NursingLink

What are possible consequences if you have a med error, on the patient's side and on the Nurse' side? Will the nurse or med aide be out of job on the first error? SOP is to call the doctor, notify the family, and what else? Can anyone tell me about this?

You have to know your facilites policies for med error.  Some facilities, have a 'no tell' policy to pt or family, if there is no potential harm...example minor wrong dose, with no apparent consequences.  All facilities have some kind of incident report and appropriate documentation.  Always follow your facilities policies.   A lot of it depends on how serious of a med error it is.

Some facilities even actually go as far as how to train the staff on how to document in the chart, to tell what happened without drawing attention.  Including specific instructions on not writing in the notes 'incident report filed'.  They feel that any error is the potential for a lawsuit.  Some states require actual harm to occur in order to file a lawsuit, other states allow  'mental anguish' type lawsuits.  Let's say you accidently give 4mg of morphine and only 2mg was ordered.  In most patients that would not result in any harm, maybe some lethargy.  It depends on the pt.  If you notified the pt and family immediately, they can say that they were in mental anguish that there was a potential adverse med affect, and they desire compensation for that.  I worked in a facility in Florida that had that policy.  They did not notify patients if med errors occurred, unless there was an adverse reaction. 

I think that it depends upon the facility policy AND the drug used that resulted in the med error.  We recently hired a nurse who has made 2 errors in 2 weeks.  The first one was a narcotic and according to OUR facility policy this is a terminable error.  HOWEVER, she is still there despite the fact that the previous nurse in her position was fired for a similar error.  Sometimes I feel that it depends upon the mood of management.