Nursing Problems and Emotional Fatigue - Essay Example

Sometimes seeing someone in terrible pain, actually makes the nurse in pain, as well, just simply by knowing how badly that patient is suffering. No nurse who truly cares for his or her patients wants to see anyone suffering. "Nurses see suffering, and they see it up close; and they, in turn, suffer with their patients who are in pain" (O'Brien 2003). Other incidents that have occurred in my nursing career have revolved around the fact that there are always shortages of nurses. Also, in nursing, there is a great deal of moral distress which sometimes can lead to errors/incidents taking place (Selva & Ludwick 2003). Especially in the 1990's the shortage of nurses was extremely severe which overworked the nurses on staff and which lead to minor clinical incidents taking place.

One occurrence that I witnessed was a fellow nurse who had a patient that was in constant need of pain medication off and on through the night. This was due to the injuries that the individual had sustained while riding a horse. The nurse had made her rounds previous times that night and had given the medication to the patient earlier but he had varying kinds of medicine that he was prescribed. A couple of these were done intravenously and a couple was by mouth. That night had been especially hectic and this specific nurse had been extremely overworked the past few days so although others of us were aware she was tired we didn't understand the full implications of what that might cause.

By accident, she overmedicated this individual patient but luckily it was not the stronger medications he had been prescribed or the outcome could have indeed been one big horrible one, and all of us on shift that night would have felt bad. Also, it did not cause any adverse reaction other than helping the patient have a very comfortable night of rest out of others, where he had suffered to try and sleep. However, the point is this one mistake could have proven fatal for this patient if it would have been one little bit different in concern of medications.

According to the Institute of Medicine (1999), there are more medical errors and untoward patient outcomes due to situations that what was previously stated, than any nurse even wants to attempt to imagine. I approached this nurse and we discussed the situation. I felt really bad for her because again, it was not out of negligence that she did this but it was out of sheer stress and exhaustion that it occurred. Now, this does prove a very detrimental point. Nurses need to be allowed to have a decent reprieve from work.

Regardless if there is a shortage of nurses, how good is an extremely stressed, anxious, exhausted, and overworked nurse going to relate to her patients Surely, in not a very happy manner? After the full discussion I and this nurse had, I felt I could fully relate to what she was saying. Accidents do happen and thank goodness this was a small one. The question now was, do I report it to the head nurse or do I just keep it to myself I decided not to report it because I felt there was no real cause.

No harm had been done and the patient was resting comfortably. Far better than what he had been when he was initially brought up to the pain management floor of the hospital. I did not believe that this one small margin in error warranted a full report being done and the other nurse getting reprimanded or possibly fired.