18 doctors and nurses reveal the worst mistake they ever made at work.

In most jobs, the biggest mistake you can make is accidentally CC'ing the wrong people on an email or forgetting the diet coke for table 6, but the stakes are a lot higher when people's lives are on the line...

The 'Karen' at the hospital who wants to speak to 'the manager' about her loved one's heart surgery isn't really a Karen, is she? So, when a Reddit user asked, 'Doctors, what is the biggest mistake you've made?' people who work in the medical field were ready to reveal the stressful, most embarrassing, or dumbest mistakes they ever made on the job.

1.

My first day as a camp nurse for people with intellectual disabilities I gave 9 pills to the wrong guest. I didn't know who I was looking for and asked my friend to send out the guest.

His hypochondriac roommate walks out, tells me he is the person I'm looking for, I asked my friend for confirmation who THOUGHT the correct person had come to me and confirmed from afar that it was, and I administered the meds. He had a LOT of drug allergies. Stomach dropped when the actual person I was looking for came out 12 seconds later.

Luckily, we called poison control and most of the pills were vitamins and the ones that weren't were either similar to ones the guy was already taking, or in therapeutic low-dose form. He was fine and still continued to ask for everyone else's pills at all times. Worked there two summers and thankfully had no other disasters like this one. - ironmaven

2.

When I was in training (I'm a doctor), I was doing an anesthesia rotation (but wasn't an anesthesia resident or fellow), and the attending physician left me alone in the room with an ortho case undergoing surgery. I had done a few cases already and they felt comfortable leaving me 'in charge'...

Anyway, the patient was getting his leg bone fixed in some way. I thought the case was almost over, so I started to wean the anesthesia off -- cause I was afraid that the case would be completed and the patient would still be sedated (thus holding up the room and disrupting the workflow)... Anyway, I weaned too fast, and gave my reversal drugs. The patient woke up and started jerking his limbs - so much that his pulse oximeter fell off. The ortho residents were like, can you re-sedate him? So...

I gave him vec. [Was too embarrassed by what was going on and wanted it to stop]. Then followed it with midazolam, and I think I gave some gas as well.... But yeah, not proud of that moment. In fairness to me.... he was in danger of extubating himself, and messing up the bone which was being set....so the movement needed to stop ASAP. - bummer01

3.

In the 1950's, before malpractice suits I suppose, my grandmother went in for knee surgery and the doctor ended up operating on the wrong knee. He later corrected the mistake and gave her a horse for good measure. - hixon1591

4.

Medical Scientist here. I once missed a low Calcium reading on a patient's blood biochemistry. The clinician responsible for the patient didn't query it, despite it being clearly an error, and infused the patient with Calcium. Fortunately, the patient was fine, but this is still too close a call for comfort. I know check everything twice. - daveofreckoning

5.

I had 2 patients in rooms next to each other they had similar condition---hypertension, a-fib but were being treated with different medications. I accidentally gave patient A all of patient B's meds. Which was about 10 pills. I realized it as soon as she swallowed the cup full of pills. She was elderly/slightly confused and didn't question what meds she was taking. Thankfully it was nothing she was allergic to and she didn't have an adverse reaction.

I had to call the doc, and inform her family. The doctor was understanding....said just monitor her BP and heart rate. I was practically in tears when I told the family...who was a also very understanding. I learned not to rush and triple check everything. The pt was okay. Her blood pressure was actually better than it was on her usual meds. - squattmunki

7.

A dentist. When I was in 5th year of dental school, I had to treat a very nervous patient. I was in the middle of a crown restoration which I had only performed a few times up until then. I was concentrating really hard. Suddenly the patient jumped and her reaction was to close her mouth and jerk away from me.

All the while the drill in her mouth, spinning at high speed. It just cut through her insides like butter until the drill finally came to a stop. Before I could react and by the time the drill stopped spinning in her mouth, her tongue was almost amputated. My heart and mind experienced sheer terror.

Time slowed down and I felt like my head was in a vacuum...I came back to reality hearing my tutor just screaming at me. The patient survived of course. But I was training in a rural town and that night was the loneliest night of my life. I knew I had to wake up and go back to that hospital and pick up that drill tomorrow morning.

I didnt know how on earth I would do that. I spent the entire night organising myself. I was going to leave dental school and do something else with my life. I couldnt go back again. It was like a feeling of vertigo now. I wasnt coming back from something like that. I could just hear the screams and the sound of flesh splitting apart.

I woke up that morning and for some reason unknown. Dont know how or why. I went back to that hospital. Picked up the drill and made it my goal to make it through the day. For the next year, my plan was just make it through the day. A year later, it was just make it through the week. Until 10 years later, I now have my own clinic. Life is pretty good and that was biggest mistake I ever made.

Make sure to retract the soft tissue firmly and at every moment I am hard wired to protect and withstand damage if a patient does something while Im treating. On That day, the poor woman and I crossed paths... I spent at least two years depressed because of it. It shaped me as a clinician.

I work 'with one hand hovering over the brakes' so to speak even though I am relaxed. I dont know how her long term healing progressed. But I wish I could apologise to her even today and let her know that I learnt from that mistake and think of her from time to time.

I know us dentists are laughed at a bit for not being doctors... but Id like to see some of these surgeons operate on a 'live' patient. It is a different ball game. Not to knock them... Ive had a few save lives of some pretty important people in my life. - kones52

8.

I saw a patient once years ago for abdominal pain. She had had an IUD placed back in the 70s, a dalkon shield. Upon follow up, the gyn couldn't find the string so he told her she must have passed it. Well guess what- she passed in alright. We found it in the retroperitoneal space near her right kidney 17 years later!! She wanted to sue him but he had retired. - MatrixPA

9.

Nurse here. I was assisting during a vasectomy. The doctor found the testicular artery and thought it was the vas deferens (the sperm tract) and was about to tie it off and cut it. In a very diplomatic way, I told him to double check the anatomy. - markko79

10.

As an ICU nurse, I've seen the decisions of some Doctors result in death. Families often times don't know, but it happens more than you'd think. It usually happens on very sick patients that ultimately would have died within 6 months or so anyway, though.

Procedural wise, I have seen a physician kill a patient by puncturing their heart while placing a pleural chest tube. It was basically a freak thing as apparently the patient had recently had cardiothoracic surgery and the heart adhered within the cavity at an odd position.

I'll never forget the look on his face when he came to the realization of what had happened. You rarely see people accidentally kill someone in such a direct way. Heartbreaking. - pound-town

11.

I'm a nurse. I've given an anticoagulant ( blood thinner) to the wrong patient. Over the the next day his red blood count Dropped. He ended up in ICU. - stewyy

12.

Not me, but my mom. She just retired as an ob/gyn and she told me about a time early on in her career when, while not a real medical mistake, she still almost ruined the operation. She was performing a c-section I think, and she dropped her scalpel on the floor.

Before she could think, she blurted out 'oh sh*t' as a reaction. The mother, thinking something was wrong with the baby, started panicking. It took a team of nurses, the husband, and the mother of the patient to calm her down. - monstercello

13.

My brother is a surgeon, and during part of his residency, he had to work in the pediatric unit. He was working with two newborns. One was getting much better and fighting for life. He was going to make it just fine. The other baby was hours from death. He wasn't going to make it.

My brother was in charge of informing the families. My brother realized about 15 minutes later that he had mixed up the families. He told the family with the healthy baby that their baby wasn't going to make it, and he told the family with the dying baby that their baby was going to be just fine.

He then had to go back out to the families and explain the situation to them. How devastating. To be given a glimmer or hope and have it ripped away from you not even an hour later. That was most upset I've heard my brother. He felt destroyed. - AndromedaStain

14.

A few months ago, I accidentally ran a creatinine test on a patient when a comp metabolic wasn't ordered. It turns out that the guy was in renal failure, and no one knew.

He was about to go in for surgery (I believe it was a bypass, but could be wrong), but I got the results in in time to stop them from putting him under. Sh*t could have been messy. I'm glad I screwed up, and I'm sure he has no idea that he could have died. - bazoos

15.

I missed a gunshot wound once. A guy was dumped off at the ER covered in blood after a rap concert. We were all focused on a gunshot wound with an arterial bleed that was distracting. The nurse placed the blood pressure cuff over the gun shot wound on the arm. We all missed it because the blood pressure cuff slowed the bleeding.

I was doing the secondary assessment when we rolled the patient, and I still missed it. We didn't find it till the chest x-ray. The bullet came of rest in the posterior portion of the thoracic wall without significant trauma to major organs. The patient lived. But I still feel like I f*cked up big time. - disposable_h3r0

16.

Dentist here, pulled the wrong tooth one time in dental school. - jollywingo

17.

I worked in a pharmacy and the pharmacist dispensed the wrong strength of antibiotic syrup for a baby (it was a higher strength, but there was no risk of overdose). The dad was a high profile lawyer and he came back and confronted the pharmacist.

Just so you know, insurance companies tell pharmacists to NEVER admit guilt/liability, EVER; even if you made a mistake. Just don't admit it, let our lawyers take care of it.

So the lawyer is confronting the pharmacist and the pharmacist says, 'I'm so so sorry, I admit I made a mistake. I thought I double checked my work, but I made an error. I have no excuse other than I am tired. I have to take responsibility for it, did you give any to your child?' (he had been working a 10 hour shift).

The lawyer, responds 'If you had not admitted your mistake I would have sued you and this pharmacy for everything you had, and made sure you never practiced again. But because you did the right thing by me and my baby, I can let it go. I won't be doing anything more about it. Go home rest easy. I haven't given anything, we check everything beforehand' - shortblack9

18.

Not a big mistake but definitely awkward at the time. I was gluing up a lac on a 14yo girls forehead. Anyone who has used dermabond before knows that stuff can be runny and bonds very quickly. I glued my glove to her face. Her mum was in the room, and I had to turn to her and say 'I'm sorry, I've just glued my glove to her face' - pikto