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!

Specializes in Emergency.

first year nursing student... extremely nervous as it was my first day on clinical.. first time alone with a doctor and a patient (i was to just observe and get V/S once he finished his assessment) i felt like i should be doing something so as he was asking her questions I proceeded to get a blood pressure... he then lifts his hand high in the air so my fist reaction was to give him a HIGH FIVE. Little did i know that he was actually telling me to STOP... not telling me I had done a good job (perhaps i was distracting him?). awkward doesnt even cover it... he didnt have much of a sense of humor either so he just looked at me with a strange look on his face..

i have had the worst past few weeks i have made so many mistakes im wondering if nursing is the right profession for me, i have only been a nurse for a year but you think by now i would be getting the swing of things, i havent harmed anybody but, i am so scatered brained lately, i feel so depressed im going to seek treatment, i worry the phone is going to ring even on my days off about something i have done or missed, im just a nervous reck anytime i enter the building , i love my job but just dont understand how nurses that have as little experience as i do are right on top of there game and im not i have no self confidence and doubt myself terribly, i can have good days but everytime i think im getting it i screw something up , like i said just stupid mistakes but i feel like my head is on the chopping block just cant live this way dont know what to do but pray and ask god to intercede for me

Had quite a few incidents of what I call Dansko ankle. Walking down the hall when your ankle turns and no amount of correction will keep you from wiping out. Usually during the most populated time and area of the place.

floridanurse1983 said:
what I call Dansko ankle.

At my job, we call it the Croc Shuffle. ?

nursepencil said:
this thread made me laugh so hard. how about this: during my pediatric clinical rotations in nursing school, I was assigned to a 2month old baby girl. I went to check on the patient, whose mother and grandmother were sitting next to the crib. I was so nervous that I introduced myself to them, turned around to leave, then accidentally locked myself into their room's closet! I stood there, in the pitch black closet dumbfounded! finally, I built up enough courage to knock the door....and grandma let me out. I was mortified!!!!

Now this is something that would have happened to me

Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

Oh good....glad I'm not the only one who's directionally dyslexic!! There are times when I get turned around and can't find my way out of a paper bag. I went to the same OB for six years and got lost every time I tried to go back to my exam room from the bathroom. Although I have to say I've never blundered into a hospital room closet and gotten myself locked in.....hehehehe. Great story!

Specializes in Emergency, Trauma, Critical Care.

I unspiked a tube feeding. And the bottle was mostly full. Yeah, soaked my entire outfit. The squishy noise to move my feet just made everyone laugh harder.

Tried to give stat kayexalate through a peg when a pt's k was 6.9. Didn't go so well as me and the ultrasound tech both got kayexalate all over our scrubs. She looked pretty upset.

I learned why. Kayexalate stains scrubs, it sorta bleaches em. I owe her a scrub top if I ever see her.

Apparently me and anything peg-related don't get along.

Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

BWAAAHAHAHAHA!!! Know what you mean about that, Nicki.....funny story! :rotfl:

I once cracked a joke when I was halfway through a G/tube bolus feeding. BIG mistake. Ever hear the expression "Thar she blows!"? Yup......that's exactly what happened. There was Jevity all over the patient, all over me, all over the bed, which only made her laugh harder (with predictable results). That is some sticky stuff, I tell you, although it's not as bad an "ick" factor as the Kayexalate. Good times!

Specializes in Emergency.

ahhh!! I hate when that happens!!! I cringed reading this because i had a similar experience. I had a pt who just had a bowel resection and had a colostomy placed. He was young, fit and was an extreme athlete so he had a very healthy lifestyle before he was diagnosed with colon CA, so the "disturbed body image" nursing dx was HUGE in this case. Anyway, I asked him if he felt like using the bathroom yet because we like to see a BM as soon as possible after surgery... he looked at me like i was an idiot, then looked at his colostomy. His wife was in the room too, of course, and had a look of "you are a moron" on her face. The pt then said to me, "sure i can try, but i was told the poop now goes in this bag attached to my abs. now" Awesome, i felt like the biggest jerk.

Specializes in tele, oncology.

Several years ago, we had a patient admitted with a brand new diagnosis of lung cancer with mets to brain and bone. It was extensive, and he only had at best guess a month or so left. Family was having a hard time coping, and they chose to focus on his bowel function as something to feel like they had some control over. (I know, it doesn't sound funny yet...just wait.)

I volunteered to help the new nurse out with giving him a triple-H enema. She geared up in an isolation gown, gloves, mask, and stepped into trash bags which she then wrapped and taped up to her knees. I gave her trouble about overdoing the protective gear, donned gloves, and helped her get the patient into position and coached her through getting the enema going. He was basically obtunded, and unable to assist, so I told her to be ready to hold his cheeks together to try and keep the water in. So the water is flowing in, starts to squirt out, she smashes his butt cheeks together...with the enema tube still in place...dropping the still 1500 mL full bag of water right on the end of the bed. Plus he probably didn't really need the enema in the first place, as unformed stool started backing up the line and out with the water all over the bed, as we first stare dumbfounded and then start laughing so hard we had other nurses come running. I literally was falling over against the wall and couldn't breathe, I was laughing so hard. Thank God no family was there.

Poor guy died the next day, we blamed it all on the enema.

Specializes in tele, oncology.

Another one, kinda awkward when it happened but made me giggle in retrospect...

We had a new pulmonolgist start coming to the hospital to replace one who had to drop his workload due to medical reasons. I totally loved the previous pulmonologist, one of those laid back, super sweet, great sense of humor, phenomenal docs that all the nurses send their families to.

I was standing at my computer at about 0500, with my radio station playing, wrapping up some charting, singing along quietly. I turned and the new pulmo doc was standing there, introduced herself somewhat coldly, and stalked off. It took a few minutes to realize that the song I was singing along to was Sublime...not sure what the title is, but "Smoke Two Joints" is a likely candidate. Yep, she has no sense of humor.

Specializes in Emergency Room, ICU.

HAHAHA!!!! This made me laugh SO hard!