Ernie is a nursing assistant who is preparing a shift report. He is documenting on a patient with a painful muscular condition. He documents the vital signs, activities, and the amounts of times the patient asked for medication. He also documents that the patient asked for medication very frequently but did not to have physical signs of pain and was likely trying to abuse the pain medications. Which mistake did Ernie make?
Answer
A
documenting the patient’s vital signs
B
noticing that the patient did not have physical signs of pain
C
assuming that Ernie is abusing pain medication
D
documenting the patient’s activities
Explanation
Ernie’s mistake was making an unsupported judgment about the patient’s motives. Frequent requests for medication and a lack of visible signs of pain do not prove that a patient is abusing medication; pain can be subjective and may not have obvious physical signs. The choice that describes this mistake is “assuming that the patient is abusing pain medication.”
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