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!
One particular nurse was very fixated on her tiny patient's stools. In babies - almost always runny or very soft and yellow to light brown. One day when she wasn't looking, someone filled her little patient's diaper with milk duds. The look on her face when she opened it up was priceless!
This is hilarious!! Having had three daughters and 1 sick and in the NICU for 7 weeks. I was verrry neurotic about her pee and poop when she came home. I could only imagine MY face if I had opened her diaper and saw anything that looked like Milk Duds!!:roll
Thursday night, 11-7, I admitted a patient who had come in with abdominal pain and ended up having an emergency colectomy for a perforated diverticulum. While I was getting her NG tube to suction, assessing her, getting her comfortable, etc., she kept saying "someone farted, I can smell it". Her family kept telling her she just had surgery breath and that's what she was smelling.
Unfortunately, it was her nurse. I had eaten a bunch of Tabouli for supper (it's a salad made with wheat, tomatoes, olive oil, mint, lemon juice...), and it was making for some lively gas activity. I was trying my best to keep my toots in (and letting 'em go in the med room- ha ha!) but some must have been squeezing through. :imbar
While in nursing school, I worked as a NA on an understaffed med/surg unit with some nurses who were not keen on helping each other out(and I was the only aide for about 26 patients). I was in a room helping a patient to the bedside commode, when I heard a bed alarm going off down the hall. I had a feeling it was our 102-year-old dementia patient, who was there for pneumonia. He was quite spunky for being 102!! It was taking longer than expected to help the patient I was with, and I could hear the bed alarm still going off. By the time I got back out into the hall, the nurse was finally there too. The patient was not in his room. I checked the stairwell first, then we started frantically running down the hall, checking all of the patient rooms. Suddenly, I heard a toilet flush, the bathroom door opens, and out steps Mr. C. He had wandered about two rooms down. I asked him what he was doing, and he said, "I went down the hall to go to the bathroom." Well, of course. He was obviously having a semi-lucid moment. We laughed after we realized that he wasn't hurt(or off the unit).
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.
Something either strikes you as funny or it doesn't. Laughing about something is an impulsive action. Most people don't contemplate if something is funny or not, it is or it isn't most of the time.
And not only do I disagree with you but I will flat out tell you that you are dead wrong about posting a funny story and this somehow shows a lack of regret that it happened. Just because folks deal with their stress in ways that you don't means absolutely NOTHING about if they wish it hadn't happened.
We all have our own ways of coping with the more difficult aspects of our jobs. We are all individual people doing our thing in life. We don't all share your methods of stress relief. To make others sound as though they are heartless and cruel (and that is what you are doing) because they see humor in something and even if it is DARK humor... that's just wrong.
We happen to be a great group of very kind and caring folks doing an exceedingly difficult job. Mom never taught me how to lose a patient day after day and not let it get to me. Sometimes there just aren't any rulebooks to follow or instructions to read. We are what we are and we find coping methods. That's just how it is.
While working in the ER a new mother brought in her 2 day old infant... The complaint was: yellow diarrhea, all day, 5-6 times so far today. was all the new mom kept saying. I asked the mom "Do you nurse your baby or..." but before I could finish my sentence, the mom interrupted me shouting. "NO I'M NOT A NURSE DUMMY, THAT IS WHY I BROUGHT HER TO YOU!!!!" WHY WOULD YOU ASK ME IF I WAS A NURSE, IT IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS IF I HAVE A JOB OR WHAT I DO, I'M HERE FOR MY BABY!!!!!!! I then finished my sentence and said, " Ma'am, Do you nurse your baby, or is your baby a formula fed baby?"
Mom stated " I don't know what you mean." So I had to explain to mom that a "nursed" baby is also called a breast baby,and that her poop is suppose to look like that. Needless to say it was very hard not to laugh while I explained that to mom.
I remember another student nurse experience and hope this doesn't offend anyone here.
I was all of 19, a student LPN. My instructor, a student friend and I stood at the bedside of a 30ish man as I prepared to do my first male catheterization. I had to talk my way through it, giving rationales and possible problems as I went along.
Introduce myself, check the ID band, open the kit, expose the site, place the barrier, decide clean hand, dirty hand. Grip member at 90 degrees, swab meatus with Betadine. Now she asks me something and I have to answer. I swab again and notice something's happening down there. Oh, no, I start thinking. From the corner of my eye, I see he's kind of smirking. I swab again. Yep, full glory erection.
Like a deer in the headlights I look up at my instructor and give her the Now, what? look. I don't dare make eye contact with my friend. Instructor says something about returning in a few minutes and turns her back (probably to hide the smile). There I am with a stranger's erection in my hand, my face beet red and I just let go.
It hits his belly with a loud SLAP and my girlfriend bursts out laughing. I throw the sheet over the guy, gather all the supplies and flee.
What does the patient say as I pull back the privacy curtain? "Oh, baby, don't go."
She was working in a Nursing Home and had some very young first year nsg students placed on her unit. One of their pts died. She told them, "make him look nice while I call in the family'.
When she went to check on their work before the family arrived, she found him looking nice alright- he was sitting up in bed, reading glasses on and a newspaper in front of him! (and of course, still very dead). The students thought he looked "nice and natural". Needless to say, a quick lesson in post-mortum care followed!
While I was in nursing school i was shadowing an RN in the ICU. We had one patient that had an incredibly overbearing family. They were constantly hovering over the nurse and scrutinizing her every action:uhoh3:
At one point the nurse went to administer a bolus feeding through the patients g-tube. As she was doing so the patients wife was once again hovering and complaining. Well, the nurse injected the feeding and a port came loose and the tube feed as well as some gastric juice went all over the wife's face:roll :roll The nurse apologized profusely, but we had a good laugh over that one! It sure taught the family to back off a bit:mad:
While I was in nursing school i was shadowing an RN in the ICU. We had one patient that had an incredibly overbearing family. They were constantly hovering over the nurse and scrutinizing her every action:uhoh3:
At one point the nurse went to administer a bolus feeding through the patients g-tube. As she was doing so the patients wife was once again hovering and complaining. Well, the nurse injected the feeding and a port came loose and the tube feed as well as some gastric juice went all over the wife's face:roll :roll The nurse apologized profusely, but we had a good laugh over that one! It sure taught the family to back off a bit:mad:
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.
nursing is an extremely stressful job. we all deal with our mistakes (and the mistakes of others) as best we can, but to criticize others for finding humor in a not so humerous situation is beyond me. i happen to know an elderly lady that if she were alive today would still be questioning my ability to practice nursing simply because i laughed to cover my embarrassment over tripping over her wheelchair and literally throwing her and her husband's supper trays on the floor at their feet as a result. i also happen to know a nursing student who was terrified to sit with a deceased patient until the family arrived because the deceased was a known practical joker and she honestly believed he was going to pop up in bed and say "gotcha!" all this even though she was the person who found this patient, called the code, and helped the rn on duty perform cpr. or the new nurse that followed procedure for a death, only to realize during shift report the doctor never returned the phone call releasing the body to the funeral home, the incomming nurse asked "am i expected to go to the funeral home to give this patient her meds?"
we deal with life and death. sometimes we do stupid things. and we laugh about it later. only another nurse can understand the gravity and the severity of some of the things we deal with on a day to day basis. so we laugh because laughter is the best medicine there is.
we had an older LPN that when giving report would call nasal cannula "nasal CANNULAR"...
I saw a nurse give a patient a pill to swallow, and didn't disconnect the suction from the wall...it got sucked right back into the cannister (still don't know why she didn't crush the pill and send it through the NG tube).
I agree that you have to have a warped sense of humor to a nurse other wise the day to day sress would cause you to implode... My sis in law started recently at the ltc facility Ive worked at 15 years.In like 3 months she has lost 6 residents and she was becoming very paranoid.I got a kick out of ribbing her about the really sick ones waiting on her..Not sure Ive lost 6 in 15 years..I think shes getting a complex Ok funniest thing Ive seen is years ago before gait belts to transfer you would kinda hug the res and get them to hug you back and you would stand and pivot in one fluid move. well the res bit down right on a student nurses nipple and the student couldnt sit her down either back in w/c or toilet all she could do was scream HELP I truely thought I would fall out I was laughing so hard..the next year I was a student nurse and I did not transfer without assist.......
!!!
NICU_nurse2b
214 Posts
This is hilarious!! Having had three daughters and 1 sick and in the NICU for 7 weeks. I was verrry neurotic about her pee and poop when she came home. I could only imagine MY face if I had opened her diaper and saw anything that looked like Milk Duds!!:roll