Nursing School Bloopers

During our ECF rotation my clinical buddy and I were assigned to do neuro checks on a woman who had fallen. I gave my friend the thermometer to check temps and and turned my back for a minute to get a paper to write VS on. When I turn around I see my buddy has the probe in the patients mouth and asks me why they are 2 probes on the thermometer. Yes she had the red one in the patients mouth.

A good way to remember how to tell the difference between an oral thermometer & a rectal one is.............
get ready for it...................
THE TASTE!!

A student in my class actually tried 4 or 5 times to stick a cath into some poor lady's clitoris! I kept asking her if she wanted me to hold a flashlight for her but being stubborn she refused! She hasn't lived that one down yet!

As for mine....

It was my last day in OB. Our instructor brought us donuts and I was all excited b/c I love them so much, so needless to say, I had them on the brain. Well, I asked my postpartum mom if she was comfortable and if I could get her anything before I left the room. She laughed and said "yeah, you got any donuts?". Since EVERY SINGLE PATIENT I have ever had *NOT exagerrating here* has asked me for food such as Mc Donald's, steak, milkshakes, etc, I just assumed she wanted a donut to eat. She had just gotten her breakfast tray and I lifted the lid and said "Hmm...what do you have on this tray?". She just looked at me blankly and said "No, a donut to sit on"! I could have died right there!!!!

I don't understand why it's wrong to humor a psychiatric patient. It's not like he was telling you of his plan to assassinate the president or blow up the local kindergarten. Are you supposed to try to talk him out of his obsession? That sounds like a recipe for frustration on both sides. What would have been a better way to respond?

I was preceting a new grad nurse and she was giving a pt a triple H emema (hi hot and a ***of a lot) when she finished she seated the pt on a commade and...forgot to put a basin underneath. 1000 cc of fluid was on the floor coming out the door. The poor grad was devastated but we could not stop laughing.

One of my fellow students did the exact same thing except with a unit of blood. ehew! We laugh about it now, I can still see the look on her face. She actually pulled off the whole tab before attempting to spike the bag, the entire bottom seam ripped open and the blood just poured out. The patient was sedated which was a good thing at the time.

I recall as a student nurse (Hospital trained) having just finished having handover; therefore the 'sisters station' (yes a long time ago) was full of the afternoon shift and some morning shift staff. Another student nurse, looking very frustrated having been directed to apply condom drainage to Mr X, stood waiting for a lull and then exclaimed "I have done everything I can think of and I just can't get Mr X to get an erection so I can get the damn thing on!!" I remember absolute shocked silence that continued until a kindly ACN took her aside and explained a few elements of applying condom drainage. That poor girl never lived it down.

try it during a blood transfusion

Catheters sure seem to cause a lot of bloopers. Here's one on my friend. She was taking out a catheter in front of our most intimidating instructor. As it came out, she accidentally flicked the instructor in the face with the slimy end of the catheter. He was not pleased!

During my preceptorship I was putting crushed meds in a stomach tube. I had most of them in, and I set down the syringe to get the last med. (It was still connected to the tube, and the plunger was out as I was pouring the meds in, and they were going in nicely with gravity.) Well, once the syringe was lower than the stomach, everything I put in, came out all over the bed!

Oh these are great! I am committing them all to memory as I start Block 1 on Monday!

As an Aide my biggest oops was that I started my day by checking all the patients charts in my assignment for pertinent info; diet order, specimens that needed to be collected, did they have bathroom privledges, were they an accu-check (I work on a diabetic unit and do MANY a day). I then went to the med-station to the white board where we write blood sugars so that the nurses can take a quick glance and get the proper insulin without going to the chart and noted that one of my patients was an accu-check and I had missed it in the chart. I assumed this because there were blood sugars on the white board for his room number.

When I went in for the a.m. check he was so nervous. Turns out this was his first time in the hospital (He was 36 years old) and scared to death of needles and hospitals. He jumped a MILE when I poked him and kept saying that he didn't know why people kept poking him. He told me he wasn't diabetic, but that they thought he might be as it might explain why his infected foot hadn't healed...made sense to me...I see that all the time!

After the 5:30 before dinner check (I've now poked him 3 times and his blood sugars were completely normal!) the nurse asks me if I'm charting blood sugars on the white board in the wrong space. I looked and said, "No. Why?" and she says that the patient in that room is not diabetic. I go check the chart and sure enough I hadn't "missed" it, there was no order for accu-chks.

It turned out that the blood sugars were from the patient that had been discharged and this guy had been admitted not even 30 minutes later. In the rush the previous NA had failed to clear the white board for that room number and I made the mistake of assuming it was for the new patient having not been there in 2 days.

I felt sooooooo bad! I did go in and tattle on myself and apologized by starting, "I have good news and I have bad news!". he appreciated the honesty and forgave me all the while shaking his head at the needless blood letting I had subjected him to. Oooops!