Scary

I had a moment this week that really freaked me out. I realize that we are all human, and we all make mistakes, but nurses have so much more riding on those mistakes! (I also don't really want to admit that I make mistakes in such a public forum, but I want to remember this...as if it isn't seared into my brain forEVER).
There is an antepartum patient who has been on our unit since November. She is 21. She has been pregnant 3 previous times and lost each one at various stages. She is now at 30 weeks, which is the furthest into a pregnancy she has ever gotten. She mostly just hangs out on bed-rest, and we monitor her (and the baby) twice a day, at 9 and 9. I take care of her pretty often, and I know she is getting frustrated with being stuck in a hospital room for all these months. We have kind of become friends, and I joke around with her often to try and cheer her up. This week her cousin had a baby. She spent a lot of time in her cousin's room visiting, and the rest of the time in her room, feeling pretty bummed that her cousin get to go home and she had to stay. She is allowed a 5 minute walk per day, so she used it to go to her cousin's room and hang out. After hours there, I went and demanded that she go back to her room. When you are "buddy-buddy" with your patient, you don't get to be an authority figure, turns out. So after marching back to her room, she refused to speak to me for the rest of the day, and I'll admit, I didn't go in there nearly as often for the rest of the afternoon as I had in the morning.
About 10 minutes before my shift ended, a labor and delivery nurse called me to ask if I had taken care of this patient today. I said that I had, and she asked why I took the patient off the monitors one minute after the baby had a HUGE late decel (code for the baby reacted poorly to a contraction and might be in distress)...WHAT? She said I should go put her back on, or make whoever I give report to do it asap just to make sure he’s still alive (!!!!!) SO I freaked out, told the night nurse I was giving report to and long story and many phone calls made by me late at night to the unit later, he is FINE. Mostly I just felt stupid, but also panicked- this is her 4^th pregnancy, and she’s lost all the others. And this is the furthest she’s gotten, and it would just be so so so terrible if something I did (or missed) cost them his life. It was a HUGE mistake, and thank god everything is good now, but it could have easily gone the other way, and would have cost a baby his life, and me my job, and sanity, etc.
But I will NEVER make the mistake again, so that is the blessing. A true lesson was learned.