How to Survive a Stay in the Hospital without Getting Killed [Paperback]

LVN Mary Lorrie Davis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 6, 2006

How to Survive a Stay in the Hospital Without Getting Killed is an easy to understand hospital survival guide written by a nurse with 20 years experience working in hospitals and other nursing facilities. The guide explains what mistakes can and do happen and how to prevent them from happening to you.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

A native New Yorker Mary Lorrie Davis has been a Licensed Vocational Nurse for 20 years. She has practiced in New York and California in many hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes/Facilities. She has been in charge, or supervised, or done bedside care in almost all services.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

In the hospital, the doctor orders the medication; the pharmacist prepares, dispenses, and sends the order to the floor. The nurse gives it to the patient.

MISTAKES HAPPEN.

I personally discovered only one pharmaceutical mistake, and just recently heard of another one. In the incident I was involved in, the dose on the medication card read one thing, but the actual dose in the packet was twice the amount. I knew this because I'd given the medicine before, and knew there should only be one tablet in the packet, not two. When I pointed this out to the pharmacist, he checked the doctor's order (I already had), took the remaining packets, and put the correct dosage in the patient's medication drawer. When I told the head nurse, she made out an incident report, I made a note on the patient's chart, and the pharmacist had the extra pills. END OF DISCUSSION.

After the doctor writes the order for medicine on the patient's order sheet, the nurse picks up the order, makes out a medication card/computer print-out and sends the order to the pharmacy. The medication card/computer print-out is used by all the nurses to dispense the medicine to the patient. The nurse who picks up the order has to be sure the order is read correctly. Doctors are notorious for their illegible handwriting. To avoid making a mistake, nurses routinely ask the doctors to clarify their orders. By not doing so, the nurse could wind up being charged with criminally negligent homicide, as in the case of three nurses from Colorado. A doctor wrote an order for a baby to receive penicillin and benzathine, 150,000 units, intramuscularly. The pharmacist misread the order and prepared two syringes containing a total of 1,500,000 units--a ten-fold overdose. To spare the child being injected multiple times, two of the nurses researched whether the drug could be given intravenously instead of intramuscularly. Their incorrect conclusion was that it could. (My research showed that this medication should only be given intramuscularly.) That mistake cost the baby its life. The best research they could have done would have been to check with the doctor.

This was a behind-the-scenes incident. The patient and his mom had no control. If the patient hadn't died, no one would have known that it happened if the nurses hadn't reported it.

In the hospital, most patients are on some kind of medication. That's why I feel the chance of an error is greater here than with any other aspect of your care. When an error happens, you might never know, unless...

* Someone tells you--which I have yet to see happen.

* You have an allergic reaction.

* You overdose.

* It's life-threatening.

* You catch the error.

The person dispensing the medicine to the patient usually makes the error or mistake. It's the wrong patient, the wrong medication, the wrong dosage, or the wrong time. Unless the patient is familiar with the medication, only the person giving it knows an error is made. If that person decides not to report it, who will know? And ethics, honesty, training, title, procedures, and the patient's rights all go out the window.

You don't have to be a pharmacist to monitor your medication. All you need is some inside information.

Product Details

• Paperback: 166 pages
• Publisher: Trafford (July 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1552128326
• ISBN-13: 978-1552128329
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,648,424 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)