Nursing School Bloopers

I'm glad to see that I am not the only one to make bloopers.

First semester on the first time to pass meds, I went in with my instructor. I was so nervous and trying to do everything right with the 5 rights and 3 ID checks. Well as I was opening those little bubble wrapped pills my hand slipped and I spilled every one on the floor. My instructor laughed and rolled her eyes at me. Needless to say I was searching for pills all over the floor and then we started over at the pixis.

Second semester, just finished yeah!, I was in the OR observing when the surgeon asked me to hold the little tabby thing on his gown. I did but then accidently dropped it. Instead of just letting it fall I reached for it. Can you say broken sterility? I wanted the floor to swallow me right there and then.

I still have two semesters to go so I'm sure I will be able to add more later.

I'm not in nursing school yet but I hope to be one day but in the mean time I work in a doctor's office as a front office staff member. I was assigned to take blood pressure and weight one day. Follow up visits only need BP and one of the other staff was watching me to my first BP on a patient. We have the automatic cuffs that all you have to do is press a button, no pumping or stethescope required. So I my patient was a elderly woman in a wheelchair with a hurt left arm, I believe. I went to take her BP on the side I was always told to do but found I couldn't and was instructed by the other staff to take it on the opposite arm. So as I went to put it on the other arm the machine flew out of my hands because I was shaking so badly. The batteries flew everywhere and the husband was cracking up and I wanted to crawl into a hole. I managed to pick all of the batteries up and fix the machine which proceeded to error on me twice before it would give a BP. I ran out of the room just about after I was done. It was nerve racking and the husband continued to tease me. Even as he was paying for the visit he made comment. All I could do was smile. Lets hope I get through nursing school someday with my nerves.

I was in nursing school and I was drawing up insulin for the first time and for some reason I keeled over backwards and passed out on my instructor.

Oh boy, the memories!!! We were practicing code blues one day and I was the "IV/med nurse." We wereusing fake arms down by the legs just for practice, well I am so OCD, I was on the right side of the body,during the mock code, I lifted the arm and said " This is a left arm, I need a right."My favorite teacher smacked mein the head with the fake arm and said ," just try not to be so obsessive, pretend its a right and start the IV."It was priceless.

Hmmm. Another one, we were doing our first psych rotation. I was in the rotation with my 2 best friends well we were each assigned a patient, we have to talk with. There were two female houses and two male houses. I had a male patient. I forgot my nametag,so i stuck a piece of tape with my name on it on my shirt, we were wearing street clothes. I went into the male house and was sittingtalking, the aide looks at me and says "you have to leave, females are not allowed in the male house." I said , it is okay I am a student. So I went to another room and then was walking around the house with my patient, that same aide said " I thought I already told you, you are not allowed in here." I said, "and I told you I am a nursing student and you are interferring with my progress."Then she couldn't apologize enough.LOL. Those were my two favorites!!!

OH THANK THE WORLD! After reading through this entire thread (and that's a lot of posts), I now feel so much better. I'm finishing clinicals for my second semester in the ADN program. On Saturday, I got my first needle stick, and I somehow got it in my head that I am the ONLY student to ever make this mistake!

Here's how it happened. At this particular hospital, we use the novolog pens. I have administered it a number of times now, but my instructor was standing over me, which makes me very nervous. He likes to direct step-by-step even if I've done it before, and this makes me very flustered. Needless to say, I forgot to take the needle off before I recapped the pen, and since the cap doesn't fit over the needle, well... You can see where this is going. Yes, I had already given the insulin to the patient so I had to go through the whole process of filling out the paperwork and waiting for the patient's blood test results to come back. That never concerned me. I was far too concerned with the fact that I had just given myself a needle stick because I am clearly the ONLY person to ever do this before, and how would this affect my clinical grade and my ability to become a nurse if I already got my first needle stick? Wheh!

I knew joining this site was the best thing I could do to keep my sanity during nursing school!

I am kinda nervous reading all of these bloopers. I start nursing school next week and I am praying I don't have any that are too bad.

Not me (thank god), but a fellow student learned the hard way that when doing an occupied bed change on a pt incontinent of stool... take your stethescope off from around your neck, lest it fall in an unsavory puddle. And it was such a nice Littmann, too...

I drop things, trip over things, lose things quite frequently. I understand the nervous shaky hands. We've all been there. Hang in there!

I'm in my 4th semester and these are both about me:

My very first time ever checking blood sugar. We'd had a very quick orientation on how to use the machine. I didn't have to have an instructor with me for this, so I go into pt's room. Stick his finger, get the blood in the appropriate place on the little slide thing (I'm so sorry for the terrible terminology, my brain isn't working all that well tonight, apparantley), insert the slide into the machine, only for it to give me an error. I thought I didn't get enough blood on it. So, the poor guy, who was awesome about the whole thing, I should add, I had to stick him again. Same thing. After the 3rd stick with the same result I go and get the nurse. Turns out I was inserting the slide upside down.
Luckily the guy was very understanding and nice.


My second was the typical saline shower. I guess when hanging a new bag you shouldn't "unspike" the old bag spike side down when there is still a bit of saline left in it!

Just be glad it wasn't TPN. The dextrose makes it incredibly sticky and the MVI makes it stinky. I've had to scrub that off the floor a couple of times, and the smell doesn't really come off your skin too well. Blech.