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To be clear, I don’t like making mistakes. I doubt any of you out there particularly enjoy the process either. But over the course of the weekend, I learned a very, very important lesson about making mistakes.
I will make mistakes. And I will continue to make them right up until I draw my last breath. It’s part and parcel with being Human and I have to tell you — the very wide stubborn streak within me — the one wrapped up tightly in my OCD hates everything about making a mistake.
In nursing school, we were taught that it wasn’t a matter of IF you made a medication err, but simply a matter of WHEN. Mistakes were expected because Humans working impossible hours, under life and death circumstances were not expected to perform perfectly for decades on end. Thankfully, none of my mistakes in my career caused any serious harm — to either me OR my patients. And throughout my time as a nurse, more and more systems were put into place to help us all out. One of the best changes that ever occurred for patient safety was when they made doctors enter orders into a computer instead of handwriting them on carbon-papered order sheets. No more blurry handwriting. No more trying to decipher numbers. No more guessing at a physician’s signature when attempting…
