"Early in my nursing career, I was working a night shift with minimal staff. We had a patient on a magnesium drip and I wasn't 100% comfortable on the IV setup my new employer was using. In nursing school and clinical rotations, I became very great at setting the IV's in patients but I wasn't familiar with the particular stand we were using at the time. Not wanting to bother my colleagues, I set up the bag for the appropriate drip and left the sleeping patient. Upon coming back to the room, I noticed the IV bag had only a quarter of the fluid left in it after an hour. Seeing right away that the bag was leaking badly because I hadn't hung it properly, I called for another nurse quickly. I also contacted the hospitalist to have another bag ordered quickly for the patient. Looking back, I definitely should have been more properly trained on the equipment and to this day, I never hesitate to ask for more training if I see it as necessary."
