Tell me about a time in your nursing career when you made a big mistake. How did you handle the situation?

"I have made a few mistakes in my nursing career, but the one that stands out to me most is when I was working in an outpatient infusion clinic early in my career and accidentally administered the wrong infusion medication to a patient. There were two patients with the same first name with appointments close together, and they were both in the waiting room at the same time. When I went out and attempted to call her, let's call her Jane A, I only said, 'Jane', and Jane B came back with me. My mistake got even worse when I did not verify Jane's last name. The mistake was eventually caught by my colleague, but unfortunately, I had already started her infusion. It was a terrible mistake, and I wanted to be sure it never happened again. So, I helped my supervisor develop new procedures for verifying patient information and I helped train my colleagues on the new procedures."

You should ideally be honest in answering this question and not be afraid to share information on the mistakes you have made. To successfully answer this question, you should provide an example of a mistake you have made in the past and tell the interviewer how you successfully mitigated the situation. A more successful answer to this question would include details of when you took a mistake you made and spearheaded a policy change or education program to ensure the same mistake was not made by your colleagues.