Your worse/funniest nursing school experience

twarlik · May 25, 2004

Well this happend to me last night...

We were doing the 3-11 shift on a busy ortho/neuro floor. I should preface this story by saying that I have a nasty habit of sticking things in my pockets and then forgetting that I placed them there. Well...I got home last night and as I was taking my uniform off, I realized that I had put a patient's glasses in my pocket after they fell off his face while taking him to the bathroom and had bought them home with me! So, I got dressed and ran back to the hospital to return them at around 11:30 last night. The nurses on the floor laughed at me and I felt pretty stupid.

So the moral of this story is, always check your pockets before you go home!

That's probably the most embarrassing thing to happen to me so far. I have two more semesters left, so I'm sure something else will come up!

lilbiskit78 · May 25, 2004

Okay I have a couple of good ones. One was towards the end of my 1st semester....go into a pts room in the morning with the usual "good morning, do you need anything,ect." The pt replies "I need you to get the hell out of here" and she kicks me! LOL! I was like "Greeaattt" The RN on the floor did not mention that she was a late stage Alzheimers pt and was very combative. She did have wrist restraints, but not ankles (which I think she needed b/c she kept kicking everyone, even kicked my instructor in the head!!). She fought all day...we put meds in pudding, she spit pudding at us...she would not let us do oral or axillary temp...you know what that means...rectal temp. She passed gas the whole time and was actually trying to poop on me...and she was laughing the whole time. If there was ever a time I wanted to throw away my stethoscope & settle back into my old office job, that was it. Also had a pt this last semester, who had no problem swallowing, but did not like taking meds. Keep in mind she took these meds daily at home, she just didn't like it. She had to take 1 pill at a time, then two drinks of water, one drink of juice, and then take a rest break. She had like 13 pills to take, took about 30 minutes. She told me I could just leave them with her, but of course, can't do that, either have to see her take them, or take the meds away. RN on the floor told me it took her just as long the day before, she was glad it was my pt that day! Actually wondered how I would have handled that if I had a real pt load..... Just some things for you newbies to look forward to! I have also had really nice pts who were very helpful too....you just never know what you are going to get when you walk in that room!!

HU_nurse · May 25, 2004

didnt close the foley bog properly after emptying it...gives a new meaning to "april showers." lol

bbear · May 25, 2004

:coollook:

Okay, I have one for you. When I was in LPN school I had to do clinicals at a nursing home. One of my patients there was a fairly elderly gentleman who had a partial hemispherectomy following a CVA a few years past. He was a very grumpy and cantankerous old man who nobody wanted to take care of. I didn't mind it because I tend to enjoy the challenge of getting through to those types of patients. He was completely immobile and incapable of carrying out his ADLs on his own. Most people couldn't understand much of what this guy said. Mostly he just sounded like he was mumbling. But after working with him for a while I got to understand him fairly well.

Well, one day I was taking this gentleman down the hall for a shower. One of my classmates (Jeff) met me in the hallway and offered to help me. So I asked Jeff if he would take the patient to the shower and I would get some towels and toiletries and meet him there in a minute. When I got to the shower Jeff was transferring the patient from his wheelchair to a shower stool. As soon as Jeff had the guy seated on the shower stool the guy started mumbling like you wouldn't believe. Jeff thought the patient was happy to be taking a shower, so he nodded approvingly at the patient and said, "You like that, don't you," as he sprayed warm water over him. Of course, I had come to understand this patient's mumbles a bit better, so I was able to make out that the patient was actually saying, "I'm sitting on my balls! I'm sitting on my balls!" Meanwhile, Jeff is just smiling at the guy and spraying his head with water. I did my very best to contain my laughter until after I rescued the patient, but it was really hard.

What was even funnier is the reaction this patient had every time Jeff would come in his room from that point on. He would let out a string of loud mumbles that were quite obviously not complimenting Jeff. And poor Jeff. For the remainder of clinicals he had to deal with the rest of us walking up behind him and taunting him with, "I'm sitting on my balls! I'm sitting on my balls!"

BHolliRNMS · May 25, 2004

Way back when I was in nursing school......we were doing peds rotation in a middle sized hospital in a rural city. We had one premature baby boy in an incubator. His mom was still in the hospital and couldn't visit. His dad came once a day. I felt sorry for the baby, so I spent all my "free" time talking to him. As I was cooing to him one day, I noticed he had soiled his diaper. I told my instructor that someone needed to change him. I was very apprehensive about touching him with all those tubes everywhere. Being the nice instructor she was, she said "then change him." I looked a little dumbfounded. She said, "go over there and get a facemask." Well, now it made absolutely no sense to me why I would need to wear a facemask to change a diaper, but I wasn't about to tell her! So, I put on the face mask and returned to her and said, "I got the face mask. Where are his little diapers?" She started laughing to the point of tears and pointing at me. All the other nurses came running and they too fell out in the floor laughing and hooting and hollering. Finally, my instructor gasped, "you're wearing it." When I walked into the cafeteria for lunch that day, everyone in there started laughing. I was so embarrassed!

suzy253, RN · May 26, 2004

One of my first clinicals was in an extended care facility and I was taking care of this very very sweet elderly black man with Alzheimer's, among other things. My instructor eventually came in and asked if I had checked his diaper yet which I was just about to do anyway. So I checked his diaper, and sure enough there was a big blob in it. So I resecured it and went to get stuff to wash him up with and change him to a clean one. When I returned, I started to remove his diaper but amazingly there was no poop in it after all. So what was that big blob? My instructor whispered in my hear....'that's his scrotum'. I almost died. I mean, I'm not just off the 'turnip truck' as they say but I had never seen a scrotum that big. And my instructor was a very prim and proper lady but I was trying so hard not to burst out laughing in front of her that I was biting my cheeks to the point of severe pain.