All of us at one time or another have seen or heard of a nurse doing the most idiotic or blatantly stupid thing that goes against our grain of "good nursing". What's the worst you've ever heard? Here's one for you:
At a LTC where I worked, (this was LONG ago...) we had one nurse on 3-11 shift that all the other nurses kept complaining about because it was "common knowledge" that she always gave her 4 pm meds with her 8 pm meds. Of course, I never actually saw this happen and rarely ever worked with this woman. However, no one else would dare to approach this nurse as she had worked there "forever", and always got her way with whatever she wanted. She would leave the building and not clock out for her breaks, and spend a couple of hours at Walmart then return to work. I was told once that a family member approached her about a resident who thought was having a heart attack and this nurse told them "I'm not her nurse, you need to inform someone else"....this while she sat at the nurses desk filing her nails. Anyhow, one evening our DON just "happened" to check this nurses med cart...and guess what. Supposedly, all the 8pm meds had already been given (or at least they weren't in the med cards) Needless to say, she doesn't work there anymore. Actually, I believe she retired!!!
I don't understand how some nurses can be so PLAINLY unprofessional - not even attempt to hide it! EDIT: Just a reminder, this is what I had heard, not what I had witnessed. Had I witnessed anything close to this you better believe I would be on the phone with someone...and fast!!!
Specializes in LTC, home health, critical care, pulmonary nursing.
Years ago, I worked with a brand new nurse, first job out of nursing school. She was a very sweet girl, however, seemed basically clueless about many nursing tasks. She had been orienting for a few weeks, when she came running up to me, frantic. She was crying and saying she was trying to give meds to a pt. thru the G-tube and now she couldn't flush the tube at all. I assured her we could unstop the tube, thought I would just show her some old tips on how to take care of this. When I got to the pt.'s bedside, I was completely amazed at what I saw. The G-tube had some thick, purple gunk all over it and in the tube. I asked the young nurse to tell me exactly what she did. She said, "First I crushed all the meds up, I flushed the tube, then I mixed the meds with grape jelly, and used the syringe to push it through the G-tube." "Whoa", I said, "Why did you mix the meds with grape jelly?" She then told me how she had seen all of us do that with crushed meds. I explained that you only mixed them that way to give meds po. :uhoh21:
Needless to say it took a while and a lot of work to clear that tube. This is also the same nurse that I once told to use a filter needle to draw up meds from a glass vial to avoid glass particles. Well, she did that, and then proceeded to give an IM injection with the filter needle! Ouch.
Limik
I'm a CNA and I know better than that! Common sense would say that big thick sticky clumps probably wouldn't go through a skinny tube too well.
As I read these posts it makes me even more depressed because reading about these " NOT SO BRIGHT" nurses who I am sure passed the boards on the first try and here I am, a person w/more than a clue and just found out I failed. I tell you sometimes life is just not fair.
When I was a CNA, I heard about a 3rd shift nurse who gave one of our little ladies 10 times the Morphine that was ordered. She did die, but I don't know the exact cause of death since she was declining anyway. One day I went into work, now an RN, and the previous nurse and I counted the narcs and we discovered that one patient was given double the dose of the prescribed morphine 2 days in a row by 2 different nurses. The 5 rights are there for a reason!
There was this one nurse who was working 3rd shift and one night she slept and she was the only nurse on the floor. She was slurring her words. She didn't check blood sugars or give insulin. There was something wrong with her and the assistant DON talked to her and they figured out she had done too many nights in a row and wasn't getting enough sleep and since she is Bipolar...yes I said Bipolar....she wasn't taking her meds right. She would come in with lots of coffee and donuts(manic phase). They let her stay telling her this can't happen again. They fixed her schedule so she wouldn't work so many nights in a row and things were good for awhile, then it happened again and she was fired. Not a safe nurse at all.
When I worked at a State Forensic Psych Hospital I knew an aide that got pregnant by a patient and she still works there. On another incident an aide was caught having sex with this same patient on the floor in the canteen but she called it rape and so she still works there. An LPN that worked with me was smoking pot everyday and even after documenting her behaviors and them finding her urine dirty, she got her job back because it was considered an ADA issue? I can't believe all of these people still have jobs with the State but yet someone like me who tried to go back to work there when I couldn't find anything else was told that I was not elgible for rehire.......why?????? Because I didn't get along with one of my supervisors and I wasn't doing my groups during the week. Outrageous huh? None of the nurses were doing groups except me and yet I was not elgible for rehire because of that? It's incidents like these that really make me question my career choice sometimes. It is a known fact that more people trust nurses than any other profession. Yet the "bad" ones seem to stick around while the good ones get fired, laid off or let go. Sad.
We use to have a male nurse that would take the cap off of the syringe and drag the needle down the concrete wall on the way to the patients room before giving the patient a shot. This way it would dull it and hurt worse going in!!!!! I never saw him do it but I had heard from other nurses that he did it and then he would brag about doing things like that. About 20 years ago at the same hospital, the aides gave the medicines to the patients and they wouldn't even measure what they were giving. If the patient was upset in the slightest, he would recieve a large dose of thorazine or haldol and if the patient was calm, he would get just enough to keep him calm. Needless to say, being a new nurse in this hospital proved to be very difficult when I refused to do anything close to what they were accustomed to. You just would not believe some of the things that go on in State facilities. There are some good nurses that work in this system yet there are some really bad ones as well. The male nurse I was talking about above, has since died. I had another nurse who had been at this facility for several years and she ended up being fired because she forced an NG tube into a patient perforating the patient's sinuses and causing permanent nerve damage to that area. I am not perfect in any way shape or form but I think I would have stopped once I realized the patient was screaming in pain?????? :angryfire
I worked with a nurse who took a bag of Amphotericin B ( in a 1000cc bag), for a bladder irrigation, and plugged it right into her IV! Ok, BAD. But here's the kicker...( I caught the problem soon when walking into the patients room to fix a beeping pump.) I brought the nurse in the room, counseled her, and I THOUGHT all was ok. I taught her how to hook up the cont bladder irrigation the right way.. A few hours later, the patient was having high BP. We notified the MD, and he ordered Lopresser IV. She gave it. An hour later, the pressure hadn't come down, and she let me know (I was charge RN). I assessed the patient and found the tubing to the bladder irrigation cloudy, and crystallized. I then questioned her, she had given the Lopresser thru the bladder irrigation tubing. HOWWW?????????? We even posted a HUGE sign on the pump, for CBI ONLY. Taped the pump closed. Put the IVF on the other side of the patient!!!! AHHHH, she was dangerous!
Same nurse, I was getting report... she says, 67m with kidney stones. He has a cardiac hx, cause it says he has stents. So throughout the AM, I am wondering what kind of cardiac probs he has, he has none. Not cardiac stents, KIDNEY stents. She had no idea there was such a thing.
Specializes in ICU, ED, Transport, Home Care, Mgmnt.
I worked in a hospital that was being sued. The nurse mistook the central line for the NGT and gave the patient pepto bismul, SURPRISE, the patient coded.
Another nurse in another hospital put maalox into the balloon of the ETT instead of the NGT.
I would love to know what it is about NGT's that some nurses keep mistaking other types of tubes for them???
As I read these posts it makes me even more depressed because reading about these " NOT SO BRIGHT" nurses who I am sure passed the boards on the first try and here I am, a person w/more than a clue and just found out I failed. I tell you sometimes life is just not fair.
Try again. I have a relative who was brilliant enough to work for both JFK and RFK (John Kennedy and his brother Robert, for those of you too young to know the initials), yet he failed the bar exam 7 times before he finally made it. He needed a room with special lighting because his vision was so bad it took him forever to see and respond to the questions (timed exam). As evidenced by all of these astounding stories, passing/high exam scores don't make good nurses! I think classes in common sense would be good...
Cindy: YA THINK??? I haven't graduated yet, but if I had never even been to nursing school, I think I would have known better than to stuff a tube up a screaming patient's nose. I guess that's what they call "critical thinking"....I am doing clinicals in a mental health lockdown facility where the staff is AWESOME about careful, conscientious patient care (although I think some of the jokes could be cleaned up a bit). Luckily, we don't care for any medical patients so there aren't any tubes to shove! Cheerio!
I worked in a hospital that was being sued. The nurse mistook the central line for the NGT and gave the patient pepto bismul, SURPRISE, the patient coded.
Another nurse in another hospital put maalox into the balloon of the ETT instead of the NGT.
I would love to know what it is about NGT's that some nurses keep mistaking other types of tubes for them???
I can't think how a central line could have been mistaken for an NGT. I hope she lost her licence. :uhoh21:
Not sure about the details....maybe some of you can picture this better. Recently, a nurse went to hook a bp monitor to the cuff already on the pts arm...( usually when pts go from one dept to the next, we will leave the cuff on and they can just hook them up to their monitor). Somehow, she had connected it to a picc line port (are there devices that have similar looking ports?). Anyway, a pt who had come in for a basically routine procedure died of air emoblus. Very saddd for the pt and for the nurse. Im sure she will have some very tough times ahead of her. Lets all be careful not to be too quick at pointing fingers. It only takes a few seconds to ruin a lifetime.
Cindy: YA THINK??? I haven't graduated yet, but if I had never even been to nursing school, I think I would have known better than to stuff a tube up a screaming patient's nose. I guess that's what they call "critical thinking"....I am doing clinicals in a mental health lockdown facility where the staff is AWESOME about careful, conscientious patient care (although I think some of the jokes could be cleaned up a bit). Luckily, we don't care for any medical patients so there aren't any tubes to shove! Cheerio!
Have you ever placed a NG? Patients often fight and beg you to stop, even if they've previously consented. You just try to have a second person hold their hands and get it down smooth and quick. I wouldn't say most patients SCREAM though, that would be a red flag, and you should never ever have to force an NG. If it doesn't go down easily, stop.
lovingtheunloved, ASN, RN
940 Posts
I'm a CNA and I know better than that! Common sense would say that big thick sticky clumps probably wouldn't go through a skinny tube too well.