crap...am I in huge trouble???

Nurses General Nursing

Published

So im in orientation and I started the sink to warm up the water and got called out of the room...........you guessed it I forgot and when i came back 5- 10 minutes later the entire hospital room was COVERED in water. We called house keeping and cleaned it up it took about 20 towels and i thought it was all over but then another patient started having water seeping in....so we called maintenance but then it was change of shift so i left. I just assumed that the sink had the secondary drain ....bad assumption. I feel like a complete idiot and am worried im going to get fired over my stupid mistake.

My first hospital job (6 months out of school)....

- I pulled up the floor wax when tossing rubbing alcohol on a huge roach (no bug killer, and to step on it would have been like sliding across the floor on a banana peel- TX roach)

- dyed the ceiling tiles blue with methylene blue (used to use for tube feeding dye, to see if a patient had aspirated formula) when I tried to put the leftover AMPULE into an empty sterile water VIAL.... didn't pressurize well, and the needle flew out, spraying the ceiling.... permanently.

- I didn't get fired.

- housekeeping hated me :D

Specializes in ICU.

I worked for a number of years in an older ICU with small, tight rooms. They had several drawers on one wall stocked with supplies - needles, tape, syringes ... everything you needed and STUFFED to the gills. You'd think that they would be rather deep, but they weren't and at one time or another, EVERYBODY would pull one of those stupid drawers out too far and dump the whole thing all over the floor. Under the bed, out into the hall. "Oh no!" :smackingf You'd feel like such a clutz being new nurse or aid and to do such a stupid thing, but EVERYBODY did it at least once, so that was your initiation to the team in a way. :)

One time on night shift I was called to a code and left a bag of popcorn in the microwave. At 300 joules I smelled smoke and nearly ****** myself! Then I remembered the popcorn. The fire alarms went off, the fire department crashed through the unit doors...and it just went downhill from there. The patient died. And, at the end of the shift I just stood before management and silently wept. I was not fired but sternly warned. I was also shunned for quite some time due to the new "no microwave popcorn" ruling.

My first hospital job (6 months out of school)....

- I pulled up the floor wax when tossing rubbing alcohol on a huge roach (no bug killer, and to step on it would have been like sliding across the floor on a banana peel- TX roach)

- dyed the ceiling tiles blue with methylene blue (used to use for tube feeding dye, to see if a patient had aspirated formula) when I tried to put the leftover AMPULE into an empty sterile water VIAL.... didn't pressurize well, and the needle flew out, spraying the ceiling.... permanently.

- I didn't get fired.

- housekeeping hated me :D

Ugh, I remember methylene blue from microbiology. That stuff probably hasn't even faded lol.

Specializes in LTC, Hospice, Case Management.

Anyone ever grab a bottle of maalox out of the med cart and just started shaking without checking that the lid was screwed on tight by the last person to use it. Well...I only did it once. You would think white maalox would be easy to clean up. Grab a paper towel, wet it and wipe it away. It will look like it is all cleaned up - until you come back an hour later and find all these chalky ghostly looking white globs all over the ENTIRE room. Repeat clean up - come back an hour later and AWWWW..they're back again.

Also dropped a glass bottle of betadine once on our newly tiled hallway floor.

You'll laugh about it some day.

Specializes in Peds/Neo CCT,Flight, ER, Hem/Onc.

Somehow managed to knock the waste syringe from a medi-port draw off the cart but it went up instead of down and flipped end over end somehow spraying blood all over the wall, door, floor AND ceiling! It looked like I murdered somebody and they had to replace almost all of the ceiling tiles.

I'm a nursing STUDENT and I managed to flood a toilet during my hospice rotation last week...apparently the wet wipes used to clean stool off patients are NOT flushable on the hospice floor as they are on my regular rotation floor...my classmates are STILL laughing at me!

One time on night shift I was called to a code and left a bag of popcorn in the microwave. At 300 joules I smelled smoke and nearly ****** myself! Then I remembered the popcorn. The fire alarms went off, the fire department crashed through the unit doors...and it just went downhill from there. The patient died. And, at the end of the shift I just stood before management and silently wept. I was not fired but sternly warned. I was also shunned for quite some time due to the new "no microwave popcorn" ruling.

Is it terrible that I roared when I got to "the patient died"?

We would have named it "Lake RNis" in your honor. There are a couple of "Lake Fuzzy"s that have not lasped in memory unfortunately where I work. I left the water on in the kennel one night. Let's just say that, that "Lake Fuzzy" flooded the entire building. Just call this a learning experience. There were no patients in the building BTW.

Fuzzy

Specializes in LTC.

It's like locking the keys in the medroom...everyone's gonna laugh at you for weeks but they won't fire you for it.

Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.

This thread is cracking me up. We had a student that spiked and broke a blood bag and family came in right after blood got everywhere and nearly lost it thinking something happened to their loved one.

Just tell them it's an accident. ;)

Kidding. You should have stood up and tell them that it's your fault.

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