What is the funniest or most embarrassing nursing experience you've had

[jaad]

My funniest was when I had a sun-downers/dementia pt on M/S walking the floor on night shift.

I said "come on, let's go to bed...and this senior pt ran back to bed, and said okay you can get on top" LOL

[ausrnurse]

I had a patient from ICU with an AKI once who was expected to recover his kidney function - he was a bit down, so I said, "I hear you won't be with us for much longer!" meaning the dialysis unit. He thought I was telling him he was dying. Awkward!

[MomRN0913]

There was that one time I was doing postmortem care with my fellow nurse and the pt had a femoral Udall catheter which was coming out. He asked if we should leave it, and I said " nah, it's halfway out anyways, I've done it before and it didn't bleed, just put a pressure dressing on it. This was a big lady. We took it out and put the dressing on it and I it was fine. Until I turned her towards my coworker to put the shroud underneath and blood goes shooting all over him. And I mean a blood bath, he looked like a scene out of a horror movie

I felt awful. He got some scrubs from L&D, had to go take a shower and wear post op shoes because his sneakers were saturated with blood.

I felt awful since he was helping me and it was my bright ideal to take the catheter out. I offered to buy him new sneakers, but between soaking them in hydrogen peroxide and. Washing them a few times they were as good as new.

We were friends, so we got a good laugh out of it.

And of course there was the time that the seemingly out of it 99 year old grabbed my butt.

And the time I made the oh so common mistake of referring to a patients wife as his daughter when it was his wife.

Ooooopsie.

[vintage_RN, BSN, RN]

We had a big lug of a man in our ICU. He was uncouth slightly creepy and less than charming, but overall harmless. He was riddled with pockets of infection and empyema, edematous and weeping from every pore. When we pulled him back from the brink of death he refused to do a thing to help himself and anytime a woman entered his room, he said "Hey girl, why don't you get me such-and-such.". After months of hours-long wound packing sessions every shift we got him down to a half-inch sized wound just below his navel that I packed in a few seconds. I got him all tidy and tucked in when he complained that it itched. He would definitely peel away the dressing and put his filthy hands right into that wound so I explained that it was really important that he did not put his bare hands on this wound. I demonstrated with my own hand how to relieve the itching by rubbing really fast over the top of the wound on top of the covers with a flat palm. When his eyes bulged out of his head, I realized that it was not his wound I was rubbing with my hand! I turned eight shades of red and ran out of the room saying something about an emergency.[/quote']

This. This wins. That is SO embarrassing LOL

[Pudnluv, ASN, RN]

The other day walked into a room to answer a light and said, "Yes maam, how may I help you?" The patient looked at me and said "Sir". Whoops!

[StaffNurseMcS]

My past few weeks of shifts have been hell

I was chased with a metal drip stand because the patient thought I was an arsonist

Just a few days ago I got the very smell contents of an abdo drain all over me

I had an elderly confused patient put his hands down his pants and then rub my face

[Hygiene Queen]

I had an elderly confused patient put his hands down his pants and then rub my face

Lord, protect us and save us...

[Umberlee]

There are a couple that jump to mind...we had a lady at the nursing home where I used to be a CNA who had had a stroke. She was originally from England and had a poster in her room that said "Central Islip, Oxford" or something like that. She started hollering out "Islip! Islip!" at first and gradually over the course of a few days it morphed into different "I" sentences..."I was! I was!" "I can't! I can't!" One day she began yelling out all day, "I fell! I fell! I fell! I fell!" When she started with that one, the nurse stopped and asked her, "When did you fall?" and she then yelled, "I lied! I lied!"

Another was a lady I cared for in a setting for adults with brain injuries. Their primary care was done by a practice consisting of local students/residents and was always very chaotic and backed up. The client was waiting and waiting with the staff and she was growing impatient. She finally told the staff member, "Just peek out the door and see if you can even see them." The staff dutifully did so and as soon as the door opened the client began screaming, "Help! Get in here, help! He's hitting me!"

[nrsang97, BSN, RN]

Haven't you learned how to walk like a duck when you sense your scrub pants coming loose?

We usually get a little warning before a full drop-trou event. If you do the duck walk, you can usually waddle into the nearest corner to cinch the ties.

Because of the abdominal binder I didn't realize they were coming loose. I will never wear one like that again LOL. Next time I will use it to hold my scrubs up LOL.

[brai9284rn]

One of the funniest moments happened in the middle of changing a patient. I work in an intermediate unit for a cardiac/respiratory/and everything else floor. We had a new admit right around shift change, so there were about 3 of us in the room. The patient was confused so we were just talking while changing her. Halfway through I realize the patient's voice sounds like someone's I know. I kept thinking and thinking. It clicked, she sounded exactly like the Gingerbread Man from Shrek. Once I told everyone what I thought, we were cracking up. I was crying by the time we were finished.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

Then there was the evening shift in early July, 1970 when a couple of my orderly buddies -- the ones that carried baggies of marijuana and mescaline tabs in their pockets all over the hospital on payday -- were hanging out in the ER, business is slow, and the new intern decides to expound on the signs and symptoms of LSD intoxication.

"Bright red cheeks, wide open eyes, staring..." he went on and on, and then happened to take a look over in the corner at the orderlies. Bright red cheeks, wide-eyed, staring ... Intern beats a hasty retreat. Hilarity ensues.

[That Guy, BSN, RN, EMT-B]

Pants off Code Blue. I had to change my brand of scrubs so it never happened again.

[twinmommy+2, ADN, BSN, MSN]

A friend who was a tech at the time said she was in the room taking care of a patient who had Down's, said she bent over the bed to do something with him and accidentally farted really loud. She looked at him and he looked at her back regarding each other. He then said "Sorry" to her as if he did it.