I need some help. My name is Elizabeth and I am an LPN. I just found out this morning I am being reported to the Oklahoma Board of Nursing from a nursing home I worked a shift at a couple weekends ago. I was a travel nurse and was the only nurse assigned to the entire hall of a facility I had never been to before because they had several nurses that didn’t show up and my medication aide for the hall didn’t show up either. Anyway after I had already passed all the meds for one hall, I got passed to another hall because they didn’t have a nurse. I started passing meds for all these patients. These patients are all senile and have no idea who or where they are, they have no wrist bands or any kind of patient identifiers on whatsoever. They have pictures in their MARs, but all of these pictures were 15 years old or greater so they looked nothing like the patients. Anyway, I was called down to a room by the tech and when I walked in, she was standing over the patient with a fentanyl patch and she said it came off while she was in the shower. I took it, wasted it, and walked back down there with another patch that I put back on her. The tech didn’t say a word and we both walked away. Well I found out the other day, they had to send her to the hospital because I apparently put the patch on the room mate. She was a DNR which the daughter rescinded. She didn’t pass away and is fine. I understand that I put it on the wrong patient in the room, but the tech was standing right there and didn’t say a word!!! And how are you supposed to know who is who when these patients don’t wear ANY KIND OF PATIENT IDENTIFIERS???? They don’t know who they are!!! I was at the mercy of my techs to tell me who was who and I got completely screwed! I need help! Do I need a lawyer before I go to the board? They are answerable to nobody and I know how horrible they are. What do I do? I understand that I am at fault, but how does the nursing home bear no responsibility in the fact that there is NO way to identify the patients?! They are all comatose or have severe Alzheimer's, dementia, or are senile. They have no wristbands or any other way to tell who is who. The only pictures in the charts were almost 20 years old. The tech I was working with laughed at me for trying to compare the pictures to the patient when I tried that. What do I do?