The error that had to happen someday...

So now I am at home, sitting in my bed, ruminating. Today I made my first real medical error- one that was carried out on a patient, no less a 4 day old infant with duodenal atresia, but thankfully to no harm. I am now officially 32 hours without sleep- I awoke at 8am yesterday and now am sleeping at 2pm the next dayafter a loooonnnngggg pediatrics shift that I managed to admit 6 patients in the span of an evening. Whew... what a trip. But in there I made an error- it was not caught by the nurse or the tech or even the charge nurse- I gave a saline bolus of his IV fluids instead of being normal saline. Nothing drastic but not what I needed to be doing. It was caught by my attending, actually- who looked at my orders and did not see a type of IVF specified and went to look- she called me immediately, scorned me fully and then made me go and apologise to the parents. I explained things carefully to the parents and what we were going to do to rectify the situation, which was simply draw more labs than normal to watch the lytes. But I felt guilty as heck. Had to fill out an incidence report form with the nurse and everything. But at the end of the night that nurse pulled me aside and told me despite my total lack of sleep and rest and the craziness of the PICU I had done a great job- she thought it was equally her fault as well, which I told her she shouldn't take the blame. So there was my first medical mistake on a patient. Truly a mistake... an overlook... and it is sure to happen again as I continue in my training. But it knaws at me like an ulcer... I need sleep...