GoLytely Shenanigans

Published Aug 1, 2008

Reno1978, BSN, RN

1,133 Posts

Specializes in SRNA.

I walked into my assigned area and the dayshift nurses were all very amused when they found out I was taking the patient in room 100. She was to get a GoLytely bowel prep for a colonoscopy the following morning. Dayshift had started it about 1 hour before shift change and the patient had yet to go. Finally around 12am she had a formed BM. I work in the ICU and this patient was unable to help with cleanup much, so we did our normal patient cleanup and after turning her, she went again. I had an order for a rectal tube once it was liquid enough...but it wasn't there yet. Anyhow, after an hour of turning and new linens and the pt coughing, the stool was finally liquid enough for a tube, so we placed that and it was draining well, and after an hour of cleaning up poop, I had to get away, so I ended up taking my lunch from 1am to 1:30am.

When I arrive back from lunch, my coworker said she thought the tube may have dislodged a bit and she'd help me clean up the pt again. So I go in and look at the tube and bag draining liquid stool...and I expected the stool to get lighter and eventually clear, but I look at what's draining in the tube down to the bag and it's very light lavender and looks like there's berry seeds in it. For some reason, I just thought, "Well that's weird...." and my coworker came to ask if I needed help cleaning her up and I said, "Nah, the tube is still draining, but this stuff sure is making her stool look funny." She just walked away and I left the room for a while. I went back in again at 2am to check urine output and as I was dumping the urine in her foley, I notice a bag of brown liquid stool nearly all the way underneath the bed and it confused the heck out of me. After looking at both bags with what must have been some sort of priceless look, my coworker comes in again and I just said "Something very strange is going on..." It didn't hit me yet that someone was playing a joke on me... Finally she fessed up to placing what was leftover from her blueberry smoothie into a collection bag and it was just taped on the end and placed under the patient's thigh...not actually draining from her bowels. I felt like such a fool, but got such a good laugh out of it at the end...I really needed the mood lightened after I was in such a crap mood after cleaning up this patient's stool for an hour!!