In a usual twist of events, Nurse Betty Sue has prevented yet another resident from killing an unsuspecting patient.
Late in the evening, Nurse Betty Sue noticed that resident Dr. Jen Willis had ordered 100 times the usual dose of potassium via IV push which would surely result in the death of her dear patient.
Panicked, Betty Sue paged the resident but received no response. Knowing this was a fairly urgent matter, she waited 20 minutes and paged the doctor again. And after another 20 minutes, a third time.
Frustrated and concerned, she picked up the phone and called the resident knowing she would be very annoyed at best. But the doctor was not available by phone either. After some astute investigating, Betty Sue eventually found Dr. Jen Willis sleeping in the call room covered in Cheerios and saliva.
Given the grave nature of the problem, Betty touched base with the resident’s attending who ultimately corrected the faulty order. “Another brilliant batch of new doctors,” grumbled Attending Dr. Bill Wineberg.
The patient is now doing well after receiving the appropriate amount of potassium to correct her cardiac arrhythmia. “Doctors are so brilliant,” the patient stated, “I feel great!”
Nurse Betty Sue was later interviewed by the hospital’s Sentinel Event committee regarding the near miss error. When asked to comment, Betty Sue stated “I’m just doing my job and keeping my patients safe — thank you for asking.” When the resident was finally awake, Dr. Jen Willis griped, “The nurses really need to stop paging us so much.”
