Clumsiest moment?

Nurses General Nursing

Published

O.k, so I am probably the klutsiest person on earth. My husband cannot believe that I am a nurse and don't daily stab myself with needles or break my neck falling over my own feet:imbar

The worst I have done (this year) is run over my own foot with a fully loaded crash cart. One of my co-workers though, got her scrub jacket caught in the paper shredder last year...

Anyone else? Truthfully, I have never physically injured a patient or co-worker, just my own bruised self.:p

Specializes in Community Health Nurse.

My grown kids are always telling me that their own kids got their klutziness from me. :chuckle Poor wittle kiddies! :kiss

A few months ago, I was opening a big double door to enter the chapel, and the bottom of the door injured one of my toes on my left foot. I happened to have on open toed shoes. My toe bled all through the service as I held a kleenex on it trying to stop the bleeding. It turned a nice purple color, swelled, and stood out over all my other toes. Hubby just looked at me when I showed him my injured toe, and shook his head. He is always telling me I can't walk straight....that I walk crooked. :chuckle Well.....he's so right about that. Don't know why I'm so "uncoordinated". :chuckle

my nickname at work is Parky short for parkinson's because I am always knocking things over!!

Urinal bottle in hand, I trip over a TISSUE on the ground and empty said urinal all over patient in the next bed!

Bent under a patient's table to pick up pen, forget I am under table and stand up knocking vomit basin all down my back.

Trip on nothing while holding a cup of coffee, flies across the room, hits the consultant as he walks around the corner. (We're now great friends!!)

Access card drops out of my top pocket into a pan full of pr bleed.

Fall flat on my face in front of a motor bike sales yard on a busy Saturday, hubby keeps walking disowning me is easier than explaining apparently!!!

Queen Klutz here! The worst I've done to a patient through my klutziness is, having my steth hanging around my neck, getting ready to use it, then bending over to help the pt and wack, oopps, are you OK? I didn't mean to hit you with my stethescope! No one seriously injured thank goodness.

If I spill one more soda on my keyboard, I think my hubby will kick me out. LOL.

I have broken toes many times. I fell once carrying my 6 week old baby...I fell over some huge tree logs that my brother had cut earlier that day, I went flying, cut my legs up really bad, but that baby never woke and never hit the ground! More recently, went to help a couple of freinds that had gotten themselves into a motorcycle wreck...I was to step down 4 stairs but my feet only hit the first step, went flying to the bottom of the stairs, caused major tissue damage to both ankles and broke my great toe (again). Not the first time I've gone down stairs so gracefully, once went down an entire flight, on my rump, after slipping on the first step. Both falls were r/t wearing cute little sandles and of course my klutziness.

Yesterday, and I'm really unhappy about this one, I was putting something away in my garage, I opened a cabinet door and a can that was stored on top came down and broke a flouresent light bulb right in my face, I saw a puff, just before it took my breath away, it was mercury, lead, and argon left me with burning eyes, dizzyness, HA, and alot of worry about what this crap will do to me...all in the name of Klutziness.

It does seem strange that I could be so klutzy but when it comes to my job, I must be more alert and I rarely have an incident at work or when I'm around dangerous equipment at my chosen hobby competing at events.

Please be careful out there my fellow nurses!

Oh, yes! I forgot about all those urinals and bedpans that I've spilt on the patients bed. What a drag having to change those linens, clean up the patient, and doing all those transfers again.

picture this..standing in pts' room...one can of opened tube feeding that I had added some blue dye to....and in the other hand..an UNOPENED can. Well..I meant to shake the unopened can....while talking to the patient. Forgetting which can was opened already..I shook vigourouly the RIGHT hand holding the opened can..WITH the dye. Needless to say..I was drenched in blue dyed Osmolyte......and the nurses at the nurses station could hear the patient laughing from waaaaaaaay down the hall!

I wont' recount all the times I've tripped over the bedside tables, chairs in the room..hooked lab coat pocket on door knobs and been jerked backwards..etc.

I think the lab coat pocket getting hooked on things while I"m racing FORWARD aggravates me the most!

I once was doing my I and O's and I was emptying this woman's colostomy bag and I was walking to the bathroom to empty the container when I stumbled. Colostomy juice splashed into my face. Luckily the only thing hurt was my pride.

This doesn't have to do with nursing but I once became submerged in ketchup. I was working as a waitress and I was putting away a big bucket of ketchups and I went into the walk-in freezer. As I lifted the bucket over my head to put on the shelf, I slipped and felt backwards. I poured the ketchups over my head as I fell on my back. I was surrounded by ketchup and broken glass. I just laid there for a few minutes like a slug. When I got up I looked like Sissy Spacek in Carrie. It will forever be known as the " Ketchup Incident"

Specializes in Med-Surg, Long Term Care.

I may have posted this on an "embarrassing moments" thread before, but my clumsiest moment was when I was rushing around at the beginning of a shift at the LTC facility where I worked right out of nursing school. I helped a resident off of the bedpan-- she'd been having frequent bouts of diarrhea-- and placed the bedpan on the floor so I could cover her up. I got distracted somehow, and ended up STEPPING in the bedpan full of liquid stool. :eek: :imbar The resident was oriented and had a good laugh over it and after my shoe was hosed down, so did I.

Specializes in NICU.

OHMYGOD!!! I am snorting oj out of my nose right now!!! I am so excited to hear that I am not the only one!!! I have accidentes grandes, know what I mean, chicas? I was working and had a scrub top on with a breast pocket. It was the ONLY pocket, so naturally, it was crammed SOOOOOOO FULL that it looked like I had a TUMOR growing off my chest!! I leaned down to work with a baby in the isolette, and as I stood up, my pens and what-not got stuck and I stood up and RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPP!

AND ALL OF A SUDDEN my bra is exposed all the way down to my nibble, as my hubby likes to call it. needless to say, I was not wearing my LaPerla but instead my three year old comfortable and very HOLY (and I 'aint talkin' Baptist, honey...) jogging bra. Dear lord. Another time, I was wearing these strappy, flimsy, but totally sexy sandals and stepped off a curb. My feet were sweaty, and the top of the sandal was nothing but four floss-thin elastic straps. My foot slid forward unhindered and scraped across the gritty, rocky concrete. I hobbled to the car to discover I had removed ALL the skin, like a glove, from my big toe and has ripped half the nail off in the process. I have always wondered if it was eaten by a bird, as I went back the next day to look for it and it was gone. Tastyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. ;>) I also, on another occasion, went to pay a parking ticket, and was wearing these platform mules that were just so cute and totally went with my outfit. (rolling eyes) Well, dontcha know that I'm looking ahead and not down (trying to look confident so I wouldn't get mugged...) and I stepped forward, not realizing that the sidewalk dropped down SIX FRICKING INCHES because it was all buckled and broken. Durrrrrr. I literally went FLYING THROUGH THE AIR like a human slinky, because my foot twisted TOTALLY AROUND and I tipped sideways off the platform sandal. I was like, spinning through the air in slow motion and I did a complete 360 and fell smack on my palms and tailbone, then skidded about a foot forward from the impact. I was DAZED and just sat there, rude mo-fo's passin' me by without offering a BIT of help. I looked at my left ankle and started SCREAMING because it was the size of a cantelope!!!!!!!! It looked like I stuffed a softball in my pantyhose or something!! I had to hop...HOP, I SAY!!!!!!....to the steps of the courthouse, and jump on one foot from step to step to step to step, people staring at me and still not offering to help, even though I was crying my eyeballs out. I got inside, got to the counter, managed to hold it together when I was in line, wicked pain and all, and as soon as the girl at the counter said 'Hello..' I F*CKING LOST IT and started bawling like a baby. It took me five full minutes to tell them that I needed medical attention. And Cheerfuldoer, honey, my husband says that I also walk sideways..we'll be holding hands and walking side by side, and he'll have to say every few minutes, 'Kristi, why are you running into me?'. AND to top all this off, I, too, have stepped into an elevator before it was level, and went face first onto the elevator floor in front of about eighty people waiting in the lobby to get to work. If it's not made of marshmallow, I'll break it, and I've set the kitchen on fire MORE THAN TWICE. Ladies, pass the Valium please.

walking around in the ER looking for empty beds, walked smack dab into one of the pillars......seems l always find myself asking...who the crap put a wall THERE?.....

Once had a drunk tell me.."l'm gonna puke''....just reflex, quickly turned his head and he spewed all across the room and down the back of my co-worker.

:roll :roll

How glad I am to find out that I have previously undiscovered siblings !!!!

Started to read this thread, and got to laughing sooooo...hard I snorted my coffee out nose........ouch !! that hurts, so had to go wipe face, and put on clean clothes first......I only do bag baths now, have dropped TOO many pans of water.....housekeeping says I give them job security just following me around.....LAst week was getting an admit from OR, we have those sliding glass doors on rooms that also swing out for easy access. Well, got patient, connected to CM, etc....hadn`t pulled doors shut yet.... RT was at bedside drawing ABG through a-line.....Fire alarm went off, so I went to shut doors ( needed to pull inline first), Fisrt swung into place, second came off track or something...hit floor with a resounding thud....missed Rt by about 1 inch...........scared the daylights out of All if us.......didn`t brwak, guess the shatterproof claim is true......Maintence paged, not happy,"WE are having a fire drill!!".RT now makes me get my own ABG`s.....

Hey, I almost forgot about this thread. But I have a new one to add that occured yesturday. My co-worker and I were pulling an Art line out of a very combative altered brain surgery pt. She was to pull and I was aspirating blood with the syringe (we do this in tandem to avoid air going in the artery when removing the line). The guy who was previously still gets pissed and yanks his arm away and the syringe comes off and blood spurts all over the place. This is all with the nursing sup and aneshtesiologist watching (chuckling). I should just wear a full body condom to work.

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