Dumb things new nurses do....

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Drew routine labs from a PICC that was STILL infusing TPN..

Got a call from lab with a critical Blood Glucose of 900.

Learned my lesson, turned off TPN, FLUUUUUSHHHHED the line, re-draw labs...:cheers:

D5 1/2NS. Stickiest shower of my life.

Better than lipids!

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Better than lipids!

I had to hang that for the first time last week (I'm still a student) and all I could think about was that it looked like liquid Crisco!

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Specializes in Family Medicine.
D5 1/2NS. Stickiest shower of my life.

I did that with TPN once. Sticky buns McGee.

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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.

I was orienting in the urology OR, and the surgeon was using glycine. 3 liter bags, four running at a time with tubing connecting them all together into one tube going to the sterile field. One emptied, forgot to clamp the tubing before unspiking it. Law of gravity: the three remaining bags began draining into the bag I'd just unspiked. That was one heck of a mess, but I NEVER made that mistake again!

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Was pushing the air out of an oral syringe before administering Roxicet into a G tube. The syringe jammed so I pushed a bit harder, and BAM...all the Roxicet flew out and stuck right to the ceiling! The pt and I had a good laugh, as did my waste witness :lol2:. That stuff is sticky; it didn't drip or anything. Just clung to the ceiling like a cave stalactite!

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I'm a year in but I work on a Peds Oncology floor so I hardly ever place IVs cause they all have central lines. Well, the other night I had to place one. We use the intradermal lidocaine J-Tips to help with the pain and there is a little hole on the side that blows out the excess pressure, so I put my hand over it to prevent it from spraying the kid in the face. But this plan backfired and I got a full blast of lidicaine right in MY face and directly in both eyeballs! My whole face and eyeballs got numb for about 5 or 10 minutes. Made the little dude laugh though :yeah:

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Specializes in Developmental Disabilites,.

I misread the bedside o2 machine. I thought my pts o2 sats was in the 60s. I pull out a non rebreather and was cranking the o2 when a physical therapist comes by and just points at the machine. I was looking at HR! His o2 sat was really 99% I was so embarassed!

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my fave was the time i came in at 0700 to find the oncoming day charge nurse asking me to give an abg class to the new grad who had admitted an ancient copd patient at 2345 and read the attending's nasal o2 order (3/4 lpm) as "three to four lpm." she started her on three liters and when she checked back an hour later the old bird didn't look so hot so she upped it to four.:icon_roll

since the old bird's system hadn't seen that much oxygen since the eisenhower administration it pretty much decided it didn't need to have any sort of respiratory drive at all. :eek:

fortunately even though her 0650 stat abg was ph 7.05, co2 96, o2 135, and bicarb 45, she wasn't really quite dead-dead. i think she was using her skin as the exchange membrane, or maybe her tympanic membrane was giving it a shot. charge nurse ripped the os off her and bagged the hell out of her and she lived to return to the snf.

this story made it into my favorite-abgs-of-all-time repertoire. :w00t:

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Those stinking prefilled saline syringes will be the death of me. The first time I had to flush a patients line my instuctor instructed me to "burp" it, well I pushed too hard and shot my patient in the face, I thought I was going to die.

This one is my least favorite to tell because I was horribly embarassed. I had a med/surg patient who's mom was with him, he was about 35 years old. Well I asked him if he wanted his mom to step out while I washed him up, he said no my Wife can stay:eek: I swear she looked 60 to me!

Oh and when I was new to my unit, I was very unfamiliar with the night shift, well there was a sign hanging in the break room announcing the baby shower of "Nurse Smith" (she had a very unique name, or so I thought:eek:) So when I was getting report from another nurse (with the same name) who looked a lot like that nurse, I asked her when she was due.....she just told me she was trying to lose some weight but she was in fact not pregnant:banghead:

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Those stinking prefilled saline syringes will be the death of me. The first time I had to flush a patients line my instuctor instructed me to "burp" it, well I pushed too hard and shot my patient in the face, I thought I was going to die.

I've learned that if you pull back a bit first, you don't get as much pressure when you push out the bubble.

This one is my least favorite to tell because I was horribly embarassed. I had a med/surg patient who's mom was with him, he was about 35 years old. Well I asked him if he wanted his mom to step out while I washed him up, he said no my Wife can stay:eek: I swear she looked 60 to me!

Oh don't be embarrassed, I do that on a regular basis!

I once worked on a floor where a lot of the patients had penile implants. Many of these guys liked to pump it up and just show it off to see who reacts. As a new grad, I told the patient it wasn't appropriate and he should put it away. He replied that he didn't know how to deflate it- only his wife did. We believed him and manipulated his genitals until the problem was solved. :o

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Not a grad yet (still a student!). Right at the beginning of my first shift on a new ward, I enthusiastically volunteered to take an IV out, wanting to show off my skills to the nurse I was buddied with. I didn't realise how long the cannula was and I was still in a state of first-day jitters. Needless to say, I didn't pull the cannula out all the way straight and when it came out it flicked up and sprayed blood in my face! Learnt a few things from that experience :lol2:

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This one is my least favorite to tell because I was horribly embarrassed. I had a med/surg patient who's mom was with him, he was about 35 years old. Well I asked him if he wanted his mom to step out while I washed him up, he said no my Wife can stay:eek: I swear she looked 60 to me!

Was it my mom and her boyfriend?

My boyfriend is older than my mother's!

Thanks okay, though... everybody's happy!

Anyhoo...

I once worked all morning with a pt, the floor nurses, my instructor, the PT and talked to the docs... and nobody bothered to tell me about the orangey-brown pollen all over my nose and face.

I only found out because I swiped my hand across my face and saw my hand with something on it.

At first I was horrified... it looked like it coulda been poop.

:eek:

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

Thank goodness, it was only pollen from when I sniffed my pt's lillies.

(did that just sound awkward?)

I asked my pt, "Aw! Why didn't you tell me I had that all over my nose?".

The pt replied, "I thought you had a weird birthmark or something. I wasn't sure and I didn't want to hurt your feelings, honey."

:icon_roll

Sure enough, everyone had known it was there, was thinking, "*****" and no one said a word.

Man!

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