One night in the icu, I needed help to turn a patient who was on a vent, and sedated with a versed drip. I had asked a nurse to come into the room, and she followed. We went to both sides of the patient and proceeded to grab the lift sheet when she said........"Wait just a minute, I have to FART!". She then proceeded to back up from the bed, turn around, lift up a leg, and farted as loud as can be. She then returned to the bed grinning to herself and helped me lift the patient.
I couldn't wait to get out of the room. I about died laughing inside. I couldn't wait to "put on a play" for the nurses in the nurses break room and replay that moment for them. They were laughing so hard. We still laugh to this day!
ok, I agree that we use morbid humor to cope. God knows our job really sucks sometimes and it takes more than alittle FUNNY to tolerate it. HOWEVER, we have to remember that we should respect the dead. That dead man could have been YOUR dad, or grandad, or even husband, and how would you have felt if you sensed or God forbid...heard the nurses giggling and laughing??????? No, I am NOT "one of those", but I do try to rmember what we are here to do, and that is to give the BEST most PROFESSIONAL care to out patients and their families....
How about we all relax. Respect the dead but this thread was started to talk about funny things that happened to us. Maybe we should put a disclaimer at the end: "Don't try this in your workplace!!!" This is where we release... So release... :roll
2 stories--same nurse in my ER. First she had a blind little old lady on the heart monitor. She saw her flat line and goes running in the room and THUMPS her on the chest, The LOL (little old lady) yelled "Hey! What ya do that for?!?!" A lead had just popped off so she says "Never you mind!" and flees the room.
Asked me to help her put an NG in a 40ish female with a GI bleed. She was talking our legs off, as she liked to talk ALOT! Suddenly the patient busts out laughing and stops her saying "I'm not a nurse, but I think that one goes in my nose!" I was holding the NG and she the water and while talking tried to shove the straw up the patients nose!
Ok, this was very funny. Imagine a busy morning on the oncology unit where at this point I had been working 5 years. So I was pretty accustomed to the surroundings. It is 7:30 am and you know everybody is trying to wake up. Our attending is sitting at the nurses station with about 10 charts in front of him all piled up reading them and writing his notes. When all of a sudden we hear the infamous "CRT, 5 Cathcart; CRT 5 Cathcart". (CRT stands for Code Blue that other places use) So, me being the code junkie that I've always been, start yelling who is it, where is it? Because you know there is nothing worst than having a code on your unit and nobody knowing where it is!!! At this point the code team, anesthesia, surgery, respiratory therapists are all on the floor looking for the coding patient without much success. At which point I go to the spot where our attending is sitting and notice the code lever at the desk pulled down and flashing!!! When he placed his charts he accidentally activated the code button! So I pulled it up and told him how it can happen. Being the cool guy that he is he says "I just didn't know who was taking care of Mr. So and So. Now that all of you are here maybe you can tell me who it is." Everybody laughed so hard and we were all awake. Better than caffeine, I tell you... :lol_hitti
When I die, I only hope to ease someones fears and give a good laugh on my way out. This man probably would have thought so too. I have experienced many dying patients take their last breathe. I could tell they struggled so humiliating. To take the last breathe most of the time seemed peaceful. I don't ever remember a struggling person who would have wanted someone to be solemn in their relief. Heeelllooo!
By the way, regarding using someone's dad for ventriloquism:
I understand that sometimes when under stress humor is needed, but I don't think it's ever appropriate to use that kind of humor with a patient. If I saw someone doing that to my father, you can bet that I would give whoever was playing with my father's corpse a piece of my mind, and also request to see the manager to have that person reprimanded. I think it's extremely disrespectful to the dead and their family. They should be given dignity, even in death.
If you want to make jokes about it in the break room, I have no control over that, and neither do I care. But if someone physically put their hands on my dead loved one and did that, I would blow my top right there. The deceased's family and friends are grieving, and there is no need to add to the problem.
This one happened to me while on a travel assignment years ago.
There was a particular doctor there that the staff referred to as Dr Rottwieler. He was not real liked. His real name was something similar but certainly not that. Anyway, during night shift, I took an order from him on the phone. I wrote that order on the order sheet as: whatever ordered "T.O. R&A, Dr. Rottweiler/ Nancy Nurse, R.N.
A couple weeks later, the doctor shows up at the nurses station. He had been to medical records to sign his charts. He is furious and wants to know just WHO Nancy Nurse (of course not my real name) is!
I admitted it, with as much dignity as possible and apologised to him. He asked me if we had any other names for him and I replied. Well, sir, Yes we do. His first name was Richard and another not so liked shorter doctor's first name was Peter. I'll let you guess what our other pet names for them were. Anyway, He laughed until I thought he would cry. It seemed he was a nice guy to work with for at least the time I was there!
In surgery many a nurse will cut the balloon port off of a foley instead of aspirating the fluid out before pulling the cath out. I once saw a nurse pull on the foley and cut the whole thing. Up the cath stub shot into the bladder. Had to delay the crani until a urologist could be found to do a cysto to remove the retained foley piece. WOW>>>She never lived that one down!
When I die, I only hope to ease someones fears and give a good laugh on my way out. This man probably would have thought so too. I have experienced many dying patients take their last breathe. I could tell they struggled so humiliating. To take the last breathe most of the time seemed peaceful. I don't ever remember a struggling person who would have wanted someone to be solemn in their relief. Heeelllooo!
As a nurse, I have had several experiences (all w/ some degree of humor)with post mortem care, the most interesting my grandfathers. The last few hours of his life he was constantly leaking stool. My mother and I being the caring nurses we are, would help clean him up, all the while letting the staff know that it was okay to joke w/ us about his pooping problems. See, my gpa was always famous for giving my mom s**t all the time (this time literally and albeit very potent). Guess he thought he could keep on doing it up until the end. I think the nrsg staff was actually kind of shocked at how light hearted we were about the whole thing. I think that nurses need to take their "fun seriously" while working. I know on my unit everyone looks to me for humor/anecdotes and I hear it's quite boring/depressing w/o my comments to keep things lively!!
so many stories, so little time...One of the most memorable was seeing the look on my charge nurses face (my mentor of course) as she came out of a room a few months back. It seems as though she had a "wardrobe malfunction." She was wearing a snap front scrub top and didn't have anything underneath other than her bra. She caught her top on the edge of a crib and low and behold, the patients aunt got a nice view of some can cans. OOPS!! She was mortified, I however was rolling on the floor. I hear it happened again a view weeks later, only this time the top was nice enough to stay secured w/ one snap! :rotfl:
so many stories, so little time...One of the most memorable was seeing the look on my charge nurses face (my mentor of course) as she came out of a room a few months back. It seems as though she had a "wardrobe malfunction." She was wearing a snap front scrub top and didn't have anything underneath other than her bra. She caught her top on the edge of a crib and low and behold, the patients aunt got a nice view of some can cans. OOPS!! She was mortified, I however was rolling on the floor. I hear it happened again a view weeks later, only this time the top was nice enough to stay secured w/ one snap! :rotfl:
: ) And this is why I stay away from tops that snap up the front!
Specializes in ER, NICU, NSY and some other stuff.
I have times where thing just break around me. One night I was standing at the desk checking expiration dates in the code boxes. The phone rang and I was the only one at the desk so I reached over and answered it. As I was speaking on the phone I stretched the cord and went back to my task at hand. In the process I managed to pull the phone off the desk. Problem was all of the raised buttons popped off. I managed to find most of them but had an awful time trying to figure out what order all of the extension buttons had originally been.
A few nights ago I worked the "night" shift at our LTC facility and we went to change this one old guy and all of a sudden the nurse just disappears under the bed. she gets up and she is totally covered in snotters, strips off her clothes right there in front of the resident and goes to the showers and comes out in some sort of MOO MOO thing and says watch out when you go in to mr :::: room it's a little slippery.
RNNJ
73 Posts
How about we all relax. Respect the dead but this thread was started to talk about funny things that happened to us. Maybe we should put a disclaimer at the end: "Don't try this in your workplace!!!" This is where we release... So release... :roll