Epic (Nursing) FAILS!

Like any good team member, nurses come to work with our game face on: ready to run hard, field phone calls, intercept doctors, and run interference for our patients. Here's what happens when we play like we left our heads behind in the locker room.

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I once destroyed a patient room within five minutes of starting my shift.

It was fortunate that the two ladies who occupied the semi-private room were AA & O and had a sense of humor. You have to know your shift is going to be a bad one when you walk into a room and trip over someone's catheter, then dump a custard in the other patient's lap. As an encore, you then open a cabinet, and 500 little paper cups fall onto your head. Then, after you've retrieved them all and stand up, you forget the door is still open and thump your cranium so soundly that you see stars and go sprawling on your posterior. The cups wind up on the floor again.....and in the meantime, two very concerned women are peering at you over the counter. And YOU'RE supposed to be taking care of THEM.

A good friend of mine was a champion IV starter who could get a line in a rutabaga if it needed one. One day after several of us tried without success to stick this 400-lb. patient with an active case of DTs and no palpable veins, we called Anna in to try to locate something so we could get some meds on board. Bless her, she got a 20g in the cephalic vein on her very first try and flushed the line.....but then she got all bollixed up in the tape while trying to secure the site. She must've had a yard of the stuff wrapped around her fingers. She couldn't pull it loose, and no one else in the room could help her because we were using all our muscle power to hold the patient down while the nursing supervisor and the tech were trying to buckle him into four-points. "Tape is our friend," Anna quipped.

Speaking of tape: regardless of purpose or design, there are only two kinds of medical tape---1) that which will not stick, and 2) that which will not come off. I was a Med/Surg tech back in nursing school days who was allowed to D/C everything but a central line, and I went into one room to take out a saline lock for a patient who was going home. She was a frail elderly lady with extremely thin skin, only I didn't know HOW thin until I took the op-site off.........and took the entire top layer of skin with it. To say the least, I was horrified and began to apologize profusely for the awful thing I'd done. The patient herself merely shrugged. "Oh, for goodness sake, it's just skin!" she admonished. "I can grow more---it happens every time."

(That was when I learned the trick of removing the skin from the tape instead of removing the tape from the skin.......there really is a difference in techniques, and I've never ripped another single layer of parchment paper that serves some elderly folks as skin ever since.)

Then there was the time I nearly got written up for multiple patient complaints. It was one of those full-moon August weekend nights that are just ripe with possibilities......if you're looking for trouble, that is. As it was, I didn't know if things happened the way they did because I was on my fourth consecutive 12-hr shift, but I couldn't help being goofy......I found myself snickering at every silly thing that happened that night, and I'd already infected several of my co-workers with the giggles as well.

Anyway, an LPN and I were working together in one room, changing a patient's soiled linens and cleaning him up while trying not to wake him totally, when I backed into an enormous flower arrangement and sent it crashing to the floor. That made his roommate wake up and swear, stringing profanities together in such creative combinations that it struck me as absolutely hilarious, and I broke up.

I am NOT quiet when I laugh, and when you get my mad cackling going on in the hallway of a hospital at three in the morning, suffice it to say that patients aren't going to be amused, and neither is the nurse manager. The only thing that saved me from a written reprimand was a few quotes from the gentleman I'd awakened with my klutz du jour performance; I guess the NM figured a good cussing-out was punishment enough!

I just got licensed as an LNA, like 3 days ago. We were doing clinicals in the facility where our class was held, a local LTC. Well, I had built up a bit of a rapport with one of the ladies (so sweet and enthusiastic to help me learn everything I could!) Everytime I had class she'd always ask me to take off her stockings for the night. No problem, I did this for her Everytime. I get down on one knee and remove both stockings. I go to get up and my bad knee gives out. I go flying diagonally towards her roommate who was sitting in a wheelchair watching tv. There was the wire from the call bell about 6 inches above the ground. I somehow managed to fly, leap over the wire and with my arms flailing, stick the landing. If her roommate hadn't moved her wheelchair closer to the tv while I was removing the stockings I would have ended up in her lap. They were both very concerned that I hurt myself (even though I managed to land on my feet. I joked that maybe I should be the one with a call bell "help I've fallen and I can't get up!" They both cracked up and I left the room a whole new shade of red that I didn't think was humanly possible.

miss81 said:
I Was helping another nurse change out a pt in the ER. Once we had him changed he said, "oops, sorry!" The nurse I was with asked, "Sorry for what?" The patient said, " for pooping again." We looked everywhere but could not see any bowel movement anywhere. The other nurse said, "No, you must have just broke wind 'cause you never moved your bowels." He gave us a look but we just carried on and left the room. A few minutes later my coworker went to pull out his pen and what should he pull out instead? Big ol' turd. The patent did have a bm after all and it must have just fell directly into my coworkers pocket. He was mortified but I could not stop laughing.

omgggggg !! lmboooooooooooo :roflmao:

Specializes in CVOR, CVICU/CTICU, CCRN-CMC-CSC.

My very last clinical rotation in the OR, same-day surgery center. Went to help the circulator and CRNA transfer the patient from the table to the cot but didn't notice that the IV tubing on my side of the patient had wrapped around some of the equipment. 1, 2, 3 - lift and out came the peripheral line! I put pressure on the site with a mortified look on my face while the other two laughed and seamlessly put in a new IV. Thankfully the patient was still fast asleep and the PACU nurse had a great sense of humor. Now whenever I go to do anything with a patient, that's one of the first things I check!

Specializes in Med Surg.

Haha I love this thread!

Last week I had a post-op pt with a PCA. I am fairly new to my hospital so it still takes me a while to work the IV pumps. Within the first two hours I had my first W.O.W battery die mid-med pass, second W.O.W. with a broken scanner so I had to find a third before scanning his meds, then a broken blood pressure machine that I discovered only after waking him up for a BP and finally a pump that kept beeping because I would forget to press "okay" on the safety screen after checking/changing rates.

The patient & his wife had a good sense of humor about everything but after I had apologized the 3rd or 4th time time I said something like, " Sorry everything I touch today seems to break or die." The wife yelled, "THEN DONT TOUCH MY HUSBAND!"

Lol oops :/ I had to clarify "Technology! Everything electronic!"

I used to work in the recovery room and we had hooks that held our ivs. I had blood running on a patient and pulled the bag too hard. You guessed it! The tubing came loose and a unit of blood went everywhere! I was mortified, but my patient took it well. I had just medicated him.

Specializes in rehab, post-op.

A swipe of skin prep under the tape works great at protecting the skin from tearing when you remove the tape. :)

Specializes in Programming / Strategist for allnurses.

Any new epic fails lately?

Specializes in Hospice, corrections, psychiatry, rehab, LTC.
On 2/6/2012 at 9:29 PM, VivaLasViejas said:

(That was when I learned the trick of removing the skin from the tape instead of removing the tape from the skin.......there really is a difference in techniques, and I've never ripped another single layer of parchment paper that serves some elderly folks as skin ever since.)

One thing that has worked for me is to get a corner slightly elevated, and then make passes underneath the edge with an alcohol pad, gradually lifting the dressing or tape as I go. If I can't get a corner up, rubbing an alcohol pad along the edge makes it start to loosen. I have never torn anyone's skin using this technique. The alcohol apparently deactivates the glue. 

BTW - the fails were hilarious.

Specializes in Hospice.

I've had a few epic fails, but the most memorable was with a bottle of mucomyst.  I was a new nurse and was trained to inject air into the vial and then draw back medication....nobody told me not to inject air into the mucomyst vial....Yep, mucomyst shot out all over me.  I changed my scrubs but it was still in my hair, and nobody wanted to sit next to me for the rest of the night.

Another epic fail, I was the only nurse in the nurses station and had eaten ham and beans for supper, just as I let out a loud long sound a GI doc walked around the corner and said, "That was impressive!". 

I no longer where scrub pants that don't have elastic, I was running to a code (back when we actually ran) and my scrub pants came untied, of course I was leading the pack.  

Specializes in Private Duty Pediatrics.

We used to use glass bottles for IVs. To change a bottle - say, to switch from D5W to NS - we would pull the spike out of the old bottle and spike the new bottle. Then we'd take the old bottle off the IV pole.

Then the hospital started using plastic bottles for the IVs. Imagine my surprise when I pulled the spike out of that half-full bottle of D5W!

Specializes in Hospice, corrections, psychiatry, rehab, LTC.
16 hours ago, Kitiger said:

We used to use glass bottles for IVs.

I remember glass bottles - along with the colorful language that often followed the crash after the IV therapy nurse dropped one.

Specializes in Vents, Telemetry, Home Care, Home infusion.

On night, was awaiting intern to come to the unit to place a Cantor tube in a patient with bowel obstruction. Central supply dropped off supplies at nurses station window edge. I reached to pick up tube package and vial of mercury, only to see the vial roll of the ledge onto the desk and onto the floor, shattering the vial. MILLIONS of mercury balls spread out underneath the nurses desk. Got down on my hands and knees using a piece of cardboard to coral the mercury together into a pile then scoop up into a specimen container.... without wearing any gloves.   First and last time this occurred.