What have other nurses done that have freaked you out?

Nurses General Nursing

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What have other peers done intentional/unintentional to freak you out? Good or bad. Happy or sad.

On my FIRST day as an LVN, (LTC) a res was screaming in her room as I was walking out to leave. I went in to see what was going on. She was having an anxiety attack and severe pain (post stroke). I pulled the call light, and no one came. Uggg.

So I peeked out the door and saw my CNA walking down the hall, and told him to come sit with res. I went down to get her a Xanax and a pain pill, well relief nurse was in the restroom, and relief CNA (with call light still going off) was sitting behind nurses station reading a newspaper. I told CNA to tell the nurse to get a Xanax and pain pill for res. She said OK. I go to relieve my CNA. Said goodbye to him, and stayed with res. after 10 minutes, CNA COMES INTO ROOM WITH XANAX AND MORPHINE PILL. She is soooooo shocked to see me still there, she hands me the pills and RUNS to the relief nurse. I could NOT BELIEVE WHAT I JUST SAW!!!!

(I did immediately call DON and tell what happened. Luckily, my CNA was still checking on another res, and saw the whole thing.--------they got a slap on the wrist! that was it!!!):madface: :madface: :madface: :madface:

Went into a pts room and found his arms tied to the bed rails with Kerlix.

Had a nurse tell me that she could tie her pts hands up to keep him from pulling out his IV.

Had a nurse pull out 4 vials of dilaudid when she only needed 2. She said the other 2 were for another pt. Then she tried to cover up the discrepancy and made a huge mess of it. Spent over an hour fixing that problem in the accudose.

Had a pt code...primary nurse was at the computer "charting".

I saw a nurse sniff and then lick her finger and exclaim... "Yep, it's Jevity"... she touched goop that was around the stoma of a G-tube.... I damn near stroked out

Ok that one made me shutter. Thanks for the mental picture!

Specializes in ICU, Cardiac.

Watched in horror as a nurse fast pushed UNDILUTED Phenergan through a peripheral IV. They did it so fast that by the time I said STOP, it was already done.

When I worked LTC, there were two aides who both happened to be nursing students.

They had to work together to put our patient "Mary" down for her morning nap.

Mary was a 2-assist with a hoyer. She was confused, dead-weight and could be combative, so transfers weren't the easiest.

Anyhoo, these two gals decide: a) they don't feel like using the hoyer and b) they don't feel like removing the leg-rests from the wheelchair.

They were able to heave old Mary up, but Mary's leg got caught on the leg-rest and they became stuck. Mary's leg was entrapped and the girls could neither set her back in the chair nor pivot her to the bed.

Basically, poor Mary was just getting beyond heavy and so, instead of calling for help and dealing with the consequences, these girls, afraid of getting into trouble (!) decide just to "go for it" and force Mary to the bed. Mary would be in bed and no one would know.

Well, it woulda worked except for the fact that they gave that poor old woman a spiral fracture. (I want to say it was Mary's femur, but it in retrospect, that doesn't seem right... this happened 20 years ago!).

ANYWAY, Mary was found suffering in her bed while those cowards went about like everything was hunky-dory.

The cause of Mary's trouble was soon enough figured out and traced back to the two girls, who, THANK GOD, were fired.

Not only did Mary suffer when the injury occurred, but her leg did not heal. She developed an infection and her leg had to be amputated!

When anyone I am responsible for training wants to cut corners or thinks I'm too paranoid, I always tell this story.

(I even told my manager at a meeting because our hospital, in it's infinite wisdom, decided to permanently secure the leg-rests to the wheel chairs... but that's another subject.)

Specializes in Rehab, Infection, LTC.
We have an older lpn who's charting kind of makes you cringe. She charted, "Resident had skin tear to right elbow and I fixed it."

This is just one example.

omg that reminds me of this treatment nurse we had for a "short" while.

we had a patient with a fracture (cant remember the details just now)...but anyway, she charted something to the effect of "somebody should do something for this woman".

thats it! she charted that and went on her merry way.

Specializes in Management, Emergency, Psych, Med Surg.

1. Lick his finger before he scanned his finger on the Pyxis machine to get medication out. He never took a bath and smelled horrible. He was a horrible nurse. Our manager fired him after his patient pulled out all of her post op drains and was bleeding out. Two of the other nurses where in there holding pressure and the others were trying to find him. They were paging him over and over and he was asleep in the family room

2. Administer medication without a physician order to a patient that was not even her patient telling the patients nurse that this was a "nursing dose". She almost killed the patient. I fired her.

3. In the Pedi ICU, drawing up IVF from one patients bag to flush the line of another patient. I fired her too. (We had worked and worked with this girl to try to get her on track without success).

4. Break a patients arm while trying to draw blood. She was high on cocaine and instead of restraining her as was protocol, he got into a struggle with her and in the process broke her humerus. He was a good nurse but he had no tolerance for drunks or people on drugs. I had no choice but to terminate him.

5. Go for an entire 12 hour shift and not chart one word on any of the 5 patients the nurse had.

6. Leaving medications at the bedside (I HATE this).

7. Telling the patient to just go ahead and pee on herself (she had a pad under her) and she would clean her up later. (This REALLY made me mad.)

8. Physically picking up a patient and throwing him out of the ED and throwing his walker after him. (this was a very well known frequent flyer pt who was a real pain in the butt). The director fired the nurse and of course reported him to the board for disciplinary action.

9. Refusing to do CPR because "my card expired".

10. Running the tube feeding through the IV line (caught this before it went into the vein).

11. I became the director of a mid size ED and there was a nurse on nights who worked in no other area of the ED expect triage. I met with the staff and told the staff that everyone was expected to be proficient in all areas of the ED and everyone had to rotate in all areas. She quit shortly after. Then I found out that she was drunk every day she came to work and her thermos was full of liquor which she drank throughout the shift. This was apparently a well known fact that no one had done anything about.

Amazing but true. And so do you wonder why errors occur?

I was working as a Restorative Aide in a facility that specialized in care for middle aged adults who had suffered from TBI's. To fill out the census, they would take on rehab patients as well. One of my duties as the Restorative Aide was to feed five of the patients at the Restorative table. We had this one patient who everyone thought was cute, he was 43 but had a myriad of problems, he had Downs originally and a bunch of other problems that messed up his ability to walk from birth. He came to the LTC I was working at because he needed rehab, as he had fallen at his other facility, which was for people with Downs and other forms of mental and physical handicaps who couldn't live alone. Long story short, despite the fact that everyone thought he was cute, no one wanted to do his cares or feed him and in the case of his nurse, give him his meds. The other Restorative Aide and I were always doing his cares and then getting in trouble with the DON when she would catch us showering him and changing his soiled briefs and bed linens. Well, the nurse tried to get me to pass his meds. She had to crush them and put them in his shake, otherwise he would not take them po. She tried to make me do it. I refused. It is outside my scope of practice as a CNA to pass meds. She became clever. She did not want to give up. Obviously she felt it was beneath her to give this patient his meds...so she collaborated with the cook (also not allowed to pass meds) to have the meds hidden in his meals. She wanted ME to pass them that bad! So one morning I am feeding the patient his oatmeal at my table and discover the patient's meds in the oatmeal. :eek: I complained to the DON who did nothing about it.

I quit working at that facility after three months.

Specializes in LTC.

Give 2cc of liquid ativan when the order said 0.25cc.

For some of the nurses, all they have to do is show up for work and I get freaked out.

Specializes in orthopedics, telemetry, PCU.

When I was a CNA, saw a nurse take a wipe meant for sterilizing equipment and which we never handled without gloves, and wipe a patient's bottom with it. This was an elderly patient, with serious skin breakdown, who was incontinent. The nurse claimed that those wipes were how she dealt with especially "smelly" BMs.

During nursing clinicals, in a peds LTC facility, an older nurse exculsively cared for a little boy with MRSA in his trach, and she constantly suctioned, as well as changed the trach ties, etc with no gloves. Her husband had surgery done, and she was providing care for his wound at home, and surprise, surprise, he came down with MRSA in the wound.

Also took care of a trach/vent dependent baby who was in the hospital after decanulating at a LTC facility, where apparently his pulse ox also came off, and he was eventually found with a hr of about 30. I guess no one bothered to check when the pulse ox alarm went off, because "they come off all the time when the babies move around".

Specializes in acute rehab, med surg, LTC, peds, home c.
1. Lick his finger before he scanned his finger on the Pyxis machine to get medication out. He never took a bath and smelled horrible. He was a horrible nurse. Our manager fired him after his patient pulled out all of her post op drains and was bleeding out. Two of the other nurses where in there holding pressure and the others were trying to find him. They were paging him over and over and he was asleep in the family room

2. Administer medication without a physician order to a patient that was not even her patient telling the patients nurse that this was a "nursing dose". She almost killed the patient. I fired her.

3. In the Pedi ICU, drawing up IVF from one patients bag to flush the line of another patient. I fired her too. (We had worked and worked with this girl to try to get her on track without success).

4. Break a patients arm while trying to draw blood. She was high on cocaine and instead of restraining her as was protocol, he got into a struggle with her and in the process broke her humerus. He was a good nurse but he had no tolerance for drunks or people on drugs. I had no choice but to terminate him.

5. Go for an entire 12 hour shift and not chart one word on any of the 5 patients the nurse had.

6. Leaving medications at the bedside (I HATE this).

7. Telling the patient to just go ahead and pee on herself (she had a pad under her) and she would clean her up later. (This REALLY made me mad.)

8. Physically picking up a patient and throwing him out of the ED and throwing his walker after him. (this was a very well known frequent flyer pt who was a real pain in the butt). The director fired the nurse and of course reported him to the board for disciplinary action.

9. Refusing to do CPR because "my card expired".

10. Running the tube feeding through the IV line (caught this before it went into the vein).

11. I became the director of a mid size ED and there was a nurse on nights who worked in no other area of the ED expect triage. I met with the staff and told the staff that everyone was expected to be proficient in all areas of the ED and everyone had to rotate in all areas. She quit shortly after. Then I found out that she was drunk every day she came to work and her thermos was full of liquor which she drank throughout the shift. This was apparently a well known fact that no one had done anything about.

Amazing but true. And so do you wonder why errors occur?

It sounds like you are surrounded by morons.

I did not witness this myself but heard about it. Everyone heard about it. Patient was made "comfort care". Morphine gtt ordered. RN hung the morphine bag using piggyback tubing (not on a pump!!) and started it dripping in. Entire bag infused in 10 minutes and pt was dead.

RN was fired.

Infusing medication's through an a-line.

Putting a venti-mask on an apenic patient.

I work in an ICU mind you.....

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