Charting Bloopers

Nurses Humor

Updated:   Published

Have you seen any charting bloopers?

Found in the History and Physical section of a patient's chart who had experienced visual hallucinations while ill:

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"Patient vehemently denies any auditory, tactile, or old factory hallucinations."
Specializes in Care Coordination, General Surgery, Oncology.

Resurrecting this thread to share a funny typo we found from a doctor the other day. Patient was in for an injury they got while doing the deed (aka coitus); doc's note said, "injury sustained while engaging in colitis." YIKES. ??

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Centricity Perinatal and I don't get along. I somehow ended up with 3 different lines for charting urine output on one patient.

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Not a nurse as you can tell but one time I wrote as chief complaint “ pt c/o soar throat”. Luckily I proof read and found my mistake, but still watch out for those flying throats.

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We had someone had charted on a prior visit an allergic reaction of "thong swelling" instead of tongue swelling. ?

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Specializes in Perinatal Nursing/ Women's Health.

"Dr. Smith (anesthesia) is at the bedside, top off"

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Specializes in Critical Care.

almost wrote pooped instead of defecated

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Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.
On 3/15/2001 at 12:33 AM, Terre said:

A new intern to our CCU once charted attempts to cardiovert a patient in the following manner:

Attempted to convert the patient with 200 jews, unsuccessful. Second attempt to convert the patient with 300 jews unsuccessful. Patient finally converted on the third attempt with 300 jews.

The mental picture of three hundred rabbis surrounding a patient's bed yelling, "Convert, convert!" was too much. We nicknamed him "Call a Code or Call a Rabbi" from that day forward.

I take care of my MiL who has dementia and alzheimers, but due to good meds, she still has some functioning brain cells.

At times, if I find something funny on-line, I will share it with her. This above post made us both laugh really hard, like to the point of tears! Then for 20-30 minutes afterwards we had intermittent giggling spells, still picturing 300 Rabbi's surrounding the patient's bed yelling, "Convert! Convert!

Terre, you don't know how wonderful it was to see MiL belly-laugh today. Thanks for posting it so long ago.

NSIME

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Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.

When I was doing home health visits on weekends, the office gave me a lot of interesting directions to patient's houses. One of the funniest (to me anyway) was to "look for the house with the brown shudders." Hmmm.

Another time I was supposed to see a new pt named Wright, who had had a lung removed, and we were doing dressings on his surgical site. Well, I got to the house, the man seemed like he was doing really, really well for being post surgery. I asked him if I could see his bandage. He rolled up his shirt sleeve and showed me a bandaid on his arm where he had had blood drawn. I was confused and called the office telling them this wasn't the patient, as he'd not had any lung surgery. Well, you may have guessed already, they had sent me to the WRONG Wright's house!

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Specializes in Hospice, corrections, psychiatry, rehab, LTC.
On 3/20/2022 at 4:35 PM, No Stars In My Eyes said:

When I was doing home health visits on weekends, the office gave me a lot of interesting directions to patient's houses. One of the funniest (to me anyway) was to "look for the house with the brown shudders." Hmmm.

Another time I was supposed to see a new pt named Wright, who had had a lung removed, and we were doing dressings on his surgical site. Well, I got to the house, the man seemed like he was doing really, really well for being post surgery. I asked him if I could see his bandage. He rolled up his shirt sleeve and showed me a bandaid on his arm where he had had blood drawn. I was confused and called the office telling them this wasn't the patient, as he'd not had any lung surgery. Well, you may have guessed already, they had sent me to the WRONG Wright's house!

So two Wrights made a wrong.

Thanks for sharing.

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Saw a doctor note trying to describe pus on a wound as “Wound appeared ___sy”.

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Specializes in Advanced Practice, Critical Care.
On 1/12/2003 at 7:55 PM, TNcanNURSE said:

I don't suppose this is an error but it was definitely different:

on the results from a UA

traces of talcum powder

Hmm, sounds like a future cervical cancer patient.

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sevensonnets said:

Patient's family had some questions for the doc so I paged him to call them in the room, but they had already left. Patient herself age 94 answers the phone. The doc then calls me and says, "Do NOT call me back. I don't know what channel Wheel of Fortune's on!"

You paged him to call them, they had left.

What???

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