Not all medical errors end up being bad.

Well my wife has been after me for a long time to post a blog on the internet. So I’ve decided I would hijack her blog and post one of my E.R. stories. When I was 16 I worked at the local hospital in the Lab drawing blood after school. As part of my job I often would draw blood and perform 12 lead EKGs on patients in the E.R. I remember one busy night while working I received a request to come down to the E.R. and perform an EKG. I had been doing this for several months and didn’t think anything of it. As I looked at the request I realized the patient was a girl that I went to school with. For the non medical readers of this blog you have to realize that in order to perform an EKG you have to have the patients remove their shirt and bra. Normally this test is performed on older individuals so it was never a big deal. I had never done this on a younger person especially a female that I knew and went to school with.
Luckily I didn’t work alone I had a supervisor. So I decided I would have him do it. Within a few moments I discovered that he was trying to get some blood from a new born infant that was critically ill. I remember telling myself normally EKG’s aren’t things that have to be done immediately so I decided I would put the procedure off until my supervisor returned from drawing the blood. Just then the phone rang. It was the E.R. They were calling to inform me the patient was going to surgery so we needed to hurry up all of her test. I couldn’t believe it nothing was going right. I knew that if I performed this procedure it would be not only embarrassing and awkward for me but also for her. After a minuet I just told myself, “This is your job, you’re a professional you can do this and it is really no big deal.”
So I grabbed my machine and headed to the E.R., as I walked down the hall I passed the respiratory therapist who asked me who I was going to do an EKG on. I told him, he replied that’s strange that their doing an EKG on someone so young. I told him that she’s going to surgery and maybe it had something to with that.
I then went into the patient’s room. I performed the test. Just like I expected it was very embarrassing and awkward, but I did it. As I walked out of the room I saw the respiratory therapist running towards me yelling stop don’t do the EKG. My heart dropped, I asked what’s wrong. He told me that someone had marked the wrong box on the order sheet. The Dr had ordered an HCG AKA a pregnancy test, a standard test for all women going to surgery and not an EKG. Just then the Patients mother heard the commotion and stepped out of the room to find out what was going on. Luckily the mother was very understanding and actually thought it was a little funny. Actually all of the staff thought it was very funny. Me, I was just pissed off. I wanted to know who would make such a stupid mistake as confusing an HCG for EKG.
I grabbed my machine and headed back to the lab even more embarrassed then when I headed to the E.R. A few moments later a girl in scrubs came to the lab and introduced herself she said that she was the new E.R. tech and came to apologies for making the mistake with the orders. I accepted her apology while thinking to myself how dumb is this person that they can’t even fill out an order sheet correctly
Well ultimately I did truly forgive her, and found out she was pretty smart. A few months later we started dating and a few years after that we got married and now ten years later I have to admit not all medical errors are bad.