Week One: Understanding My Why

  Reflection: Mistakes as Teachers As a new nurse, I was helping care for a patient recovering from a motorcycle crash when I misapplied a wound dressing. At the time, I believed I had done everything right: I followed the physician’s orders and even asked another nurse for guidance. The next day, however, my nurse manager told me the medical staff had noticed it wasn’t applied correctly. That was difficult to hear, but it also revealed something bigger—neither I nor the other nurse truly knew the proper technique. Instead of seeing it only as my failure, I now recognize it as a reminder of how essential training and mentorship are. With stronger education on wound care, that situation could have been transformed from discouragement into a powerful teaching moment. Another mistake happened when I crushed and administered a medication through an NG tube without realizing it wasn’t safe to crush. Neither error was intentional, but both moments stayed with me. While they initiall...