When Things Go Wrong

This video will go through the things you should do if you make a mistake. Now, this is a general video to give you some advice, as well as the core things to do. However, you should always follow your organisation's policies and procedures on reporting, and what to do in situations where mistakes have been made. The first, and possibly the most important thing to do when you realise you have made a mistake, is to try and stay calm. This allows you to think rationally and not do anything outrageous. It also allows you to conduct yourself appropriately, and it does not instil unnecessary fear in the patient. For example, don't go running around the facility screaming about the mistake, but calmly do what you can to help the patient. You must make sure that the patient's okay by efficiently determining just how serious the mistake is.

If the patient is in serious danger, or if you feel that you're not trained enough to know what condition the patient is or will be in, immediately go to a more senior team member and explain the situation. This will probably be a senior nurse, doctor, or team lead. If first aid is needed and no one else is around, do what you can to stop them from deteriorating further. But remember that in some cases, this may require you to leave the patient safely to go and get someone more experienced.

Following on, make sure that someone more senior has been made aware of the situation if that has not actually been done already, as they may need to make others aware of what's happened. Mistakes can not only be hard on the patients and their loved ones, but on the person who has actually made the mistake as well. It's common knowledge that everyone makes mistakes. Letting yourself feel bad for a time is okay. However, after a short while, do your best to move on and learn from the situation.

After mistakes happen, it is very unlikely for them to happen again if you make sure that you have learned from the incident. You can also use your new knowledge to set an example to others in your work in many different ways. You show them that mistakes happen, that everyone will probably at some point make mistakes and that if they do, they will be able to learn something from them and make sure that they don't happen again.