Stupid Nurse Tricks (Or How To Look Incredibly Stupid)

[Ruby Vee]

It's been awhile since we had a stupid nurse tricks thread, so here goes: How to look Incredibly Stupid Without Really Trying:

Call in to work because it's snowed and it's "not worth your life to drive to work on those roads." Be in a bar down the street from the hospital when your best friend at work uses the "Find My Friends" app on her iPhone to check on when her replacement will get there in to relieve her. (Will you lose your job?)

You've got horrible abdominal pain, but you suck it up and come to work anyway. Yay, you! You collapse in your patient's room and are whisked off to the ER by your manager and an RT. You insist that you're infertile and couldn't possibly be pregnant as you're delivered of a full term baby girl. (OK, this one was a CNS and nursing student.)

Call in sick to work because you want to go to your manager's wedding and you didn't win the "get the weekend off" lottery. Catch the bouquet. (And lose your job.)

You're having palpitations, and you're a little lightheaded and slightly diaphoretic. Strangers at the mall are concerned and offer to call an ambulance. You decline, telling them you're fine. Then you think that you probably should go to the ER, but since you know from AN that you won't get a sandwich to eat, you sit down at Bertucci's and order a plate of ravioli. Then you drive yourself to the ER, park at the bottom of a hill and walk uphill to the entrance. You're surprised when the triage nurse takes you straight back. (Yes, that was me. I was fine.)

Tell everyone at work that you're young, you want to have fun, and you're going to a friend's Halloween party after work. Go to the party dressed as a sexy nurse, and be in lots of pictures. Post those pictures on Facebook. Now call in sick to work the next day at 06:50 for your 07:00 shift. You've friended everyone you work with on FaceBook. (And NOT lose your job. What are the odds?)

Steal money from your colleagues' bags in the breakroom. Get caught by a colleague with a black belt in tae kwon do. Be photographed with a 5 foot tall girl flipping you and then sitting on you until Security arrives. (Have your manliness questioned by everyone who sees the pictures.)

[IrishErin]

OOH, and one more! I had this trauma surgeon who would always criticize everyone in the room during a resuscitation. One day I wasn't squeezing the blood in hard enough (waiting on the Level I infuser), so he came to take over and show me how the experts do it. He proceeded to bust the blood bag and cover himself in blood. I will never forget that day!

Yessss! Sweet justice!

[ParvulusPuella]

We measure BS in mg/dL.

[Uknurse2314]

Ah, thanks :)

[Silverdragon102, BSN]

What are your normal blood sugar ranges in the US and how are they measured?

I find it confusing when I read posts RE blood sugars because in the UK our blood sugars should be between 4-7 mmols/L (the highest I've known on a DKA patient is 48mmols/L).

Just curious, even though it's clearly measured in different units in the US it still makes my heart jump a bit seeing a blood sugar of 30 being discussed!

Also I love reading all the posts on here, they literally make me laugh out loud some of them.

This may help with converting US to UK/Canada

Blood Sugar Glucose Converter for Diabetes. Even has a pdf chart

[GoldenRoya]

The nurse (not me!) goes into this one patient's room to give the Magic Silver Bullet (suppository). She'd just had a hip done and doesn't want to roll too far, so my coworker does the best she can by feel.... which turns out to be a mistake, since she misjudges the distance and tucks it up, not the rectum, but the other one, just an inch or so further forward. She goes to retrieve the suppository, but can't catch the slippery little sucker, apologizing to the patient all the while, while the patient is getting more and more uncomfortable until she finally says, "Honey, honey, stop... I'm not used to people digging down there!" We found out later that the patient was a nun...

You'd think that people would learn to look before they stick, right? Wrong. Someone else (me) thinks she's hot stuff and can hit the right hole every time, no matter what... Yeah. I did the poke-and-hope method, and missed. Had to go excavating in order to get it back. The patient looked down at me, digging around for the slippery bugger, and says, "You know, [susan], my partner, could have had that thing out in no time..." My face turned so red I looked like a sunburn, and the patient had the good grace to laugh. As did the rest of my coworkers, after she shared the story with the next shift!

[Bortaz, MSN, RN]

We had a night shift NICU nurse sit in a chair by the wall, and doze off (who am I kidding...she was in REM sleep). Once asleep, her head falls back and hits the old code blue button (that isn't used in NICU, but is from the previous life of that room). Code blue is called overhead, "Code blue in NICU, code blue in NICU, code blue in NICU).

Our phone starts ringing...it's the code team, calling to ask "Where the hell is NICU!? We've never responded there!"

We don't call codes in the NICU, we just handle it our selves. They were all quite surprised to hear that one called.

[yesterday]

RT on a fitness craze was wearing ankle weights for his shift. (God alone knows why -- why would you want to make work more difficult than it already is?) Took the patient to MRI without thinking twice about the ankle weights. Suddenly, RT is airborne, flying right past the patient, nurse and MD and landing with his ankles slammed up against the scanner, above head height. All attempts to remove the weights without removing his pants are fruitless. Patient is laughing so hard he forgets to ask for dilaudid. In the end, RT's pants had to be removed in order to detatch him from the scanner.

That was the day he chose to go commando.

Metal bits from the ankle weights went into the scanner and it had to be shut down for three days.

This is absolutely HILARIOUS!

[Lev, MSN, RN, NP]

We had a nurse, who had something like 15 years exp at a busy Boston Hospital, hire in at our rural facility and just crashed and burned. Management was suspicious of her, so they checked her omnicell med pull records and she had something like 50 wrong pulls in a day. I mean, how does that even happen?

She was hopelessly behind on her meds; okay, it happens -- I have no judgement against her. But we came to find that she was stashing all her late meds in her bag. Not narcotics, mind you; antibiotics and BP meds! So she was trying to cover her mistakes by stealing meds from her patients.

That is what I call stupid, and wildly unethical

Wow...