Funniest Nursing Situation

[Neats]

What is your funniest Nursing situation you have ever been in.... Mine was

As a Nursing Home Administrator and Nurse I once went to the wrong funeral. Two people in a small town with same unusual name had funerals same day, heck I had a 50/50 shot at getting it right. Some of the staff still send me random obits asking if I would like to go.

[K+MgSO4, BSN]

It was my first year of nursing.

This patient came in who was a paraplegic who had recurrent bowel obstructions. Daughter refused our hospital air mattress and brought in thier own matress from home....of course no spare bed available to inflate the mattress on so we inflated it on the treatment room trolley, gathered up the team, both HCA, 2 nursing students, 2 nurses.

Kick out all families out of the 6 bed room, including the batty priest who used to turn up to preach unannounced and not allowed by the ward management. Curtains around 5 other pts and door closed. Pep talk to the gang 10 min to do this before dinner arrives.

Hoisted him up on the mobile hoist, plain mattress off, wrestling with the air mattress and we hear plop, plop, plop. Look up to see a huge river of poop coming out of this man onto his bed frame - a metal bed frame with a million holes and spraying up with the force into mine and one of the HCA hair....thankfully we had our faces turned away as we were wrestling with the mattress.

The only thing I could think of to deal with this out pouring was to grab the rubbish bin and hold it under him while he resolved his obstruction. Poor pt was apologising to us all and all I could do was laugh at the situation. Anne and I were already filthy so we did the dirty work cleaning and the others put him into his wheelchair after the most insane cleaning with the poor man dangling in our mobile hoist.

Now a massive poop explosion is not quiet or odour free .....not a single one of the 5 men in that room wanted dinner that night, but suddenly they all wanted to walk even the guy who had been carrying on like a porkchop all day about his intra abdominal gas post lap chole and would not engage with me to mobilize.

The poor patient was mortified that myself and Anne had to go off and wash our hair, self and put on theatre scrubs. We worked in facility where we had white tunics with colour coded trims and colour coded pants. Both myself and Anne chucked a full uniform that night.....

[Crystal-Wings, LVN]

This was before I was a nurse, but I used to do private duty for a woman in assisted living. There was this guy that always like to flirt with her, even though she was married (this was the alz unit) and he'd say "hey baby!" to her every time he saw her. That was pretty funny.

Another time we were in the dining room and this same guy didn't like what they were served so he said "This is horse ****! I won't eat horse ****!" So the aide jokingly told him "We don't serve horse **** here, but you can get some across the road!" (this facility was in the country and there were indeed horse stables across the road!)

[Have Nurse, ADN, RN]

Many years ago I was working a med/surg duty on evenings. Our charge RN manned the call lights. She was a bit frazzled when she answered a light and asked softly on the intercome: "Yes, may I help you?" The patient, a gentle slow moving and hesitant personality stated: "I'm not sure but....well...I think.........I think I might have to use the bathroom."

"Just a moment," the nurse replied. She turned off the speaker and growled in frustration to us at the desk. (I was struggling to keep a straight face) "WELL, WHICH IS IT???!"

She sent someone to the patients' room but the rest of us couldn't help smiling at her ability to sound calm on the light, but not at the desk!

[mejsp]

The funniest things that come to mind:

I worked as a nursing assistant during LVN school. We took report and jotted notes on a little pad with the patient's information on it, name, diagnosis, vital signs, intake and output, the usual stuff. My patient was in the bathroom. I looked on my paper and said, "Mr. Librax, are you doing o.k.?" He said, "Yea, I'll be right out." About that time I realized I'd called him by his diagnosis "O.D. Librax." He'd overdosed on Librax! Needless to say I thought I'd die. This young, handsome fellow came out of the bathroom smirking at me. I made the mistake of telling my brother about the error. That was in 1981. My brother still sends me notes signed "Mr. Librax."

Next, I worked in Labor and Delivery. The doctor's locker room and bathroom was adjacent to our lounge and a direct link from delivery and the postpartum floor. It was standard procedure for us to knock on the door and walk right through. On this fateful evening one of our physicians was sitting on the throne with the door wide open. I walked in and he cried, "Maaa..Mary!" I apologized profusely. He later told me the thing that bothered him most was that I didn't turn around, I just kept going. I was on a mission. Its not like a big deal for nurses to be in the bathroom with people. Attending the delivery with him later that evening was a little awkward, but we got past it.

[Have Nurse, ADN, RN]

You poor kid!! LOL

[sevensonnets]

I've worked for many years in a Catholic hospital, and when nuns or monks or bishops, etc., are admitted they are treated like royalty. Sometimes they're admitted to ICU just to get more personal attention. We had this one monk with a diagnosis of abdominal pain although he claimed he wasn't having any. A whole crew of visiting monks came to see him one day and they were watching wrestling and laughing so loud I as manager of the unit had to go quiet them down. Anyway, when Bro. Aloyisius was to be discharged I put him in the WC and went out to meet his ride home. We're going down the ramp to the car and he goes, "Oh look, there's Bro. Alphonse! Let's pretend I'm dead!" He slumped over in the WC and became 'unconscious'! Bro. Alphonse wasn't having it. He says, "Get up Aloyisius or I'm going home without you. We're having pot roast for dinner tonight."

[WalterWho]

I was recovering an older guy in PACU and every time I attempted to get close to him, touch him, or even talk to him he would bat me away and sternly tell me to "behave, Cody". I tried to listen to lung sounds: "No, Cody, behave!". I tried to look at his dressing: "Behave, Cody!". I would simply ask if he was having pain: "Cody, you behave!". After he started to calm down, it was determined that he could safely return to med/surg, so we transported him. When we got to his room he was a lot more with it, so I asked him: "Who is Cody?". He looked perplexed, shrugged his shoulders, and hesitantly said "I have a cat named Cody." He got a kick out of the story.

[bikegirl]

the silliest thing happened when I was a PCT, working on a GeriPsyc floor.

I came into work and a pt kept going around saying that there's a bear in her room. Pt started following me around to tell me about the bear in her room.

I just wasn't up to hearing about bears for the next 12 hours.

The pt lead the way to her room and pointed to the closet. At the closet, I made bear noises and chased the bear out of her room. The pt started laughing and ran out of her room.

In the dayroom, pt started telling eveybody "I told that nurse (we were all nurses to pts) there was a bear in my room and she believed me!!!!!!!!!"

Until I left that floor 6 months later, nurses and other techs would make bear noises upon my approach. There was a bear picture put in my prog notes cabinet, a beanie bear placed in my desk drawer, and a pic of a black bear mysteriously appeared on my locker.

I never lived that one down.

[cmilly4]

I was helping a nurse clean up a client whose ostomy kept leaking. I had not seen her much that day and asked how her day was going. She responded "it's been well" as I turned the patient toward her and heard splashing on the floor. She stopped and just looked down and then walked off to grab napkins. I was thinking, "why did she leave me here holding the patient?" Turns out the noise was the leaky ostomy pouring over the bed onto her shoe and pants. We laughed because the timing was so perfect, "It's been wel..."

The above woman was telling me what a great job "the little black boy" did shaving her (she had some facial hair) nobody could figure out who she was talking about until I finally got his name and it was an italian guy that wasn't that dark. Everyone's confusion was funny though.

A confused woman asked me to crawl in bed with her because she thought I was her daughter and later cussed me out saying she wasn't going to listen to me just because I looked like her daughter.

A lady telling me she had been searching all night for her hearing aid that was in her ear.

I was wheeling out an oriental patient for discharge and jokingly said, "woohoo, Freedom", I made the patient smile really big and when we got outside he pronounced "I'm freedom!".

In general I try to make my patients smile and we usually find things to laugh about, those are just the ones I could think of.

[cmilly4]

I almost forgot. At clinical I was feeding a blind patient. His roommate starting "meowing" maybe he had a mental disorder. The poor blind patient was so excited but I didn't have the heart to tell him there wasn't really a cat there.

[Leader25, ASN, BSN, RN]

Working the night shift I was in charge and a newer young nurse came to me and said that the doll on the window sill in the patients room was scaring her. Well I just said oh stop and said I would check with her and pulled up my back straight , grabbed a big flash light and headed for the patients room with the nurse following me, it was dark and stood just past the doorway held up my flashlight and snapped it on the location of the doll, well...the big dolls eyes suddenly shone like some unearthly being ...we both screamed out loud and ran down the hall,and could not stop shaking and laughing.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

Years ago, I worked at a world famous teaching hospital where there were many world famous physicians. World famous physicians from other countries visited regularly and news cameras followed them around. Despite all this fame (and fortune) nursing staffing was abysmal, and often we were staffed with a charge nurse (any RN who was actually employed by the hospital SOMEWHERE in the hospital, not necessarily an RN with more than one shift under her belt or any knowledge whatsoever of the specialty) and the rest were agency. Some of the agency nurses were great, and I learned a lot from them. Others, not so much.

As a world famous hospital, we had patients from all over the world. Carol, one of the agency's not-so-finest, firmly believed that anyone who didn't speak English could be made to speak English if you just spoke it loud enough to them. On this particular day, I foolishly assigned her to the room closest to the elevators. As a couple of world famous physicians strolled off the elevators followed by a news crew or two, Carol could be heard loudly and distinctly asking her patient (a very famous non-English speaking gentleman) "Do you have to (BAD WORD RHYMING WITH "HIT") Senor? Do you have to S---?"

Thankfully, her voice was edited out for the version that appeared on the evening news, but I'm told the original version is still out there on a blooper reel.