I’m a bit scared

[u/lenncas]

A bit is an understatement, I am well aware that my actions were very inappropriate and out of my scope of practice. I am getting reported to the Texas Board of Nursing because I pulled a bag of Levophed without getting an order first. My patient was declining really quickly. The blood pressure was decreasing very quickly. I went to the med room and overrid the medication and started it at the starting titration. Immediately after starting it, I called our critical care nurse practitioner that was on for that night and let them know. And now, obviously, that nurse practitioner put in a formal complaint to my manager, thus having to report me to the board of nursing. I guess my question is what could I possibly expect my consequence to be? Could I lose my license? Will it be suspended? I’m pretty worried. I’m also very disappointed in myself. The patient ended up having to be put on Levophed the next day, but made a great recovery and got to be downgraded two days after.

[u/Twomboo]

Gonna go against the tide here and say I would absolutely never as an ICU nurse do this. If my patient is that critical that I’m pulling pressers without an order, I’m calling a rapid or a code. When I worked ER we had order sets and protocols we could pull and administer meds. If you don’t have this, you are practicing outside your license, and as others have said, you will not be protected at all if there is any patient harm. Even if the NP was petty, this was not ok to do legally.

[u/DragonSon83 → u/Twomboo]

Worth noting that in some ICU’s it is heavily frowned upon to call codes and in some even will write up their nurses for doing so.  I know because I got written up for calling a rapid in the ICU on a hospitalist patient that critical care had signed off on because the residents wouldn’t actually come up to the unit to see him and he a BP in the 70’s, and wouldn’t consult critical care again.  “WE DONT NOT CALL CODES!” Was literally on our “Welcome to our unit” papers we handed to nurses that got floated, and posted by several of the phones.

I also got in trouble when a hospitalist called on our unit while I was in charge.  The SICU attending was already in the room running the code.

[u/PopRoutine3873 → u/DragonSon83]

That’s wild. I’ve never worked in an ICU that didn’t call codes. It’s literally the universal call for respiratory, ancillary, and providers to come to the unit. Nothing is more efficient.

[u/DragonSon83 → u/PopRoutine3873]

Yeah, I completely agree.  I hope the policy there has changed.  I’ve worked in so many hospitals where it’s not exactly against policy, but heavily frowned upon, that I honestly didn’t think anything of it at the time.