Murphy's Law of Nursing

[Pepper The Cat]

1. The admission they want to send you is always the opposite sex of your only available bed - resulting in bed moves.

2. A certain MD always takes at least 20 minutes to respond to your page - except for the time when you page him and then run to the bathroom - that time he calls back in 3 minutes.

3. The loud snorer is never roommates with the pt who is deaf. No, he is roommates with the light sleeper.

4. Families always want to talk to the discharge planner, social worker, specialist or manager on a Sunday afternoon when none of these people are working. and the get mad at YOU because they are not available.

5. Pts are either constipated requiring laxs, enemas etc, or have exploding diarrhea.

What are your Murphy's Laws?

[bagladyrn, RN]

Your nose always begins itching and/or running right after you don your mask and sterile gloves.

[anotherone, BSN, RN]

anytime you are actually fully staffed, census will be low, staff will be cancelled and then the admissions will start rolling in

[Morainey, BSN, RN]

Drawing up the Dilaudid in the med room, thinking to myself, "do not throw this away as it needs to be barcode-scanned or they will think I am DIVERTING NARCOTICS AND I WILL LOSE MY LICENSE!!!" as I watch myself chuck the empty Dilaudid syringe into a sharps container.

[Seas]

I have my personal one:

if one single patient will go south and will require Rapid response team or even a code (god forbid) that will be my patient!

[Towbongsnjrn]

You will loose your peripheral IV access at 6p/6a. ALWAYS.

[Mandychelle79, ASN, RN]

you have to call the doctor who hates to be woken up at midnight for a triage pt and then again in an hour because as you were hanging up with the first call a second call came in

[BostonTerrierLover, BSN, RN]

Laxatives of choice are always given 1 hour before my shift starts.

Someone always wants 1/2 and 1/2 coffee, 2 grahm crackers, and a 2% milk, . . .Oh, and something for Nausea!" while I'm running to the desk to announce "CODE BLUE ER" over the Loud Speakers.

Having One less 4x4 than I needed.

Nose will ALWAYS start tickling 30 seconds into ANY sterile procedure.

[MPKH, BSN, RN]

The doctors will make rounds just when you're about to go off to break, or at shift change.

[NO50FRANNY]

I have heaps but will narrow it down.

I am guaranteed to be the only nurse that the floridly psychotic or upset geriatric patient will talk to or respond to, particularly when they are not assigned to my area, they also appear to know when I am working. Add to this my colleagues making jokes that I must be around when the department is full of weirdness.

Massive verbal and reassuring de-escalation scenario with patients' relatives right at handover, only accomplishable by the nurse with all the details (me) ensuring I go home an hour late. Couldn't they have cracked the s*#$ half an hour earlier?

Patients will always decide to get sick/deteriorate, need to toilet, or die the minute I transfer them into their ward bed.

I offer pain relief, they decline, 5 minutes later the doctor tells me they would like pain relief making me look totally lacking in compassion.

If you are busy, and your patient has fifty tablets that you have carefully dispensed into a cup for administration, you will either drop them yourself or they will.

If I run with the crash trolley to the cardiac arrest on the ward, they will be alive when I get there and have just fainted. If I walk they will be having CPR.

Nose itching after preparing for sterile procedure should be studied.

Patients with terrible access will always need it the most and be the most needle-phobic.

The patient with a GCS 14 attributed to IVDU after a fall will always be the one seizing and intubated 20 minutes after arrival (secondary to their large extradural haemorrhage). Said pt. will always be unloaded in a less visual area, with a less experienced nurse because no-one thought anything was really wrong with them.

The pt. that the ambulance officers overplay have the flu, the ones they underplay die quickly.

Awful, time sucking patients will always be around when you are trying to look after the nicest people in the world.

[blondy2061h, MSN, RN]

The day you think you're just barely healthy enough to go to work you'll have the most grueling, physically demanding assignment ever. The syringe full of blood will always hit the floor barrel down. The day you wear white you'll get puked on.

[thesundowner]

Once I complete the extensive, time consuming, back-breaking dressing change on my MVA patient's lower extremities that took 45 minutes to complete, the orthopedic surgeon is certain to stroll into the room, rip open the dressing, glance at the wound for .5 second, then leave the patient there with the dressing hanging off on the floor for me to completely redo because it is now dirty. Side note: the orthopedic surgeon has not, prior to this moment, been to see this patient in 3 days.

[sapphire18]

Bring 2 needles into the room, you get the stick. Bring 1 and you miss.