Nursing Blogs>Rebekah Child

Optical Illusions

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Have you ever made a medication error? I think everyone has or almost has.
Isn’t it amazing how your eyes tell your brain what you think you want to see? What you are used to seeing, what you expect to see…but that isn’t always what is really there. There is this optical test, trick, whatever you want to call it where you can actually ‘see’ your blind spot where the optic nerve enters the back of the retina. Instead of walking around seeing a black blank spot in our vision, our brain courteously fills it in for us.

Another example, for Mother’s Day my beloved Grandma sent me a Mother’s Day card. Only she didn’t send me a card that said “To My Granddaughter”, she sent me a card that said “To My Goddaughter.” On the inside of the card, she even underlined ‘goddaughter’ three times. Her brain told her the card said granddaughter and by golly, it said granddaughter!!! When I called her to tell her the blunder, she did not believe me. I had to actually save the card and show it to her.

I loved the mistake…it was the best card I received—very original! And will definitely serve me in the future as a great example to be safe at work because we so often see what we ‘want’ to see.

Rebekah Child
Rebekah Child attended the University of Southern California for her bachelor's in nursing and decided to brave the academic waters and return for her master's in nursing education, graduating in 2003 from Mount St. Mary's. Rebekah has also taught nursing clinical and theory at numerous Southern California nursing schools and has been an emergency nurse since 2002. She is currently one of the clinical educators for an emergency department in Southern California and a student (again!) in the doctoral program at the University of California, Los Angeles.

    Nurse Jackie poll: Have you ever been hospitalized from a mistake at work?

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