crap...am I in huge trouble???

[Rnis]

So im in orientation and I started the sink to warm up the water and got called out of the room...........you guessed it I forgot and when i came back 5- 10 minutes later the entire hospital room was COVERED in water. We called house keeping and cleaned it up it took about 20 towels and i thought it was all over but then another patient started having water seeping in....so we called maintenance but then it was change of shift so i left. I just assumed that the sink had the secondary drain ....bad assumption. I feel like a complete idiot and am worried im going to get fired over my stupid mistake.

[loveu123]

I doubt you will get fired over this. I am an HD nurse and we go to the ICU with our hd machine and reverse osmosis machine for the water to dialyze. Myself as well as other nurses have flooded on more than one occasion and did not get fired. The good thing is you calling maintenance for help. Relax and let it be a lesson to never leave the water on.

[JeneraterRN]

Though I think the OP started this with genuine concern (I think you're in the clear), this has morphed into a very cool thread. Thanks for the laughs-it's good to know I'm not the only klutz out there. By the by, the worst mess I had to clean up was actually a doctor's mistake. During a delivery, the doc was trying to express the placenta while pulling on the cord. The cord broke and was twisted somehow. It helicoptered and sprayed everyone in the vicinity with cord blood. Floor, walls, ceiling, father of the baby-spattered. Strangely, it completely missed me somehow.

[canesdukegirl, BSN, RN]

Wow! I love these stories!

A friend of mine did EXACTLY the same thing you did. She went to the substerile to soak some instruments in Klenzyme before putting them in the autoclave. Our OR sinks are pretty large and it takes FOREVA to fill them. She was called back into the OR and promptly forgot about the running water...until someone was walking by the OR and saw water seeping under the door and into the hallway!

Being the creative problem solver she is, my friend quickly asked the scrub nurse to throw off the unused suction tubing from the sterile field and hooked it up to the little do-dad that we use to soak up fluid during an arthroscopy case. Problem solved!

The methyline blue stories cracked me up. I thought I was the only one! A few years ago, I was drawing up Lymphazurin at the beginning of an axillary node dissection case, and nobody told me that you should NEVER put any air into the vial first. Well, I did. I carefully slid the needle out of the vial while keeping the vial at eye level to ensure I had gotten every single precious drop...and PFFFFFTTT! Blue hands, blue floor, blue scrubs. Looked like I had murdered a Smurf. The scrub nurse couldn't stop laughing. After she caught her breath, she said, "Canes, please go look in the mirror." Oh yeah. I looked like I had the Smurf Measles. Nobody kept a straight face when they looked at mine!

You won't get fired. Your pride might get fired for a while though!

[Carolinathe3rd]

I feel like a complete idiot and am worried im going to get fired over my stupid mistake.

I have made bad mistake and didn't get fired. I think as long as no one got hurt or the clean up wasn't extremely expensive I you won't get fired. Possibly a write up. Just try to get in the habit of looking behind yourself before you leave a room.

[Kooky Korky, BSN, RN]

Your biggest mistake was not in flooding the room but in leaving and not owing up to the incident. You should have reported this to the nursing supervisor and written up an incident report for maintenance if that was required. This was very unprofessional and looks bad, especially since you were in orientation. As a former DON I would be very disappointed. Again, not in the accident, those things happen but in just leaving? It looks like you were sneaking out.

I don't think she walked away or didn't own up to it. Where do you get that she didn't own up to it?

She says she helped clean up, notified maintenance, and now fears for her job (so she must have owned up to it).

It scares, angers, and dismays me that it is assumed that she is believed to have been "sneaking out" when she clearly states the steps she took to ameliorate her error.

[bagladyrn, RN]

Once worked at a hospital that had a new OB unit built with BIG whirlpool tubs. Our first weekend in the new unit we decided to have our labor pt. try the new tub. Filled tub, helped pt. in, then prior to starting the jets my coworker decided that adding just a little baby bath would make it nice. When the jets were turned on the tub immediately began producing amazing amounts of bubbles. Filled the room waist deepwith patient, husband and two nurses laughing hysterically. When we opened the door to get clean up supplies the mass of foam amoebaed out into the hallway attracting the attention of everyone on the unit.

[That Guy, BSN, RN, EMT-B]

No but expect a new nickname puddles

[Kooky Korky, BSN, RN]

My first hospital job (6 months out of school)....

- I pulled up the floor wax when tossing rubbing alcohol on a huge roach (no bug killer, and to step on it would have been like sliding across the floor on a banana peel- TX roach)

- dyed the ceiling tiles blue with methylene blue (used to use for tube feeding dye, to see if a patient had aspirated formula) when I tried to put the leftover AMPULE into an empty sterile water VIAL.... didn't pressurize well, and the needle flew out, spraying the ceiling.... permanently.

- I didn't get fired.

- housekeeping hated me

If your housekeeping is anything like ours, the "love" could well be mutual.

[Kooky Korky, BSN, RN]

Just tell them it's an accident.

Kidding. You should have stood up and tell them that it's your fault.

Please re-read the post. She did tell them.

[tech1000]

Fired over leaking water? I'd hope not...

[LaurenBoog]

In orientation, my preceptor was showing me how to hang tube feeding. It was a special kind that she had to request from dietary (wasn't stocked on the floor) and when it finally came up at the end of shift, I spiked the wrong part of the tube feeding and it went all over the med room!

On New Year's Eve this past year, I was trying to call for a stat echocardiogram for a patient, but the telephone operator misunderstood what I wanted and ended up sending a urgent page to all the hospital bigwigs that the state had come to survey the hospital! We started getting phone calls from all these random people asking what was going on....no harm done but I felt so stupid having to explain to my nurse manager and DON what I had done!!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

[tokmom, BSN, RN]

I had a friend knock off the sprinkler thingy on the ceiling with a very tall IV pole. It flooded the entire ER. lol