Early morning shift in A&E (ER) we got one of the nurses to lay in rhesus on a trolley and covered her like she was dead then sent in the student nurse to clean the body before sending it down to the morgue, the nurse had been holding a bag of frozen peas over her arm so it was cold. When she touched the arm that was hanging out of the covers the nurse sat up, the student nurse almost wet her knickers.
Now I have pulled some of my best pranks on days that werent April's Fool. But it is all in fun! One day as I was pushing the old med cart(olden days), I put an old sign around my neck that read,"This Patient is Hard of Hearing". Only I covered up the pt part and put a tape over it that said,"Nurse". All day patients were yelling their medication requests. And I was going, Eh, eh? My buddies got a good laugh over that one.
As a prank one day, one of my co-workers and myself covered various parts of our faces with bandaids. Another nurse called the charge nurse and said get over here quick, they are fighting in the nurses station. When she got there we had angry looks on our faces in a face off. She almost passed out and was about to kill us. Then we turned to her and said "April's Fools!" We were later forgiven. LOL.
This is not nursing related but it really got me good. My fiancee and I went thru a drive thru to snag something to eat before going to a christian concert that morning. The cashier at the window took my $20 and as always used that conterfeit pen to check and make sure I hadn't just made it in my special printing factory the night before, LOL. The cashier just as calmly as could be had put a brown mark on the bill and looked at me and said "Maam we have a problem, I need you to pull over so we can call the police department." Since this was not an area that I was from and I had gotten the money from my bank that was 3 hours away, I paniced. My fiancee who happens to be one of the local police for that area even got his heart beating a little faster. I was so relieved when she laughed and said "April Fool's". I couldn't believe that I had forgotten what day it was, she really got me good.
On night shift we used to be supplied with meals.The student nurse on the medical floor had to ring the other floors and take meal orders and then serve them out, put them on a tray and send them up to the designated floor in the dumb waiter.One night one of the RNs had put in her order and was rung to say her meal was on the way up.She got the tray out , sat down at her desk, lifted the cover off the plate and screamed when she saw the biggest cane toad ever.This poor girl had an absolute dread of cane toads and was absolutely hysterical.,Saw the funny side of it when she calmed down though
Not an April Fool's, but for my Hubbie atthetime's Bday, I got the truck arranged so he wouldn't go behind it and hung a sign, "HONK AND WAVE, IT'S MY 30th BIRTHDAY!" He said he was wondering why everyone was real friendly! It was on there until he went to lunch!
Wasn't on April 1st; but a few weeks ago I had to drug test the whole department. One girl finished hers and happened to be particularly gullible. When the test was done, I called her to the back office stating "we needed to talk." She looked sooo nervous and confused. I told her that the drug test also test for pregnancy, and that she was positive for pregnancy. She started freaking out stating "But I'm so careful, my husband's not going to be happy, etc, etc, etc." She carried on for a couple minutes before I told her I was kidding. Thankfully she saw the humor in it.
We had a doc that would always come in the morning and look at his pt's catheter bags, checking urine color ouput...
So, we took a new bag and hooked it up on a pt's bed, hid the real one and when the doc turned the bag around to check he was sure surprised to see goldfish swimming around. It was all we could do to keep a straight face until he saw it.
OMG--I was a big one for pranks when I worked in hosp. Of course most of these were in olden days when you had time to do pranks.
One Christmas morning several years ago--we decided to get our eve shift nurse and NA (who were always getting us). My girlfriend and I put up new admit 'Jenny Tilwarts' age 106 DX failure to thrive (we were on surgical floor and getting medical pts on holidays usually meant they needed a lot of nursing home care.) I gave report with a straight face--verbal-- and we even made up her graphic sheets complete with every dx you could imagine--along with orders to die for. Next when NA came in we sent her in room to see if Jenny needed some water (because another dx was dehydration). When she entered room there were some blankets bunched under covers and of course no patient. NA proceded to look in bathroom and came to tell me that patient was not in room. All nursing staff from days started 'looking' for Miss Tilwarts because she was known to 'wander' and she had pica. We let this go on for a few more hilarious minutes before we dc'd patient. (Genital Warts)
Specializes in FNP, Peds, Epilepsy, Mgt., Occ. Ed.
I worked night shift on a small unit and decided to pull an April Fool's on our coordinator.
I wrote out a letter and in it put the "resignation" of every single nurse on the unit, effective immediately. Each one had at least a semi-plausible reason.
"Mary called; her husband took a job in California and they have to move next week and so she won't be here...." and so forth.
He opened the letter and sat there reading it, getting redder and redder. Finally he said "Ah!" and let out a huge sigh- it dawned on him what day it was!!
Specializes in ER, NICU, NSY and some other stuff.
This was not an April fool's prank but a get my brother back prank.
One Thanksgiving my older brother was giving me a hard time about everything and everything, (as older brothers will).
While he was away from the house for a little bit, I filled an nearly empty Cool-Whip bolw with Menthol shaving cream. Everyone in the house but him was aware. He came in and proceeded to cut himself a large wedge of pumpkin pie and then slather it with "cool-Whip".......
The look on his face when he got a big mouthfull was priceless. That was nearly 20 years ago and to this day he will eat nothing I prepare untill he sees someone else taste it first.
Yes we planned this for weeks to get the off duty right, so as we finished night shift the student was coming on day shift, and it was her last shift on this roataion.:roll :chuckle
Come On there must be more pranksters out there to share with us all
After reading a fair amount of doom and gloom posts on these boards, I'm happy to see good clean fun is still allowed in nursing. Makes me more confident I'm going into the right field.
As for my pranks, I'm not going to give away my good ones. You never know who you might end up working with.
:lol2: 
RNgonewild
180 Posts
Now I have pulled some of my best pranks on days that werent April's Fool. But it is all in fun! One day as I was pushing the old med cart(olden days), I put an old sign around my neck that read,"This Patient is Hard of Hearing". Only I covered up the pt part and put a tape over it that said,"Nurse". All day patients were yelling their medication requests. And I was going, Eh, eh? My buddies got a good laugh over that one.