Shocking story of the day

Nurses General Nursing

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We seem to have a little bit of a theme going on at allnurses with stories of horrible infection control breaches. I figured I would add my story into the mix.

Last night I was hanging out with one of my friends who is a nurse at a different hospital than I. I told her about how frustrated I was that I had stabbed myself with a clean needle drawing up a med on my last shift. She asked me if I gave the med in that syringe anyway. I looked at her like she had six heads and told her that of course I threw that out and started over. She told me that a nurse she works with did the same thing- BUT GAVE THE MED ANYWAY! She told me her reasoning was that she knew she was clean. My jaw nearly hit the floor.

Specializes in Clinical Research, Outpt Women's Health.

Those nails need to go Sharpie mom. For a man to almost lose his leg? That is horrifying.

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Specializes in ER.

It is amazing when I hear about Nurses and how they contaminate their patients. You would hear all these stories....think no way....well let me tell you I witnessed it first hand when my son was a patient at IU Methodist.....yep I am throwing them under the bus because it was MANY nurses there....one ICU nurse was changing his PICC line dressing, here is how it went....she opened the package, put on the mask...took out the gloves and set them on the bed...took out the tagaderm dressing and peeled it open then set it on his bed sticky side up...with bare hands, opened the chloroprep sticks and put them back in the sterile tray....put the sterile gloves on and took off the old dressing...cleaned the area and put the new dressing on.....all was contaminated. I went and got her supervisor......he ended up with VRE

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Specializes in ER.

I wish! We still use blunt tip needles to draw up. They hurt when you accidently stick yourself! But Yes I changed the needle.

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love the avatar where'd ya get that one?

When I was in nursing school back in the late 80's

I had to give a postpartum patient an injection and

drew up the med with a sharp that I first accidentally

poked myself with. I was too scared to tell my instructor

so I hid my injured finger and gave the injection anyway

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Specializes in Clinical Research, Outpt Women's Health.
love the avatar where'd ya get that one?

When I was in nursing school back in the late 80's

I had to give a postpartum patient an injection and

drew up the med with a sharp that I first accidentally

poked myself with. I was too scared to tell my instructor

so I hid my injured finger and gave the injection anyway

Oh no!

Do you want me to help protect you from all the outrage?:lol2:

I bet that happens a lot with newbies. And I think it can be forgiven.

However, the experienced folks with blatant disregard who cause infections.....need to be dealt with!

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i have a horror story that will make you go :bugeyes:

i was working as a tech on a med/surg floor. there was a patient who by all appearances many would judge as "redneck." she was always nice to me, but i'm just saying...she had a rather rough appearance (tattoos, foul language, smoker) as opposed to appearing "innocent" or "professional." so, needless to say, when she started yelling and using profanity about how horrible one of the nurses had treated her....everyone kind of assumed that it was just the patient "blowing a gasket" and of course never really questioned that the nurse had actually been unkind. afterall, the nurse was one of those "innocent" looking nurses who would never even dream of saying a bad word. she was actually a preacher's wife. i always thought she was kind of sneaky and judgemental though just by the looks she gave/her demeanor.

so....this patient got tired of waiting for transport to take her out after being discharged and when i noticed her getting upset i offered to take her. of course, she had bags and things that had to be taken out too. so, i couldn't carry all the bags AND push her out in the wheelchair. i asked if her mother (who appeared to be in her sixties) could carry one of the bags, and we could sit the other in her lap. she said, F*** this and F**** that....they were supposed to bring a cart to take my things out. my mom isn't supposed to carry anything over five pounds, etc, etc. i apologized (it wasn't my fault and i was unaware of the situation until then, but was just trying to calm her down). she started walking down the hall when she NEEDED to be in the wheelchair and was VERY vocal about how unhappy she was with this particular nurse. she actually threatened to "beat her a**!" i finally convinced her to get into the wheelchair and as i walked her down and stood with her outside while waiting on her mother to fetch the car...i asked her what the nurse had done to make her so upset. she said first of all the nurse would only give her one pain pill when all the other nurses prior to her were letting her have two pain pills. she said she asked the nurse why she could only have one and her response was, "you don't need two." i was skeptical, but kept letting her vent. i figured if the nurse wasn't giving her two then she may have been too sedated...who knows. she said THEN the nurse was putting in her foley and dropped it in the floor.....and proceeded to pick it up and use it anyway. i was REALLY skeptical then (i mean, who would do that?!), but i expressed my shock and apologized for the nurse's behavior. in my own mind i was thinking that the nurse might have dropped the foley bag and gotten a new one, but the patient didn't realize that it had been replaced. anyway, i got the lady to calm down and she thanked me, but she was still visibly shaken when she was in the car.

as soon as i returned back to the floor the nurse who had been accused approached me and wanted to know what ended up happening. the last thing she saw was me chasing behind the woman with a wheelchair and lots of nurses swarming around as she retreated due to having been cursed at and threatened to be beat up. i said, "well, she said you wouldn't let her have the pain medication she requested even though everyone else had because you thought she "didn't need it" and she said that you dropped her catheter in the floor, but picked it up and used it anyway."

without skipping a beat the nurse scrunches up her nose and says, "well, i washed it off."

:banghead: :eek:

i didn't say one word. i was stunned. i just walked away....awkward. i did tell the charge nurse, but as far as i know nothing was ever said to the nurse. the lady told me she planned to report the nurse. the sad part is that because of her appearance and the way she behaved upon her exit, even if she did report it, she probably wasn't taken seriously.

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Totally not a nursing post, but this grossed me out...

I was in Wal-mart one day and a baby dropped it's pacifier from mouth to floor.

I watched in horror as mom picked it up, stuck in her mouth, sucked on it, then stuck it right back in baby's mouth.

Cringe. Cringe. Cringe.

that is gross, but...hey, at least she attempted to "clean" it for the baby.

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Specializes in geriatrics.
Totally not a nursing post, but this grossed me out...

I was in Wal-mart one day and a baby dropped it's pacifier from mouth to floor.

I watched in horror as mom picked it up, stuck in her mouth, sucked on it, then stuck it right back in baby's mouth.

Cringe. Cringe. Cringe.

I've seen this happen often... I believe it is something the older generation was taught to do a lot, especially if there was no running water around to rinse off the nuk with... At least she didn't just give it back to baby without wiping it off at all!

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Specializes in Cardiac surgery ICU.

I wouldn't like to be your patient, that's certain!!! Also some of the other nurses after reading their comments!!!

Never heard of aseptic methods????

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And people wonder why I REFUSE to go into a hospital. :rolleyes:

Saddest part is that folks actually trust these people with their lives, and the lives of their loved ones.

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Infection control is taken very seriously at my hospital. We have at least one or two learning modules a month on infection control issues and once a year during our hands on education fair we have an interactive infection station. The nurses are taught strict aseptic technique and from what I see follow it pretty well. I have seen nurses and NP's contaminate their gloves but will immediately ask for new ones. Drs. are the problem in our unit, but the nurses are very good at speaking up if they see a breach in sterile technique. The nurses have been told that they will not get in trouble for telling a Dr. that they have contaminated their sterile area. The doctors actually get reprimanded if they give the nurse any trouble in this situation.The nurses help each other, too. If one nurse is helping another with a sterile procedure and notices that something was contaminated, will alert the other nurse. We work very well together in our unit and very few people take offense to this. New nurses will become upset, until they realize that this is standard practice and before long they are also watching out for contamination. Our vented pts. have sx for the ETT and separate sx for the oral and nasal cavities. Everything is capped or covered, including suction tubings. Every port on the IV tubing is capped off if not in use. Everything is changed every 24 hrs. from suction containers, inline catheters, oral sx. devices and all IV tubing with additives. All IV tubing is connected and set up using sterile prodecure every time it's changed. This takes a lot of time but has seriously decreased our infection rate. We also have a PICC drsg. team and only the very few nurses on the team are allowed to change PICC drsgs. Our PICC line infection rate has decreased dramatically since we started this. Some nurses complain that all nurses should be allowed to change the dressings because they are nurses, too, and know how to change a sterile dressing. But as we have all read right here and know from experience, all nurses are not using proper aseptic technique. The fact that our infection rate has dropped so much goes to prove this, too. No fake nails are allowed and regular nails can be no longer than 1/4 inch. About every 4 to 6 months the educator puts up a big colorful graph to show how we are doing on our infection rates. It includes all the sites, such as IVs centrally inserted, ETT, blood, MRSA infection and any other sites that may cause infection. We also have an area on the dry erase board that says NO PICC INFECTIONS for ? days. The number of days is filled in. If we didn't do well on one particular area, then we will have increased education and quality assurance for several months until the infection rate is in the acceptable range. It seems like a lot of extra work but because we see the results of it, we realize that it is the correct way to control the spread of infection.

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