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!!!
Peachy, I too am so sorry for the loss of your Maw Maw....I feel protective of any family members in the hospital..I remember telling a nurse on a stepdown progressive care unit in a major hospital in B***** that my dads heparin lock was infected and needed to be removed. She said it was fine and I shouldn't be assessing things just because I was a nurse. Undaunted, I insisted she remove it or I would. She refused so I did..By that evening dad was on iv antibiotics (through a NEW line) for the copiously pus filled former heparin locke site that I identified earlier. I too haven't yet made a major mistake but there have been some close calls..One that comes to mind is discovering by chance that our vials of pitocin were actually vials of pitressin. Due to that almost fiasco, I still check the pit vials all these years later even though because of that, the pitressin vials were changed to look different from the pit...
I am a new nursing student so I haven't been in clinical very long. However the other day I got to see the charge nurse change the dressing on a couple of stage II pressure ulcers that were on the coccyx of a pt w/MRSA. She was not wearing gloves. :uhoh21: The CNA who was hlping hold the pt on her side was wearing gloves at least. I was stunned. Reported it to my Clinical instructor, don't know what happened if anything.
This is so unacceptable and not to mention how she is infecting herself with mrsa......which will be carried over to the next pt. I've seen something similar to this in a hopspital where i do clinicals.... so i'm not one bit surprised. I've witnessed nurses go into a pts room that is on contact isolation or resp isolation with no gown on or mask how stupid and careless.
Specializes in Trauma,ER,CCU/OHU/Nsg Ed/Nsg Research.
I've witnessed nurses go into a pts room that is on contact isolation or resp isolation with no gown on or mask how stupid and careless.
Not necessarily- you don't need a mask for contact isolation, and you only need a gown if you're doing something (like cleaning them up) that could involve some body-to-body contact. As for the resp isolation- the nurse may have knowledge about the pt that you don't. The Tb skin test and first 2 AFBs could be negative, so s/he feels more comfortable going into the room without the mask. Not saying this is always true, just offering a different perspective. :)
When I was a CNA 20 years ago and working in a LTC facility...I remember an LPN being fired because she was opening up capsules and having patients lick the meds from her hand. She thought the capsules were plastic and couldn't be swallowed.....
Now why the HELL she would have em' lick the meds from her hand....is another good question....OMG. She was a whacko in general from what I remember.
I remember an LPN being fired because she was opening up capsules and having patients lick the meds from her hand. She thought the capsules were plastic and couldn't be swallowed.....
Whoa...that's bizarre. Not to mention DANGEROUS. Time-released meds are in a capsule for a REASON. Some of those residents are probably getting several hours' worth of medicine at once. And this nurse also thought the capsules couldn't be swallowed? What universe is SHE in?? Sounds like her elevator doesn't quite make it to the top floor....
Whoa...that's bizarre. Not to mention DANGEROUS. Time-released meds are in a capsule for a REASON. Some of those residents are probably getting several hours' worth of medicine at once. And this nurse also thought the capsules couldn't be swallowed? What universe is SHE in?? Sounds like her elevator doesn't quite make it to the top floor....
Definetely a taco or two short of a combo meal.... I am sure she must have lost her license many moons ago....
Very very bizarre. I wonder how many patients she harmed....or worse....
Specializes in Telemetry, ICU, Resource Pool, Dialysis.
I am completely speechless. I cannot believe ANYBODY would hook up O2 to a central line of any kind, or a BP air line to anything but the cuff!!!! Are you sure these were nurses? Maalox into the bulb on an ETT??:uhoh21: OMG
This happened to a friend of mine. when I told her I was going into nursing, she grasped my hand and said "Please be a NICE nurse." There was such entreaty in her voice, I asked her what had happened. she had recently been hospitalized, and had recieved a dose of morphine ten times larger than ordered :angryfire ! someone noticed before she died, but the story does not end. When it came time for the morphine treatments to end, the nurses refused to believe she was going through withdrawl. she has a history of opioid abuse, and she knows what withdrawl feels like! After shift change she found a nurse who took her seriously, and contacted the doc, who ordered meds to help her through. On top of all this she is blind, so how scary is it to not be able to see your tormentors!
As a nursing student, we were all gathered around a patients bed to watch another student perform her first REAL PATIENT Z track injection.
And that's exactly what she did. She shoved the needle into this poor guys hiney and proceeded to move the whole syringe in a Z motion, then injected the med. Bravo. Man screaming, nursing instructor pallid. A few students calm and unsure what the problem was, others horrified. We all knew that day, which students may be not be graduating with us. LOL:uhoh3:
Let's see, years ago I worked with an RN who had many years experience, she often worked as an evening supervisor as well. She worked nights, I was working days. After I got out of report, I did my usual round to check on everyone and check IVs, etc. I came across a patient who came in periodically with kidney stones. I noticed he was sleeping. This was a young guy, late 30s or early 40s. I realized he wasn't sleeping, he was have unconscious! His resps were about 8. He was on a morphine drip. I checked the bag, noticed it was a 100cc minibag versus the usual 250cc bag we'd use for morph drips. I quickly shut off the morphine and ran saline, paged the doc stat (who was luckily doing morning rounds). The guy was transferred to ICU STAT. He was overdosed. Instead of putting 50mg into a 250 bag of N/S she put 50mg into a 100cc bag. I wrote her up, but did anything happen? Nope. She continued to nurse AND be a periodic nursing supervisor.
Years before that, I caught a new RN drawing up Potassium Chloride to use for doing a heparin lok flush. She was mistaking the small vial of N/S for KCL. She was one scary chick. And yes, I wrote her up. She didn't last long.
Caught one other scary RN once.....we had a patient come up from Emerg, admitted to our unit. He had a DVT and came up on a Heparin drip. His Emerg orders stated he was to have a loading dose of heparin s/c. He'd have received this in Emerg prior to starting the drip. When he got to the floor, I saw her going into his room with a syringe. When she came out, I asked her what she'd given him, she lied and said she'd given him nothing. I didn't believe her. I went in and made small talk with him...he mentioned a nurse had just been in there to give him a shot to his arm (s/c). She still denied it. There was nothing else injectable she could have given him, nothing else was ordered that was injectable.
When I was a nursing student, I was doing my practicum on a med/surg unit. I was helping do morning care with an LPN..she was a really mean, grouch cow. She got up this lady (brain mets) onto the toilet. Later I heard this poor old lady had fallen off the toilet and hit her head. This wench just left her on the toilet - not secured at all, no access to a call bell...she should have never been left unattended.
I was always astounded and mortified, too, to see RNs give a bolus of saline to unclog an IV line or hep/saline lok. They'd get out a big 10cc syringe, fill it w/ N/S and attach it to the hub and put major pressure to flush the cannula.....um, hello? if there's a clot on the end of the cannula congratulations, you just dislodged it. I'd even seen docs do this, too. sheesh.
I remember one nurse who forgot to prime her iv tubing and the young patient got a hole line of air from the tubing, ended up in ICU w/ an air embolus. She was fired.
I wrote up a couple of physicians, also. Had a case once where I was working nights...had a lady in her 50s who began having chest pain, vitals weren't good, color was awful....I called down to EMERG and wanted the on-call doc up to my unit STAT. He was too busy on the phone making personal calls. He didn't show up until I'd paged him 3 times........she was then promptly transferred to ICU. I think he lost his license to practice a few years later as he was charged with double billing. A real pillar of integrity and compassion, that one.
Also had another incident where I had a 17 yr old patient w/ Mono. A week earlier in our small town, a girl in his class had mono but was misdiagnosed as having the flu....she ended up dying at school of a ruptured spleen. Needless to say, all the teens in town were devastated and very scared. So this young guy rings the bell in the middle of the night complaining of abdominal pain..to the area of his spleen. He's in tears, afraid he's going to die, too. I call downstairs for the ON-CALL doc. Well where is he? He's left the building..he went home. He lived a half hour out of town. I was livid. If you're oncall, you damn well better be available *NOW*.....so I call him up at home, wake him up, he says he'll be there right away. I'm trying to calm down this young guy.....he's very restless, very scared, what can I do, not much.........we wait. 30 min goes by, no doc. 40 min, no doc. I call his home again. GUESS WHAT? He fell back asleep. I was not impressed. I completed an incident report and reported him to the chief of medicine. Although I'm sure nothing happened as a result. He finally did come in..bully for him.
After shift change she found a nurse who took her seriously, and contacted the doc, who ordered meds to help her through. On top of all this she is blind, so how scary is it to not be able to see your tormentors!
Mermaid4
281 Posts
Peachy, I too am so sorry for the loss of your Maw Maw....I feel protective of any family members in the hospital..I remember telling a nurse on a stepdown progressive care unit in a major hospital in B***** that my dads heparin lock was infected and needed to be removed. She said it was fine and I shouldn't be assessing things just because I was a nurse. Undaunted, I insisted she remove it or I would. She refused so I did..By that evening dad was on iv antibiotics (through a NEW line) for the copiously pus filled former heparin locke site that I identified earlier. I too haven't yet made a major mistake but there have been some close calls..One that comes to mind is discovering by chance that our vials of pitocin were actually vials of pitressin. Due to that almost fiasco, I still check the pit vials all these years later even though because of that, the pitressin vials were changed to look different from the pit...