April Fools Day

Specializes in ICU, ER.

I am working nights tonight and my coworkers have a bit of a fun prank war going on while they are on their breaks. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas for good April Fools pranks/jokes. Obviously they need to stay professional and can't be mean-spirited and preferably not take too long to set up (they have two 15 min breaks and a 30), but other than that it would probably be OK.

Any ideas would be appreciated as I don't have time to get involved too often LOL

21 Answers

Specializes in Family Medicine.

All I can think of are pranks involving laxatives. Probably because I'm feeling kind of constipated today. TMI, I know. Hope you think of something good! :)

Specializes in Trauma Surgery, Nursing Management.

I like to put KY in the gloves. I know, yuck!

Today, one of the nurses sent a fake page to one of the senior residents, stating that their attending was mad as fire that they were scrubbed in instead of helping her with an M&M presentation, and that he should contact her immediately. The resident had really big eyes for a minute and then started laughing. The attending came in a few minutes later and laughed too!

Another time, we had a nurse go into a dark, empty triage room dressed in a pt gown and moaning loudly in pain. The resident came in, flipped on the lights and out came 5 nurses who sprayed him down with the hand alcohol rub.

Specializes in ER, SANE, Home Health, Forensic.

Recently one of our coworkers posted a message that one of my coworkers got engaged. Posted it at the beginning of his 3 days off. Watching his face as multiple people congratulated him until he figured out what was going on was HYSTERICAL!

Specializes in Cardiology, Oncology, Hospice,IV Therapy.

Once I took a Baxter infuser and turned it on, put it on hold, and turned the alarm volume up to high and put it in a storage closet. After a while it started to beep. My coworkers were going nuts trying to find out where it was coming from!!:lol2:

Specializes in Critical Care.

Okay, because this is a hard one and I do not want to suggest anything that may harm someone. Go into an empty room (if you have one), turn on the call light or activate a bed alarm. Then hide in the bathroom. You can then jump out of the bathroom and scare the staff while they are investigating, or you can hide uner the bed and grab someone's foot. I would use this with caution. Someone did this to me about a year ago and I thought I would have a heart attack. This is another one, you would think wouldn't work, but it did. Call the staff to the nurses' station with a urine specimen container filled with lemonade. Tell them that the lab called and tubed the specimen back to the floor because they did not believe that this was urine. Open the container, sniff it, drink it, and then say they were right this is lemonade. Talking about horrified faces.

Specializes in Peds and PICU.

One of my faves (and not just on April Fool's!) is to page our docs to 867-5309. Once we did this to a resident that none of us really liked, just to try and loosen it up. We learned that night that calling 7-5309 in our hospital will call the OR....whoops!

Specializes in LTC.

One of the CNAs got me and everyone else at work tonight.

Her: Come here I have to tell you something.

Me: What?

Her: What is that all over your face?

Me: OMG WHAT IS ON MY FACE?

Her: Its like all over.. go look in the mirror

And as you went to look in the mirror she said april fools!

Specializes in Cardiac.

Well, it wasn't intentional but I asked the Unit Secretary how it's looking for our PM shift. She said, "oh, it was a good day today, very relaxed. It should carry over to your shift." Not so much on PM shift though. Admits, discharges, transfers, high acuity decompensating confused patients Galore. Ha. I figured out at the end of the day that THAT was the joke.

Specializes in Peds and PICU.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who had a miserable April Fool's shift! All day long we were busting at the seams! Send one kid to the floor, admit another one, stat CTs, emergency blood products, families literally going to the peds floor and demanding to know why their room isn't ready for transfer, getting admissions where the dialect the parents speak is so rare that even are super-duper, awesome language interpreter machinery can't find a match!

Specializes in NICU.

I just started working as a unit secretary on a mother/baby unit... last night the charge nurse "booked" a triplet c-section for one of the nurses, who was then panicking. HAHA it was evil.

Specializes in ICU, ER.

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone! They're all very good! Unfortunately it turned out to be a shift from Hell last night so I wasn't able to get in on the action, but I will just do April Fools month lol!

Specializes in ER.

We called transport to take a post code down to morgue, the two guys working that day were both in nursing school and always hung out in the ER with us whenever they could so they get there and start out of the trauma bay with the pt, who is actually one of the surgery residents and he sits up moaning and groaning as they get out of the room. One ran behind the desk and the other straight out the ambulance bay doors. Even the patients got a big laugh out of it.

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