The one mistake every nurse shouldn’t make

I paused before answering no, that everything was fine.

The nursing instructor asked me a second time. I re-traced my steps, 4 more checks over my work. I replied again with an ‘Aye-oh-OK’ response.

This dialogue happened two more times before the patient finally looked over at me and kindly (and jokingly) said, “She’s obviously trying to tell ya something”.

I still for the life of me couldn’t figure it out??

My instructor kindly replies, “Well, good job on the IV, but if Mr. Smith wants to get out of bed to use the restroom or anything else he’s going to have to jump (and maybe fall).”

I looked at the bed – and it was still at waist-height! I got so involved in my task that I forgot that the nurse had raised his bed for that IV site troubleshoot!

I was mortified. I had missed something so basic, so simple, yet SO very important. To this day I tell that story to any and all that will listen. I have never left my patient’s bed at an unsafe height. Every time I leave my patient’s room I always, always, always lower the bed to its lowest setting. The way I learned that lesson has remained engrained in my brain.

I’ve made many more mistakes since then. Some even more comical, and some down right scary. I once entered in the wrong infusion settings for a narcotic medication for a patient. I transposed concentration and total amount of drug settings on the IV pump. Lets just say, thankfully the patient was intubated and the mistake was found quickly.

So back to my original statement : What is the one mistake every nurse shouldn’t make??

The mistake that they do not learn from.

Learning from your mistakes is the single most important process of growing and maturing as a practitioner. Not learning from a mistake will set you up to make that same mistake again.

Be sure to learn from all your mistakes, no matter how great or small, your patients will thank you for it.