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!
Years ago we changed the stretchers from the morgue to a wagon likie device that was supposed to look like a supply bin or something. Anyway, we had sent a lady to the morgue to pick up a stretcher. She was new to our facility but a seasoned pro! Upon arrival to the unit, much to hers and everyone elses surprise, she had brought "supplies" with her! A recent deceased was on the cart!:chuckle
I was learning how to nurse in a lock-up, aggression management psychiatric ward. A police van backed up to the ward on a clear winters morn and almost a dozen male nurses wrestled the patient out of the van into seclusion. The treatment nurse strode purposefully into a crowded seclusion room with a tray carrying two needles of midazolam and droperidol. Wriggling her way through torso's, she manoeuvred herself besides and between bodies (one of which was the psychotic agitated patient) and proceeded to administer an injection to the gluteus maximus muscle of another nurse, which settled him nicely.
It took ages to live this down. As a nursing student I was checking the recus trolley and said I needed another guadal canal, (guadal airway)
I knew what I said as soon those words left my mouth and got laughed at
all through the shift. I was forgiven though as soon as I checked out the other wards and returned with one for the trolley. Talk about feeling like a drip
Specializes in ub-Acute/LTC, Home Health, L&D, Peds.
This was supposed to be funny? Sorry, I missed the hilarity there.
Cara
O come on Cara, everyone knows dead patients are really the funniest.
No, I don't think we all know or even think that. I have respect for any patient I take care of before or after they have passed away! Yes, we (healthcare workers) can have a morbid sense of humor at times but come on how would you like that if it was your Mom, sister, daughter etc...? I am all for a good laugh and I am definately not at all always PC (politically correct) but I don't think "everyone knows dead patients are the funniest."
O come on Cara, everyone knows dead patients are really the funniest.
No, I don't think we all know or even think that. I have respect for any patient I take care of before or after they have passed away! Yes, we (healthcare workers) can have a morbid sense of humor at times but come on how would you like that if it was your Mom, sister, daughter etc...? I am all for a good laugh and I am definately not at all always PC (politically correct) but I don't think "everyone knows dead patients are the funniest."
O come on Cara, everyone knows dead patients are really the funniest.
I think as nurses we have a morbid sense of humor that helps us deal with stressful situations. It makes horrible situations easier to cope with.
I failed to see the humor in this as well. You can have a morbid sense of humor, but using a deceased patient as a prop to get a laugh is crossing the line.
Didn't you ever have a totally inappropriate thought or impulse, get the giggles, and not be able to quit? I can see that happening to myself in the ventriloquist story... NOT the best way to handle someone's deceased Daddy, but if it ever did happen I think I'd have to be picked up off the floor.
I can see your point here, and yes I have laughed at something inappropriate before. But I hope I would later realize how inappropriate the situation was and therefore no longer find humor in it. Posting it as a funny story shows a lack of regret that this happened.
Considering the doc apparently "whispered" this, it appears he was aware she might hear him and he was taking steps to prevent this.
It's dark humor. I say it is far better than sitting in a fetal position, drooling in a corner due to stress.
What does that mean? I have not seen any proponents of "sitting in a fetal position..." on this thread. If this type of "dark humor" is the only thing preventing you from sitting in a fetal position, then I see more problems here than a dark sense of humor. Some of this "dark humor" needs to "lighten up", not the people who fail to laugh at it.
Actually I question whether some of these "dark humor" situations really happened, or if they are just people trying to out do other's stories. For some of them, I truly hope it is their imagination only.
OK; this happened on my wife's unit not mine.... She is an neonatal icu nurse... She had just cleaned a baby's little bottom and was turning away from the isolette with a little peanut sized fece (thats turd --- to you black humor people) cradled in the diaper. At that moment someone bumped her elbow and the little baby poop went flying. She looked all over the floor but couldn't find it... she even enlisted the help of another nurse.... but , no dice.... meanwhile, a resident who had left his cup of coffee on the closed lid of a nearby laundry hamper was picking up his cup for a sip. My wife called out "don't drink that!" And that got the attention of all the other nurses nearby and the attending md ,too. So she had to explain what had happened and say that the poop might be in his coffee cup since she hadn't found it elsewhere. So, everyone watched as he poured it into the sink---- no poop. But it got everybody laughing.
The incident gave rise to a secondary joke played on new interns in which a nurse will use a chocalate covered peanut to recreate the incident and actually drop it in the newbie's coffee.... Dan
I failed to see the humor in this as well. You can have a morbid sense of humor, but using a deceased patient as a prop to get a laugh is crossing the line.
I agree with this as well. I like to think that I have as much as a sense of humor as the next person but dead babies, crack-addicted teens, and disrespecting the dead does not tickle my funny-bone, ever.
OK; this happened on my wife's unit not mine.... She is an neonatal icu nurse... She had just cleaned a baby's little bottom and was turning away from the isolette with a little peanut sized fece (thats turd --- to you black humor people) cradled in the diaper. At that moment someone bumped her elbow and the little baby poop went flying. She looked all over the floor but couldn't find it... she even enlisted the help of another nurse.... but , no dice.... meanwhile, a resident who had left his cup of coffee on the closed lid of a nearby laundry hamper was picking up his cup for a sip. My wife called out "don't drink that!" And that got the attention of all the other nurses nearby and the attending md ,too. So she had to explain what had happened and say that the poop might be in his coffee cup since she hadn't found it elsewhere. So, everyone watched as he poured it into the sink---- no poop. But it got everybody laughing.
The incident gave rise to a secondary joke played on new interns in which a nurse will use a chocalate covered peanut to recreate the incident and actually drop it in the newbie's coffee.... Dan
organichombre, ADN, BSN, MSN, LPN, RN
220 Posts
Years ago we changed the stretchers from the morgue to a wagon likie device that was supposed to look like a supply bin or something. Anyway, we had sent a lady to the morgue to pick up a stretcher. She was new to our facility but a seasoned pro! Upon arrival to the unit, much to hers and everyone elses surprise, she had brought "supplies" with her! A recent deceased was on the cart!:chuckle