Nursing School Bloopers

Nurses Humor

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Anyone have any funny nursing school stories from their past?

I had to change an IV bag and went in with my instructor to do so. My instructor always made me nervous but I was determined to remain confident and do the task....it wasnt difficult. She proceeded to ask me what was in the bag and I told her normal saline. She told me "ok, go ahead" and stood back to watch. I proceeded to pull out the line to put it into the new bag, but didn't take it off the IV pole before doing so. I received a saline bath with the remaining fluid that was in the bag. My instructor ran to get a towel and we cleaned up the wet floor. She then asked me to step outside the room. I thought I was going to hear it. What I heard was her laughing and telling me that I had to laugh sometimes and "everyohne has a saline bath once and then it never happens again." I still don't believe her but its funny looking back now.

Specializes in med/surg, telemetry.

I remember my very first clinical day in a LTC and the patient I was assigned to was completely dependent. We were taught bed baths and such during our lab time in school and had heard of a bath bed, but had never been shown one. Anyway, we use the Hoyer lift and get this rather frail lady onto the bath bed stretcher and wheel her down to the shower near the other end of the hall. We get her washed the best that we can. You see, every time that I tried to wipe her anal area more crap would come out. So I try to wipe more gently to clean her up and still some oozes out. Grrrr. So I get it the best I can and figure I can't really get it much better than I have. We get her covered and ready to wheel back down the hall to her room. As I'm going down the hallway with her on the stretcher, a nurse catches my attention and points to the floor behind me. As I look down the hall where I came from, there is a steady trail of water following right behind the stretcher. Apparently, there is a "tray" kind of thing under the stretcher that had a drain plug (which was not plugged up) and was steadily draining some of the water from the bath as I was heading down the hall. I was soooo embarrassed. After I got the lady dried, dressed, and back into bed....I stepped into the hall and saw a custodian mopping up my mess. I went up to him and just profusely apologized. I could just see the expressions on the nurses faces looking at me thinking " Dumb nursing students.....geeez!" At least these are the kind of stupid errors that stick with you and your sure not to repeat.....LOL

Tammy

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I have a couple to add. The first one is my personal blooper.

It was my 2nd semester and our first day in a hospital. I was so excited because not only was I in a hospital, I got to be in the ER. Since the ER is where I want to work, I wanted to see and do as much as possible. After a few hours there, the nurses were aware that I would want to follow them anywhere they went to see as much as possible.

So, one of the nurses asked me if I wanted to watch a pelvic exam. Wanting to learn as much as possible, I jumped at the chance. There is one room in the ER at this particular hospital that is for this sort of thing. The nurse warns me that they had tried to cath this patient and she freaked out on them, so I am a bit nervous. The way the room is set up there is waiting area that has chairs so you can pull the curtain and the family can be on one side and the patient on the other. I follow the nurse in and watch her set up the tools and in comes the doctor behind me. He introduces himself to the family and as he is walking up he asks me to shut the curtain. As I said, I am nervous about the patient, excited about being in the ER and now the doctor is talking to me. So, I jump on his request as quick as possible. I grab the curtain and pull it closed. One problem, I pull it in front of the doctor. So, me, the nurse and the patient are on one side, the doctor and family on the other. Without missing a beat, the doctors says from behind the curtain, "I need to be on that side to do the exam." Trying to control giggles, I start saying I am so sorry and open the curtain back to see the family trying not to laugh too loud as well. The rest of the exam went fine. :wink2: Later that day, the doctor came up to me and asked me if I was learning a lot. I blushed and said yes! My dad said I should have told him I learned which side of the curtain the doctor is supposed to be on.

This one is about a fellow nursing student. She was the type that was really nervous because she really want to do well. She was standing there talking to our instructor when I walked up. My instructor was helping her chart. The instructor asked her if the patient was on oxygen and the student replied yes. The instructor asked do you know what it was on? The student said no, I didn't look. Do I need to? The instructor told her yes and the student ran back into the room. A few minutes later she comes out with this look on her face. She tells the instructor " it was on the wall, but I don't think that is what you wanted to know, was it?" My instructor lost it, she was laughing so hard. Finally, she says no, let me go and show you. I have to give the instructor credit, she stopped laughing long enough to go in the room with the student. But the moment she came out, she started laughing again. That one still makes me smile.

I have 1 and half semesters left. I am sure some more stuff will happen!

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I hope this isn't a stupid question, but what is a stopper... ? I know it's definitely not related to a BM, but what is it used 4?

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Specializes in med-surg/or/ambulatory/geriatric psyc.
First semester, first IM injection. Standing at the med cart with my instructor, who was watching me draw back the medication. I had trouble getting the cap off the syringe, but she told me, "just pull it straight off". Finally got it off, drew up the medication from the bottle. Instructor, cool as kool-aid, says "What's that on the front of your uniform?" It was blood--my blood! Not only on my uniform, but also dripping on my shoe. I was SO intent on doing that shot right that I didn't notice I split my palm wide open with the needle. GAWD.

Have you ever done that with a Lovenox shot? Those darn caps are hard to get off there, and when you poke yourself with one of those needles, and get the med in your thumb.........it starts to look like your thumb is going to fall off! OUCH!

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I hope this isn't a stupid question, but what is a stopper... ? I know it's definitely not related to a BM, but what is it used 4?

No such thing, they were just kidding. You know like "Put a stopper in it to stop it up!":lol2:

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Thank you for your story. I am a 1st year nursing student and today we learned how to cath a patient. I was worried about the same thing about "not being able to find it" . I thank you because so many situations were going through my head and it made me feel better and normal.

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I worked 7p-7a and had some student nurses working 3 to 11p two days a week. This older lady was one of my students and she had one of my pt's. The pt. was alert and oriented but npo and had a temp. I asked the student if she would give a suppository to the pt. She said ok sure. Ten minutes later she came out and told me that pt. got the suppos. down. I asked her what? she replied the lady had a hard time swallowing the suppos. I told her suppos. The student nodded yes. ( It was clear she wasn't getitng it). I said rectal and she gasped. I thought well it's just tylenol and glycerin. couldn't really hurt her but I told her to tell her instructor. I couldn't help but laugh at that one

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Baby poo is much easier to deal with. After 8 months as a nursing assistant dealing with adult diapers, babies were a breeze. I have to say one of my funniest memories in nursing school is when two of my classmates were using alcohol wipes ($1) to clean the explosive diarrhea from their new white shoes ($59). The look on their faces...priceless.:balloons:

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Here's my blooper.

I was in my second year of nursing and doing a practicum in a rural hospital. Anyways my preceptor had me go discontinue an IV on a gentleman whom had been discharged. No problem right, well I turn off the pump, lock the IV and pull it out of his arm. A drop of blood fell onto the floor and I leaned down to wipe it up with a kleenex, well there must of been a clot on the end of the IV and with me moving it around the clot must of dislodged and shot blood all over my face. Horrified I ran out into the hall to the nurses station, well the nurses all thought the pt. had beaten the crap out of me. Once they got the story straight they thought it was all pretty funny. After a year of HIV tests I relaxed about the whole incident and can now laugh about it myself. But I now immediately place the cannula of the IV in something as soon as it's discontinued.:uhoh3:

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Specializes in geriatrics,med/surg,vents.

once had a pt,C2 quad,who had to be digitally disimpacted every few days.Went in one night did my little thing and went to roll out the chuck from under her dumping two days worth of you know what onto my feet--she laughed so hard when she realized what I had done,she never did let me live that down.

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Specializes in Emergency Department.

Speaking of "first caths" - I was given the opportunity this week (female pt). I was so stinkin nervous my hands were shaking like crazy. Well, after getting all the way to the point of inserting the cath, I went to push it in and...nothing. There was absolutely no give. So I pushed harder and still nothing. The patients was yelling and crying for me to stop which didn't help. I looked at my nurse and mouthed "now what?" So he gloved up and proceeded to try himself. He pushed about 10 times harder than me and it still wouldn't go in. So we had to stop. We did a bladder scan to find over 1000mL of fluid. We then had to call the dr and get direction. Turns out she had a Foley d/c 2 days earlier and had then had 5 in & out caths since then. I am assuming the cath wouldn't go in since she was so swollen and had sustained quite a bit of trauma to the area from the multiple in/outs. My shift was over before I got to see what the end result was. From what I heard, she was scheduled to get another Foley placed and a large dose of narcotics (in addition to her morphine pump).

Definitely not how I thought my first cath would go, but oh well. I did learn from it and hopefully the next one will be better. The only thing that made me feel better was that the RN couldn't get it in either!!

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It was at my first clinicals in training to be a CNA (thankfully, I'm a CNA now and I can laugh about this). My instructor had told the class to do whatever the CNA's and RN's told us to do and assist as much as possible. So I went to make beds and after my completion I had to assist a pt to the bathroom. It turns out that she was having a BM. This was my very first time in cleaning up someone's else feces. So, the CNA asked me if I would like to clean her up, and I said that I'd give it a try. So I go to wipe and did that three times consecuitively. As the CNA double checks, she finds more poop on her bottom. She told me that next time I had to wipe deeper.:idea: My friends were with me when I did this, so now they make fun of me q time I have to wipe a pt. They say " remember wipe deeper, wipe deeper." LOL! I was embrassed then, but now I just laugh my head off!!! :lol2::lol2::lol2: It's our little nursing joke. :rotfl:

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