Empty narcotic syringe
I’m a newer nurse who worked med tele nights for about a year and recently accepted a day shift position on an ortho unit. I’ve only been on the unit for about 4 weeks after having 3 days of orientation, and honestly I’ve been struggling with confidence and feeling overwhelmed.
The other day I had a fresh post-op patient come up from PACU. At the same time, my new admission had also just arrived to the unit and I was trying to pass my 1800 meds, so I was extremely flustered and overwhelmed in the moment juggling multiple things at once.
While settling the post-op patient, I found what I thought was a filled Dilaudid syringe underneath the patient’s covers in the bed. The cap was still screwed on, and in the moment I genuinely thought it was still filled. I got nervous and escalated it to the nursing supervisor because I didn’t want to ignore a possible narcotic issue.
Our hospital policy is also to dispose of empty narcotic syringes/vials in the sharps container, which is another reason I became concerned seeing it left under the patient’s blankets.
While I was on the phone with the nursing supervisor, a float nurse on the unit was hovering over me. She kept going off on me in a really rude tone saying things like, “The plunger is all the way on the top, don’t you see that it’s empty?” I immediately said, “Oh my gosh, thank you so much for double checking,” because I genuinely appreciated it and was panicking in the moment, but she just walked away rudely afterward.
Once it was clarified that the syringe was empty, the nursing supervisor said no occurrence report was needed. But afterward, the float nurse was telling other staff that I could’ve gotten someone in trouble over an empty syringe. Ever since then I’ve felt embarrassed and honestly kind of crushed by the interaction.
Part of me feels like I overreacted, but another part of me feels like if I ignored what I thought was a narcotic syringe in a patient’s bed, that also would’ve been wrong.
I know for next time to just double check with someone else to verify. But, I just feel so bad and I keep replaying the moment over and over again.