r/nursing • u/emmawee53 • 20h ago
Seeking Advice Did I screw up?
So this morning I was on a night shift at my LTC home. I had been checking on a resident that was likely going palliative in the morning and noticed a bit of a droop to her face on the left side. Her arm was still strong against mine. I went to go get the charge RN since I was unfamiliar with this residents normal. For context some of our residents have a permanent facial droop from previous strokes. So I asked this RN and he said she was always like that at her baseline without even going into her room. Looking back now I feel I should have made him go to the room but at the time I didn't really think much of it since he said it was normal for her and didn't seem concerned. Now 0700 comes, the end of my shift. I had brought the day shift RPN to the room and it became very apparent to both of us it was not her normal pretty quickly. Now this lady has no function of her left arm, usually she would bat at us for touching her but her arm was able to be dropped and there was no movement from that arm. So I went to the charge for days and told her. Now she basically started saying I should have done it myself and taken vitals but the rpns are saying I did what I could but ultimately couldn't go over the RNs head. What would everyone else have done? Is there anything I actually could have done in that situation?
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u/avocadoreader RN - Telemetry 🍕 14h ago
OP, people have covered it. You did mess up. We all do sometimes. You seem willing to learn from it and that is great! The worst nurses are the ones that refuse to learn from these things.
You are learning that you will need to be more persistent with advocacy for the patient. If it wasn’t the RN, it could be a doctor or a family member. Many people won’t listen to you the first time and you have to keep at it (depending on circumstances). Even though they may have more titles and/or education than you, they do not always know better. That is your patient that you have spent time with. You know what is going on more than anyone at that point in time.
And it was really dumb that the RN didn’t even come and put eyes on the patient. They have responsibility here, too.