Nursing School Bloopers

Giving my first IM injection was a nightmare. I was so flustered it took about 30 minutes just to draw it up. To be honest, I don't know who was worse--me or my brand-new instructor.

So I get the injection to the patient, locate the site, mentally mark it, and dart it in. I hear the instructor whispering over top of me, "Aspirate! aspirate!" and making weird motions.

Which prompts me to look at the patient, who is certainly not aspirating, but whose respirations are regular and even......

Took about 15 minutes before I realized that she wanted me to aspirate the syringe.

Yea I had one kid who was seizing and I had to push Rectal Lamictil After the "code" I checked my drug book and the dose we gave to bring him under control (by order from the MD) was more than the max for an 190KG adult. I neary quit nursing school that day. But I didn't, I just realized I was destined to be an adult nurse. Now I work in the ER of a level 1 trauma center.

1. I had a pt. with confusion and renal failure. Here I am attempting to calm him down by leaning over the bedrail and talking softly to him while my elastics from my braces hit him in the forehead. I was mortified because the pt. just looked at me and I thought he was going to freak but he did calm down. I laughed about it later and my braces came off in 2nd year nursing.

2. I went to give my first foley catheter and when I opened the iodine package, it went all over my face, hands, and white uniform. My mentor and the pt. were so hard that it broke the tension for all of us. My uniform was saved from this blue enzyme cleaner we soaked our instruments in because of its protein remover. This was 3rd year nursing.

3. Just a few months ago, we had a lamp in our gyne room to use for vag. exams. Anyhow the doctor was late and I went up to him and said "O.k. lets go the slit lamp is ready to go." Well everyone was laughing because the pt. in need of the slit lamp was an gyn pt. and not an eye pt. Needless to say I was a little flushed.

This is what keeps us human.

Thanks for sharing and keep them coming.

Long, long ago I was a student. My first bed bath was to a comatose man. After washing his back I proceeded to his buttocks and then rectal area. He seemed to have some brown stool there that I could not seem to wipe off. It was the poor man's scrotum that I was trying to remove. Talk about being naive!!! I did figure it out, but I will never forget!

Good thing you weren't successful...

Good thing he was comatose ... !!!!

Then the question is.........If the pt can take po meds why are we giving any of them through the NG?

I had a little blooper....

My patient (who was a retired MD) had an IV and of course the stupid pump was beeping, so I go in and realize I should probably flush it through one of the ports. So, I go and get a saline flush and attach a needle, and proceed to poke the needle through a port and of COURSE I forget that now the IV tubing is all a "needleless port" system and all the NS comes squirting out of the port all over me and the patient who now is cracking up asking me WHY I would attach a needle........you know I never did that again!!!!!

Another blooper, I'm in my patient's room who is VERY hard of hearing. The MD comes in to do his assessment (amazing huh?) and he asks her "if she likes to eat" (assessing her appetite) and she looks at him SO confused and says "DO I WASH MY TEETH?!?!?!?!" Her roomate, the MD, the PATIENT and I were all laughing hysterically.....

me too!!!!!!!! lol

This was my first semester in my second year, I had an older lady in for angina and so she was on bedrest, only up to bedside comode, so she asks me to clean her teeth, so I take them out, I'm all gloved and take them in the bathroom, lay the washcloth down in the sink, and prepare to clean these teeth, so they are nice and clean, I then proceed to drop the teeth, they bounce off the side of the sink, out the bathroom door and halfway across the pt's room.

Oh, I'm standing there looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, thinking if I could sneak out the bathroom and out the door without the pt seeing me, I was soooo embarrassed and scared, I swore that she was going to tell my instructor and I was going to get a safety and andd this horrable stuff, so I take a deep breath and slink out and the pt grins at me and says "They giving you a hard time?"

LOL.