DUH moments..

Nurses New Nurse

Published

Specializes in Float.

So new nurses..share some of your duh moments so far! Here is one I did last week:

It was the end of a 12 hr night shift. Pt having weird fecal type residual out of PEG. Ended up hooking it to suction to see how much she had. So we took it off suction per MD orders. Preceptor gave me a big thick strip of tape and said "go use this to mark the canister with the time and amount so the next shift will know how much." I thought "huh why did she give me this LONG strip of tape"

I tore it in half and lined it up ---- this way with the suction drainage, wrote the amt and time.

A few minutes later I'm charting and my preceptor says "um come here I need to show you something"

Well DUH..I was supposed to put the tape like this | to mark it...oops lol. She said she got a chuckle out of it. Made perfect sense once she said it. Scary sometimes that they give us a license huh? lol

So what have you done that you felt like DUH...what was I thinking?

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Specializes in Tele, Renal, ICU, CIU, ER, Home Health..

During my first year as a nurse, I helped a little old lady to the bathroom. She said, "Honey, I'm going to need the paper". So I went and got her newspaper off of her bedside table. She started laughing and said, "not that paper...the toilet paper". DUH!!!

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Ok, so I might be dumb, but I think that I would have done the same thing with the tape on the suction canister. Could you please give the rationale behind it. Thanks :)

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Specializes in Float.

The rationale for the tape? I guess so you aren't writing directly on the canister. I mean like on chest tubes we mark it directly with a marker. Of course it doesn't work so well unless you have a sharpie. A dry erase will wipe right off and a pen won't mark it. I guess this is why she wanted the tape on there so you could easily mark the canister with a pen and track the drainage each shift. We weren't irrigating so this was straight drainage from the woman's stomach.

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ahh, that makes sense. I guess I was thinking each shift would add a piece of tape to mark the suction level taken q shift. Thanks for explaining!

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Specializes in Geriatrics, Cardiac, ICU.
ahh, that makes sense. I guess I was thinking each shift would add a piece of tape to mark the suction level taken q shift. Thanks for explaining!

Actually, it looks to me like you could do it either way as long as it gets marked. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

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Ha, I had one last week.

DC'd an IV on a 30-some year old woman, s/p PE. Held pressure for a bit. Yup, still bleeding. Held pressure for a little longer. Peeked - blood still gushing out of the hole. I was thinking hard, like, darn, this is weird! Looked up...

she's on a heparin drip!!!

DUH!

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Went to SL an IV, pt. taking in fluids ok. etc, after sugery. instead of just locking it, I took the entrie thing out. DUH, still had doses of IV abx, if I remember correctly.

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Specializes in Neuro, Critical Care.

ha. The other night i was so tired.....i have 2 pts usually a night. I was taking one to scan and i had one empty room. I told the PCT who was helping me to wa it one second while I asked my neighbor to watch my other pt. She says...what other pt?? DUH

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Specializes in Float.

Well after working last night I have a few new ones to add lol. It was only my 2nd shift handling all the RN duties and my first with 3 patients doing everything.

- First, We give a ton of IV zosyn. There is a little powder bottle attached to the 50ml fluid and you have to squeeze fluid in to reconstitute, then flip and squirt back into the bag. So I hang it and all, then go to organize things and go to put the next dose in the pt med drawer. Then I had a mental image "huh I REALLY don't remember reconstituting this" So I go look in the room, sure enough the 50cc finished running but the little attached bottle still full of powder Zosyn lol. So I hung the other bag (AFTER reconstituting) and took the first bag down to pharmacy later on to fix back up for me. Can we say DUH!

- 2nd. Went to hang Protonix..same deal to reconstitute. I could NOT get the fluid to go in the little bottle. I squeezed, rolled, mashed...took to my preceptor and she couldn't do it either. Again hung a different bag and took to pharmacy with my Zosyn from above. He laid it on the table, mashed it, and did it no problem! Just like taking your car to the mechanic I swear! lol

- While in the pharmacy, I picked up narcotics to replenish the floor. My first time doing this. I had 10 vials of Dilaudid, 10 of Morphine and some Ativan and Lortabs I think it was. I was sooo nervous, I made sure I checked it all before I signed it out. Took it straight up to the narc room and had the charge nurse sign them in. We put them in the narc cabinet. I took out my Dilaudid for my patient, wasted half as needed, showed it to my preceptor who signed the waste..all is good right? Well at shift change they were counting the narcs and the charge nurse said "hey you forgot to sign out your Dilaudid" I said I KNOW I signed it out but looking at the sheet I saw I didn't. Well sure enough I signed it out on the Lortab sheet accidnetally. I had been so nervous getting those narcs counted in I forgot to flip the page to the Dilaudid. So she helped me fix the pages to be correct but I felt like a big dummie.

I think that was all my big "duhs" nothing that caused any issues directly to the patients...just feeling dumb. I also bumped a bedside table and spilled all my stuff on the floor lol..thankfully it was just trash from stuff I'd already opened and used. Oh and at the end of the shift I dumped my coffee all over my report sheets, thankfully I was done with them at that point lol.

I did do lots of GOOD things on the shift lol... but sometimes you just feel so crazy I swear!

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Specializes in ICU, telemetry, LTAC.

My first day on the job, I asked my preceptor to sign my narcotic out for me. She looked at me and said, "why?" It took me a couple seconds to remember I could sign things now!

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Specializes in PCU, Home Health.

Well, I am nearly past my first year as an RN- tomorrow is my anniversary of looking on the internet and seeing that yes I passed!!

I had a not so shining moment yesterday when a doc was giving me orders and she wants me to do a PPD test. She sort of has and accent and I can't understand the letters- because in school we called this a TB test or a Mantoux skin test. She asked to speak to my charge nurse and told the charge nurse that she could not imagine a nurse not knowing what a PPD was!:trout: So there I am with my tail between my legs- the charge writes the order and all and it is sent to the pharmacy. Pharmacy calls me back asking me what this PPD thing is! (It was a balm for my hurt pride). I rewrote the order for tuberculin skin test and it made them happy. I just hope the doctor realizes tomorrow when she is signing that order that I am not a complete moron.:uhoh21:

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