u/Unusual_Way231

I’m a new rn in the icu and am on my 3rd day off orientation. I had a pt in HHS who needed hourly sugar checks and insulin drip titrations. Pt came in continent, but had a female external cath (due to anatomy) & restrained on a presidex drip. Output looked normal I checked a few times to make sure there was urine in the container whenever I was in the room. At 6am I emptied 500 out and thought ‘huh… he’s getting a lot of fluids I should bladder scan bc that can’t be right…’ Bladder scanned him and see 3,300 mL and freak out. He was drowsy but arousable so I tried to get him to pee… which did not work he claimed he could not go. Got a straight cath order and called doc. Bc of his anatomy me and three other nurses could not straight cath him and he ended up needing a Supra pubic tap which got almost all of the urine out.

I feel so guilty and horrible that I didn’t bladder scan him earlier and nip this in the bud… I thought all was well bc he was putting out but his bladder could have literally ruptured :/ has this happened to anyone else before?? How common is something like this?? The other nurses didn’t seem to know what to do either :(

A Knoxville hospital is trying to use the COVID-19 pandemic to shield itself from liability for a nurse’s fatal medication administration mistake, court records show.

Sonny Caldwell was being treated for various conditions, including COVID-19, while he was a patient at the Turkey Creek Medical Center in October 2020, but an investigation by the Knox County Regional Forensic Center shows he didn’t die from any of those conditions.

Instead, an autopsy stated, Caldwell died because a nurse there inexplicably crushed up medications meant to be taken orally and pumped them through an intravenous tube, causing a blockage that killed him within minutes.

#news #healthcare #nursing #nurselife #nurses