Practical jokes at work

Nurses General Nursing

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What are some of the best practical jokes you have ever pulled off at work?

I was in charge one night and we had a prisnor as a patient. The cop watching him until the county took over was a real jerk. He went out into the waiting room to sleep. An hour into his nap we moved the guy to a room down the hall. He, as well as the cop who was supposed to be watching him, slept thru the entire thing. Another hour went by and 2 county guys came in to relieve the township guy and found him asleep in the waiting room. As they came thru the closed fire doors into the unit we could hear the township cop saying "don't worry about it, he didn't go anywhere." The 3 of them walked into a room with an empty bed with a crumpled up sheet, gown and socks on the floor. All color drained from the cops face as he came out to the desk and stuttered "w-w-wher's m-m-m-my boy?" We nearly died laughing. When they started talking about APB's we fessed up and showed the 3 of them to the patient's new room. The county guys loved it!!

So what about the rest of you? Surgilube on phone earpieces and call the person? Water fights with 60cc syringes?? How do you blow off steam at work?????:roll

Specializes in NICU, Infection Control.

I don't know if this will work for you, Kristi, but many years ago, some one brought in a zucchini from her garden, put in in an incubator (it weighed about 3#, and was shaped like a pear), got the X-Ray tech to take a "baby-graph" on it and put it up on the viewing board w/ the dx: dysmorph! The peds Radiology attending thought it was great.

We have a pathologist who is renowned for studying placentas, yes, really. One of the nurses brought in her horse's placenta in a trash bag, and we made out a pathology request: Baby Boy Foal and took it to the lab. One of the Path residents thought it was an accreta and got all excited, but Dr. B knew immediately what it was, and loved it--came over to the nursery all excited--"but you really need a barn floor to spread it out on!"

When I was doing Infection Control, one of the medical floors called me, and insisted that I come over to see what was in some IV fluid they had hung on a pt. When I got there, there was a goldfish in an IV bottle w/ the IV tubing connected to the Oxygen outlet! So, of course, I called the head of the Micro lab to come up, and he called the ID docs---the pt who had been quite depressed got a LOT of visitors and was smiling and laughing at the joke, and all the "suits" that came by to see him.

ok Kristi,

Try this one.

Get some hospital letterhead and write that you are pleased to announce the following people have qualified for Merit Raises.

List the names of those you wish to play the joke on and state that they must report to HR on a certain day at a certain hour.

Then sign it (don't use your name-DUH) and post it.

Let us know how it works.

Ahhhh... I can already hear the laughter of the HR employees when some nurse walks in and proudly states "I'm here for my raise!"

:rotfl:

Heather

How about putting nitro paste in a hand cream tube, this in hopes of getting the ER sup, but an ortho nurse comes whizzing through ER, on her way to the 8th floor, decides to snake her some hand cream and bing botta boom, she passes out getting off the elevator.

Specializes in cardiac ICU.

This is a tame one, but it was cute. In the middle of a shift, one Filipino nurse, who is usually very serious, decided to play a joke on her trainee, a somewhat shy and nervous Filipino nurse new to this country. So she called her on her wireless phone and said, "Hey, there's a phone call at the desk for you, from the Phillipines! They're calling collect, and they said it's an EMERGENCY!" This poor nurse completely freaked out, trying to hand off her patients so she could run to her car and get a credit card. After she realized it was a joke, she got much more relaxed at work.

Also, we have these fat little 3cc 0.9NS flushes where I work, which fit in the palm of my hand perfectly. When they were new, I had a great time squirting at the ceiling above coworkers who had their backs turned. They would inevitably look up and see nothing; after a few times I would ask them if they felt anything dripping on them, or was it just me?

Specializes in Medical.

It was a time of great change - new CEO, relatively new DON; we were in the middle of a 'paradigm shift', and the hospital had spent thousands on a consultancy firm. We had recently changed ID badge formats, and the ID now included a magnetic swipe bar. Admin had been putting out a whole lot of ridiculous new policies and memos, so a friend of mine typed up the following (on letterhead):

Attention, all staff

It has come to the attention of X Hospital management that excessive staff time is being lost with toilet breaks. [Overpaid, Overhyped and Deluded] Consulting estimates this lost time to be the equivalent of 1.2EFT per unit or ward per week.

All staff toilet doors are therefore being fitted with a swipe card system. Staff are required to swipe their ID cards before entering the bathroom. It is not necessary for staff to use the bathroom facilities more often than once per duty shift, for no longer than three minutes.

To enforce this policy, a red light will flash in the cubicle at the three minute mark. If the cubicle is not exited within thirty seconds the door will automatically swing open.

We thank you for your cooperation in making X hospital all that it can be."

It was 'signed' by the CEO, DON and Medical Director (scrawls over their typed names).

Copies were hung in the two staff toilets on the ward (single rooms with one toilet, fronting on to the main corridor on either side of the ward).

Of course, all the nursing staff thought it was hilarious. However, I was standing at the main desk the day after it was hung up, when one of the consultants came barging up, smake billowing from her ears, 'memo' in hand. She starting ranting about how enough was enough, the whole administrative team were jackasses and morons, and the hospital would be far better off if the salaries of those 'ridiculous, useless, waste-of-space consultants' were spent on patient care.

Although we were tempted to let her head up to admin, we let her in on the joke. She settled down (a little!) and said "Well, it wouldn't surprise me at all. Take it down so they don't get any ideas!"

"O.K. I must confess this best joke I ever played on anyone....worked with a dr who was sooooo uptight, we had gotten some new vag speculums in, I put some lemon yogurt on one, brought it to him and said" Check out this vag discharge! Is this bad,or what!?" As he agreed, I said "you know, this smells kinda good!" and then licked the yogurt off!! He vomited!! We laughed for weeks!"

I am so glad those speculums were NEW!!!:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Count me in Mary!!!! In a heart beat! I can hear the interview questions now:

Do you laugh hysterically when someone falls flat on their face?

Do you engage in one upsmanship if someone plays a practical

joke on you? (If so, you're our nurse!!)

Are you willing to disgust uptight people by doing gross things?

Can we open this place soon????:roll :)

SIGN ME UP!!!! I tried to get a laff from my coworkers on the nose picking is a good thing article and they all looked down their noses at me. I can see them wanting to ban me if I did the chocolate frosting or yogurt things. But that has not stopped me from shooting nearly everyone of them with a syringe full of saline!!!

ER folks are always up for a practical joke....The fallopian tube one was new to me though...

We had a trauma surgeon once that would always leave his keys laying around the ER and then run in looking for them after he had done his rounds. One night the tech decided to "cast" his keys, he put them into a ball of wrapped plaster and let it harden. We drew a little happy face on it and set it on the counter and waited. he showed up about 2 hours later wanting to know if anyone had seen his keys. We all stopped what we were doing and looked at the rock hard blob on the counter....The look on his face was priceless... he had to get the saw out to get to his keys....

At my new hospital the doc loves to play jokes, I am just waiting for him to leave his car keys somewhere.....:devil:

Specializes in Emergency room, med/surg, UR/CSR.

:rotfl: When I discharge patients from my rooms in ER I usually tell them that they are free to go. Well, I had a patient brought in in handcuffs accompanied by a sheriff's deputy. When I told him (the prisoner), you're free to go like I normally do, I realized what I said, and then said "not literally." The deputy cracked up but the prisoner didn't think it was funny for some reason! :rotfl:

We have a charge nurse whose favorite patients are anyone over the age of 20. She signed up to work as a staff nurse one day, so we set here up; we wrote patients in all of her rooms and they all were under the age of like 6! I also put a note on the daily assignment sheet, stating that she requested to have all the kids put in her rooms that day! :rotfl: She didn't seem to find that funny though the rest of us were cracking up!

Pam

When I used to work at a pedi urgent care, we would do the "dropped baby" on any unsuspecting new physician or employee. I would walk down the hall with a doll resembling a new born wrapped in a blanket and trip in front of our x-ray tech. She would say "now I've gotta do an x-ray".

We like to prank call our triage desk when there is a new nurse. My personal favorite....Are you a nurse? Thank God, my little boy scraped bird poop off my car and ate it.. Is that poisonous? Never mind...I'll call 911.

Specializes in Emergency Room.

I made an ER chart listing a 350# man, HIV +, Temp 103, Hx: DM, HTN, recent gastric bypass surgery. c/o SOB, dizzy, N/V/D x 6 days. B/P 211/106, HR 138, resp 28. Then I found someone's forgotten sneakers and using blankets and towels made an "man" on a gurney in one of the ER rooms. I made it look like he had legs, with shoes sticking out from under the sheet, and found some old homeless persons ball cap to put on his "head". This was the only ER room with a camera, so that we could watch from the desk. First, the ER doc goes in. "Sir? Sir? I'm Dr. xyz. Sir?" We watched him circle the gurney for at least a minute until he finally lifted up the sheet and found only a fat "towel man". Oh he loved it! Then, of course we had to get the med student and the PA. We were rolling on the floor. :rotfl:

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