I have one medication error in my history.
Gave 5mg morphine to a pregnant patient seizing instead of giving 5 of valium. Same exact type of syringe, both syringes in the same box, I got in too much of a hurry, looked in the box, saw the valium, reached in and apparantly grabbed the morphine rather than the valium. They looked exactly the same. I looked at the syringe, and my head said valium but the syringe said morphine.
so I gave it.
The seizure soon stopped. I thought all was well.
I delivered the patient to the ED with no seizure activity.
Returned to my rig, my partner asked "Why did you give morphine to a seizure patient" and my heart dropped. I just sat down and shook all over.
I immediately went into the ER, told the doctor what I did, he said "well no wonder why she has pinpoint pupils" he then told me no harm to the patient. He even went so far to talk to my risk manager after I was done reporting it, telling the Risk manager that he was impressed with the honesty I had for telling him and risking ridicule and reprimand. He said the patient suffered no ill effects, they administered narcan and patient was doing fine and the baby was doing very well also.
He recommended that we change suppliers of at least one of the drugs because he took a look at how we had our drugs stored and said that he understood how this error occurred and because of his suggestion, we changed the way things were done.
I could have been fired but thanks to this doc's good word I was not. I did get a day of remediation with risk management to go over the drug box and to revamp the setups but I did get paid to do that. It was a definate scary scary thing, I thought I had hurt the patient. Had I have hurt her or the baby, I am not sure how I would have reacted.
A positive learning experience.
You learn from these types of things. If you do not, then you don't need to be in EMS.