Nursing School Bloopers

As a teenager, I used to be a volunteer in LTC at the hospital in my neigborhood. I asked the nurses if I could take one of the full care patients outside for a stroll in her wheelchair. They said yes, I put her in her wheelchair and away we went.

So we were outside and as we are strolling along I notice the patient sinking in her wheelchair - rapidly. (She had no control over her body) I realized that I had forgotten to put the seatbelt on her before we left, but it was too late. I put the breaks on the wheel chair (thank goodness I remembered that much) and whipped around to grab on to her legs and try to push her up. By this time her bum was no longer in the chair. I had stopped her from slipping, but I didn't have the strength to get her back in her chair (she was about 200lbs), so were stuck! I thought I would be the only person in history to get fired from a volunteer job!

Luckily a friendly stranger came along and helped me get her back in the chair. We went back inside like nothing happened. But now it's been more than a decade later and I've been in nursing school for three years, but every time I put a patient in a wheelchair, I remember that day and always buckle up!

Our instructor had us team up for the day so:

1st my partner draws up all 19 med including several narcs for G-tude
she bumped into my back and spilled them down me

Next during the childs bath I dislodged the G-tube

And finally I pulled the Trach out

The child smiled at everyone exept me
I wander Why

I thought I was going to be kicked out of school or at least the facility
Niether I graduate in June Yahoo!!!!!!!!

My nursing student buddy asked me to help her pull her pt up in bed. The pt was really groggy and was asking why were we pulling him up in bed. I told him "So your feet don't get caught down here at the bottom." We pulled him up, got him all comfortable, and it was then when I realized he was a double above the knee amputee!!!

When I was a nursing student, more than a quarter of a century ago, the hospital in which I was doing my clinical had just gotten new beds. Since most of the beds on the floor on which we were doing our clinical rotation were the old fashioned crank beds, we students were all quite impressed with the brand new electric beds with IV poles attached. (I'm sure you can see where this is going.) I was raising the bed to see how high it would go, and it was still going up-up-up when the flourescent light above us exploded, raining glass down over three nursing students and the brand new bed. My nursing instructor walked in just in time to see the IV pole going through the light fixture . . .

Yes, I passed that clinical!

This is more of a nursing instructor blooper:

I was checking charting when I see the student has charted "Neg Homan's x 1" I read her the riot act about "A pt's got two legs, it should be neg x 2, You have to chart completely, don't ever assume, blah, blah, blah..."

After I'm done tearing this girl a new one, she meekly says, "The patient only has one leg."


So--I ate some major crow and apologized.

My first IM injection to a patient was for an elderly confused gentleman. As I stood behind him, he lied on his side, with my classmate holding him in place. As I mentally made the "X" on his buttocks, I held the skin taught and went for the poke. My classmate wasn't really holding him. He moved and the injection needle went right through my thumb, barely scratching the patient's skin on the other side of my thumb. In my defense, I didn't even feel it! Had to throw out the penicillin shot. At least it was penicillin though!

I am sorry but I have to ask what was wrong with this? I start cliniclas in the fall and I would have done the same thing. I do not want to make a worng mistake if I can help it so please tell me why if the orders said to take the staples out and she did then why was it wrong? Is there a rule that says only take staples out of a certain part of the body or something?. Eek.

You take out every other staple just in case the incision dehis's (reopens). It apparently did in mcmike55's post as he mentioned goig back to surgery.

When we had first started clinicals we were assingned to do total care for one or two patients each. Nothing too in depth; just ADL type things. A good friend of mine had this confused elderly lady. The lady's speech was mostly gibberish and the continuous repetition of short phrases. My friend brushed the lady's teeth and got her up and dressed. Then the lady kept repeating "mowf ith thicky, mowf ith thicky" and seemed to be getting rather agitated. She had tried to console the woman, but she got only more agitated. It took a little while to figure out that the woman's "mouth was sticky" because my friend had brushed her teeth with a generic tube of denture adhesive. We got her mouth cleaned up and all was well with the patient. My poor friend had still not lived that one down by the time we graduated.

My classmate was emptying her first foley bag, forgot to clamp it and got urine ALL over her white scrub pants. Even worse, it was the cherry red bloody sort of urine.

On my nursing home rotation, I was helping an elderly woman tuck her shirt in. We got done and she said "can you get my girls out of my pants please?" I, of course, thought she had gone crazy. Nope. I had tucked her BREASTS into her elastic waisted pants... Whoops.