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 Room, ICU.

The first time I ever gave meds throught a peg-tube, I was so nervous I was shaking like crazy... I ended up spilling the pt's meds all over the floor, the bed, and the pt.... then slipped on the water trying to clean it up... fun times!

Specializes in Emergency!.

Ouch! That had to hurt.

Nubain and I are not friends. In my OB rotation in nursing school I went it to my patient. It was my ever REAL experience with an ampule and was supposed to be my first ever IVP med. Well I broke the top of the ampule off the wrong way, a small spike was left on the edge that sliced my finger. I ended up having to go to the ER and got 3 or 4 stitches. I was so embarrassed, my nursing instructor had to give the nubain. And before I left to go get my finger stitched up she (my instructor) was doing her best to patch it up with gauze and tape to which she exclaimed "I can deal with women pushing out babies, not with cut fingers!" It made me laugh so hard!

This is HILARIOUS!! I could not stop laughing!! My son came running into the room to find out WHAT is so funny. I will refer this often when I need a good laugh! Too good! This is in response to Viva Las Viejas' Feb.21 post.

Last tuesday was my last day of orientation at my new job. I was feeling really confident and basically took over a whole assignment first thing at 6:30. Around 9 I went to check on a patient's ileostomy before he went to therapy. It needed to be emptied so I poured it into the graduate and as I was rinsing it our, some of its contents splashed into my eye! Oh and I forgot to mention that this patient was on isolation precautions for MRSA. Ewww! So I on top of that I ended up missing 3hrs of my last orientation shift while I went to the clinic. I felt like I have gotten off to a crappy start at the new job now lol!

Omg I haven't laughed this hard in so long!!

I am loving this board!

I just finished my med-surg 1 clinical this past December, and was so glad to be done with it. On my second week I had a really nice lady, and while I was doing my assessment her Dr had came into the room. I was so nervous and trying to get out of his way, that I forgot the bed side table was behind me with her husband's large cup of fresh coffee. It went crashing to the floor, and went straight for the Dr's shoes! I grab a towel and started wiping the coffee up. I didn't want to disturb him, and started wiping in between his feet. He then started to leave the room, stepped on my hand, almost fell (but luckily he caught his self), and walked out of the room without saying a word. I tried to stay in the pt's room as much as possible, because I was so scared of what might happen if we bumped into each other in the hall.

I was so embarrassed! :no:

Specializes in Emergency, Haematology/Oncology.

I once walked a very cute ninety year old couple out to the crowded taxi rank at the front of our ED, you know, to help them into the cab and show some respect and care for my elders. I was helping mrs into the front seat and had my hand in the doorframe of the backseat where grandpa was getting in. Yep, you knew it was coming, he slammed my hand in the car door. The f word escapes without permission at a thousand decibels instantly as I go down like a sack of you know what onto the concrete and promptly pass out. My next vision is of course (while being wheeled into the department on a trolley) my ever so compassionate colleagues "for gods sake wake up".

XD OOOoh man, I had a good laugh at a lot of these. I'm going to be a nursing student starting this fall, so this has really helped the anxiety levels. I just know I'll be adding my own silly moments on here when they come around. Many props to the OP!

Specializes in 3 years MS/Tele, 10 years total ICU, 5 travel.

When a brand new nurse, still on orientation. It was about 1 am, and my preceptor has gone to get a snack from the vending machine. So I'm sitting alone at the nurses station, and in walks this 60-something year old man in a stained, faded sweatsuit and sneakers. Walks right into the nurses station and starts scanning the chart rack for charts.

Now, my new little self, remembering that we're supposed to protect our patient's privacy and family isn't supposed to be able to just go get the charts, stands up and asks - in as polite but firm a tone as I can manage - "Excuse me sir, can I help you with something?" He gets this little grin and this 'Oh, really?' expression on his face.

You guessed it, right about that time my preceptor comes back around the corner. "Oh, hey Dr. _x_"

Could the ground PLEASE have swallowed me right about then?

Specializes in School Nurse; ICU.

I love this post!

I have a few (more, but I want to keep at least some of my pride)

My very first day on my own in the ICU (just finished my 6 months of internship) and was scared to death. My charge nurse gives me 2 patients-one fairly stable and one just coming out of the OR-new admit. I go up to the OR to collect my patient and am trying really really hard to look competent and like I am not shaking while listening to the OR nurse's report-patient had an abcess and ......... After the report was all done I asked "So, do you think it was infected"? The OR nurse just looked at me with an absolutely horrified look-I was so busy trying to not look scared that I missed the word abcess! Yeah....real nice start!

The second one I have was when I was working in a large elementary school. We had a 5 year old with a high fever who needed to go home. I called the parents and told them that their child had to be picked up-no problem. However, when the dad got there he looks around the health office and asks where his son is. I pointed to the young man and said right there-Yep, you guessed it, not his son. The teacher had accidentally put the wrong name on the referral slip (there were 2 "Joes" in the class and she wrote the wrong last name down). To make matters worse when we called the real mom the child talked to her and told her he didn't need to be picked up because we "were sending him home with another man".

The final one was when I called a parent to let them know their child had bumped their head but they were OK and would she like to talk to him before he went back to class. The mother got very quiet and said "my child can't talk". Yep, you guessed it, the wrong last name. Lesson-don't supply the student's last name to the aide who is flustered and upset and assume that she heard you correctly when she says yep to your last name question (refer to item number one on my list).

Specializes in LTC.
Laughtermed said:
Back when I was a CNA I had just started a job with a staffing agency. Until this point I had worked with the elderly but now I was being staffed at the local hospital. I was placed for the first time in the post partum unit. I had helped a new mother to the bathroom. There was a cord hanging by the toilet and, from my experiences with the elderly, instructed her to pull it when she was finished. Not five minutes later my beeper, and everybody else's, went off. The nurses are running to my patient's room screaming "hemorrhage!". We all (3 nurses and 2 CNAs) run to the bathroom door and throw it open. The patient looks at all of us with a shocked expression and says "I'm done". Who knew the pull cords would have such different purposes.

When I had my second baby, my almost 3 year old daughter pulled the emergency cord in the BR when she was visiting at the hospital. I had no idea she had pulled it, so I was sitting there completely dumbfounded when 3 nurses came flying into the room!

Your stories are so amusing!