What is the dumbest order you ever read?

Not an order, but a progress note. A schizo pt claims to have chronic back pain d/t being pregnant with 16 babies. Dr. made rounds and wrote "no problems other than being pregnant with 16 babies!"

Here's one I got tonight that I had to clarify...

16 gm of Mag Sulfate IM !! (for a mag level of 0.9)

Called the doc back and was like, "are you sure about that?" He said "omg, did I say IM? I meant IV" lol

I politely suggested we try 4 gm of mag IV and then just see where we are

Sure enough, after 4gm given, level was up to 2.1

What would they do w/o us to save their butts.

I've seen sliding scale potassium before. It was for a patient that was chronically low.

Bedrest with bathroom priviledges...

.... on a 90 year old with a hip fracture

i work ltc and the only standing order we have it for treatments it is
clean c n/s, apply TAO, cover c 4x4 and tape qday and prn
one of our experienced nurses wrote the oder to read

clean c n/s, apply new skin.

sadly enough this wasnt caught till about 1 week later....

a few days ago we found out there is actually something called "new skin" bowlers use it lol

So this patient has had their ER workup, is perfectly stable (DX of HTN or some-such), and is being admitted to the tele floor. One of the nurses is putting in the morning admit orders and there, buried amongst the morning orders for labs, meds, etc...is an order that states "Intubate". For a patient that was breathing better than I, and was fully alert. Great fun when he called the intern that wrote the order (on speaker phone) and asked if that was a STAT order or if it could wait till in the AM. Even better when she denied she had ordered it. Gotta love doclings.

Doc got in a hurry and wrote and order for:

Ancef IV Q8 hours prn pain

Rehydrate the patient who is bleeding copiously (and has a falling BP) with Sprite - now I guess this doesn't really count as it was a verbal order which we refused to carry out and insisted on an IV instead.

We have a doctor that writes a sliding scale for potassium on every patient he has regardless of diagnosis.

I work cardiac surgery -- the only patients who DON'T have an order for sliding scale potassium are those with renal failure.