Nursing School Bloopers

During my med/surg rotation I had two patients. I gave the first one her combivent and went to attend to the other patient, by the time I got out of the room my first patient had been on her mask for over 1 hour, I felt so bad and embarrassed at least my instructor could laugh at it

Hi, I new to the boards but have been reading them for months. Well, I have to throw in my two cents on bloopers!
On the clinical floor two weeks ago, my patient had an axillary temp of 100.4 F. My instructor suggested that I get a rectal temp on him. Go searching the unit for the red temp probe, but can't find it after a few minutes of looking. Walk over to the nurse's station and ask the unit secretary where the rectal probes were kept. She starts to tell me that they don't use rectal probes on this unit but gets interrupted in the middle of this by a call bell which she promptly answers.
She then hits the PA to ask for the nurse to hit her call light returns to me and pulls out a box of Rectal TemperDots. She then proceeds to tell me how to take a rectal temp, (never mind the fact that we were taught how to do this in Nursing 1) finishing off with "That is how we take a temp on J5".
At that point she turns bright Red and I drop to the floor laughing along with everyone in the unit. It seems that the Unit Secretary forgot to take her hand off of the PA button, thus broadcasted how to do a rectal temp to the entire unit.
BTW, my patient's temp was 104 using the temperdots.

One of my pt's was very hard to understand he had Cerebral Palsy, I was trying to give his meds to him and had crushed them and put them in Applesauce, he was trying to tell me something and I didn't understand him, I was getting more embarrassed because he was getting upset that I didn't know what he was saying. I just kept saying, "Okay, take your meds and then you can tell me" My instructor was standing behind me looking at her watch and tapping her foot. I kinda just shoved the meds in his mouth, gave him a drink, and asked him again what he wanted. For some reason, it was clearer this time, and he looked so sad, and a tad bit ****** and said, "I didn't want my meds crushed"

Opps.......

I was charting once, and was trying to describe my pt's cellulitis. It had some drainage, so I charted "The pt has "*****" drainage........sounds right, doesn't spell the way it sounds, guess purulent would be the word I was searching for huh?

After inserting a foley catheter, I went back to check the output, and found it was in the wrong "hole"


After our first week of nursing school, and learning all of the prefixes and suffixes, and learning how to put them together, our teacher asked us to come up with a word for high blood sugar (now most people would know this, but I had never dealt with diabetes or anything of the sort) I yelled out, confidently and very proud of the new language I had learned to speak, "Hyperhemaglucose"

I pronounced decubitis (dik-you-bite-us')

Half of us girls in the class were floored when we found out the vulva has a majora AND a minora, the instructor told us to go home and have a mirror party.:hatparty:

My most embarrassing moment happened the first time I inserted a foley catheter into a female patient. Embarrassing because I am a woman and you would think I would know a little sumpin' about sumpin'.

Anyway, I prepare the patient and the sterile field and am ready to start. I tell the patient I am going to touch her, and then carefully and slowly clean her with the betadine soaked cotton balls--taking great care to clean the area I THINK is her urethral meatus. This is so embarrassing--I cringe now just thinking about it. Right before I get ready to insert the tip of the catheter into a small crease that I THINK is the urethral meatus, I get a feeling something is not quite right and hesitate. At this point, I've got the catheter just a few inches away from where I am planning to insert it. I'm so nervous I can hardly think straight because the instructor and 3 other classmates are watching. The instructor tells me to go ahead, and mercy me, I have a moment where the fog clears out of my brain and I realize what I think is her urethral meatus is actually her clitoris. In that split second of lucid thinking--you know how nervous you get with the instructor watching--I took a closer look, saw the 'real' meatus and inserted the catheter correctly--realizing how close I came to making a mistake. I felt so stupid and my face turned red as a beet. I don't know if my instructor knew--I wouldn't doubt it because she was smart as a whip--but she just looked at me, smiled and said "Good job."

This one happened to my roommate. She was giving an iodine soln douche to a GYN patient. The douche can was metal with attached rubber tubing (a long time ago in a county hospital, needless to say). The tubing had become very soft and sticky after several sterilizations. Our instructor said she could fix that, whipped out her trusty scissors and cut the tubing right at the metal nipple, right over the patient's bed. We changed the bed, the patient's gown, and the student's uniform. I don't think the stain ever came out of the apron.

This was the same instructor who, in a class discussing hospital hierarchy, remarked that "sh*t runs downhill". The maintenance crew outside the open door could be heard snickering. We loved that woman!

Now if only you had remembered your soap & shampoo, you would have been all set...

"If it makes you feel better, when I first got out of school I worked for an OB-GYN, and an OB pt called to ask if she could use her vibrator (she had been in that day for vaginal bleeding). I right away said, "NO!!! You might vibrate something loose... like your baby!"Posted by Tennurse


I find that really nasty? Being in hospital strips your dignity as it is without disrespecting yourself with that sort of behaviour - EEEEEWWWWWWWW!!!

I had to change a condom catheter on a patient; I was running late, so another student and the instructor's assistant (male) were in the room with me. The patient (yes, the patient) kept telling me what to do, but when I looked between his legs there was only a little knob, that didn't seem to have a meatus. The assistant looked at it and asked the man if he was circumcised--he was. I just had to keep pushing back skin until finally the glans showed up. It was kind of like a jack-in-the-box--you wouldn't have believed that little "knob" could have held what ended up to be a normal-sized penis. I did, however, get commended for getting the condom part of the catheter on by the assistant ...

One of my fellow students mentioned that she had had a patient whose penis was similarly retracted. (Is that how you would properly describe it in the nursing notes? )

NurseFirst

Wow....I thought we had a lot of meds on med/surg, but I'm not sure of hearing of 19--all to go down a GT.

NurseFirst

I was in watching a pace for bradycardia...now I was warned very heavy to "be part of the wall...don't make eye contact with the cardiologist..that one look from him and medusa would seem tame!!!!" Okay noted..so I was perfectly walled!

SO the nurse, RT and him get started..but they forgot one little thing..watch your patient! THey knew they had me in the room and were acting all cool...but me, I was watching the patient! So here I am noticing that the patient.....oh wasn't breathing! LOL! So I said "hey RT!!!!!!!" and threw an resp bag at him! He caught it and looked...you could see the lightbulb come on!!!!!!!!! OH WOW!!!!!!

Anyway he coded, and I got to work...I wasn't the wall but the one telling everyone else what to do..and the doc..he LEFT THE ROOM!!!!!!!!!!! MID CODE! He lived no probelm! Only slight probelm was..the defib wasn't set for this or was even plugged in!!!!!!! LOL!!!!!!!!!! I did a pre card thump and that was all it took!!!! Wow...my hubby (paramedic) drilled into me..witnessed, hit em! It worked!!!!!!!!

Well...after that the doc came to me to "talk"..okay I was terrified!!!!! But he laughed and said..."yep...watch patient not machines...I forgot but don't tell anyone!"

I gave him a smile and said.."okay, as long as I don't catch ya doing it again..LOL!...I will be watching you now! And by the way...you didn't have the pacer plugged in either!".

He was so humble after that..but only for me and I kept my secret with him. And actually he was a riot! Just no one took the time to understand..I have many stories abut him...he died this year from prostate cancer at 56...and I have great memories of how funny he really was!!!!! A special gift I got I guess!

But I will tell you..I have never laughed so hard as I did that day!!!!!!!! And I was a student..oh boy, I knew I was in for trouble!!!!!!