surgery a few days before but had to stay in the hospital for a post-op infection and it had been 5 days or so since her surgery. It's a pretty long time to stay for a pretty minor surgery, but because of the infection, they wanted to keep her in for longer. She was getting IV antibiotics and here comes the mistake, folks! I had given the med on time and flushed the line with fluid but I forgot to unclamp the line after I had hooked up the medication to the secondary line. I don't know if everyone will understand, but basically, instead of getting the medication, she got the regular fluid ordered instead of the med. When I found out, I was so scared, I went in, fixed the line, my patient was ok, so next came the daunting part of telling my instructor. I went up to her and said, "Can I talk to you about something?" and explained the story to her and she was so great about it. Because I corrected the mistake within an acceptable window of time, there was no damage done to the patient, my instructor says. She was even deciding whether or not I needed to fill out an incident report because there was no harm done to the patient and the hospital didn't consider it a medication error because it was within the 1 hour window. I ended up filling one out, though. The thing that bothered me was not the fact that I had to fill out an incident report, because it doesn't really make a difference to me, but it was more the fact that I was so careless. It was essentially, literally, a rookie mistake. I can laugh about it now, but that day was bruuuuuuuuuutal! First incident report! After I made and dealt with the mistake, I had such a heavy heart. I kind of thought, 'oh god, if I could've made that mistake, I can easily make any other mistake!!' so this was definitely a humbling experience for me.

On the plus side, I got to hang out with and feed the baby I fed in week 15! She had grown SOOOO much in one week! I was also able to do so many other tasks this week like a dressing change, multiple IV medications, syringe pump meds, and basically got to do a lot of care for patients because I had the time to. I was a bit sad to leave because I am only starting to get the hang of things now. Oh well, change is in the nature of nursing, right?

I've made it through another semester, folks! Bangladesh is a comin!