The reality is that nurses are human, despite the constant pressure they put on themselves to never make a mistake. Additionally, risky staffing ratios, a lack of breaks, and lengthy shifts raise the possibility of mistakes, particularly for those new to the position. Even while it's impossible to catch every mistake, being aware of these typical mistakes may help you spot them early on whether you're learning a new floor or dealing with inexperienced nurses.
Maintaining Order and Cleanliness
The word "hospital" frequently conjures up pictures of stark, clinical structures. However, hospitals aren't always immaculate. It takes a lot of care and work to keep these settings tidy. Another error to avoid as a novice nurse is failing to sanitize your tools after each usage. The majority of nurses employ tools like stethoscopes, otoscopes, and thermometers. You must clean these items of equipment in between patients to reduce the risk of infection.
Many inexperienced nurses might not know how to properly sanitize their instruments, though. The secret to warding off bacteria, germs, and other hazardous pathogens is learning how to do so.
Medication mistakes
For nurses, medication errors are a serious issue. Nurses and other healthcare workers frequently mistakenly give patients the incorrect drug or the improper dosage of a prescription.
Since patients' medication intake directly affects their health, medication errors have the potential to inflict substantial harm to patients. You should therefore reduce the possibility of making this kind of mistake.
Issues with Social Media
Another error made by novice nurses is sharing private patient information on social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The sharing of patient information is prohibited by HIPAA and other privacy rules, and many nurses have been fired for disclosing private care information, taking photos with patients, making contentious statements online, and other offenses.
Additionally, when new nurses spend too much time texting or monitoring their social media profiles, complications can result. If something were to occur while you were working, they might look into your social media usage. If you were posting ten times an hour when your patients required care, it wouldn't seem good.
Falls-Related Issues
Because nurses typically care for a large number of patients, it can be difficult to always keep track of everyone. Even though they are not yet physically capable of doing so, some patients make the effort to stand up and walk independently. Unsupervised patient activities could result in falls that could cause harm.
Charting mistakes
Every future medical professional's work may be hampered by errors in a patient's charts or other important documents. They are unable to properly interact with and care for the patient if the information is inaccurate. Exercise caution when entering patient data to prevent mistakes of this nature. Pay strict attention to the information you record, and constantly verify it.
Everyone, including nurses, makes errors. However, given that mistakes made in nursing can have particularly severe repercussions, it's crucial that you arm yourself with all the knowledge necessary to prevent mistakes from occurring in the first place. Furthermore, it is even more important that you understand what to do to lessen the consequences of a mistake if you do make one.
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