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.

Specializes in Cardiac.

Your coworkers will never let you live it down, but I doubt you'll get fired.

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Specializes in Med-Surg/Neuro/Oncology floor nursing..

Like the others have said everyone makes mistakes at one time or an other, we're only human. The hospital I work at now is HUGE and located in Manhattan. In Neuro, we had a new patient on the door side, the patient on the window side had a minor neurosurgery(24 hour stay). The window side had a great view of central park, especially in the evening. So the next day the window patient was discharged and the patent with the fracture on the door side asked if could be moved(patients change spots all the time so it wasn't a problem).

So we switched her to the window side and about 4 hours later her new roommate came in and obviously she was on the door side. Then about an hour later they came to take the patient with the fracture for an MRI. OOPS. I didn't put the paperwork through and transport saw on the paperwork and chart(which was still on the window side that the patient with the fracture was still on the door side(the brand new roommate's chart was still being worked on and she didn't get her "NEURO" unit bracelet yet with a GPS on it). Our bracelets have GPS's on them so we can keep track of the patient at all time). So transport takes the Door side patient and starts walking her to MRI. It's a good thing he said" Skull fracture" yikes how did you get that, when the patient replied "skull fracture? I am here for possible swelling of the brain!"

Thank goodness the transporter said something to her or she would have had an MRI for nothing. That day was so crazy I just forgot to change things around.

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Oh wow, your first war story! :)

I dropped an 800.00 bottle of some rare kind of human blood product on the floor. It imploded...talk abt messing up. I got a couple of "YOU WHAT!?" comments but it was fixable. That's how I rate stuff, is it fixible...if so ok.

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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

Bwahahahah! Texas roach...ewwwwwwwwww! New Orleans. Stomp on em, they lie there stunned for a minute then get up, give u a bad look and walk on...just popped their knees when I stepped on em, I guess :D

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When I was still very new, I was updating the parents of the smallest, sickest preemie I'd ever cared for. Then, as I had a moment of inner pride over my competent care and coherent explanations, I bent down to pick something up off the floor. On the way up, I swacked my head on the bottom of a bedside counter. It was not an oh-silly-me-haha kind of hitting my head, but a where-am-I, why-won't-my-eyes-stop-watering kind of hitting my head.

If you're a diligent worker and you take responsibility for these things, they'll be things to look back and laugh about. I still amaze myself though. The other day, in my own home, I apparently stepped on a tiny ketchup packet with enough force to require changing slacks and scrubbing down the bottom of a wall. Gotta laugh sometimes!

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Bwahahahah! Texas roach...ewwwwwwwwww! New Orleans. Stomp on em, they lie there stunned for a minute then get up, give u a bad look and walk on...just popped their knees when I stepped on em, I guess :D

Exactly !!! 3 inches of roach doesn't care about a shoe sole - just lubes it up to send the 'predator' sailing...but doesn't kill it :eek: That's why I needed the rubbing alcohol. :D Something to strip the suckers cell structure :D Stripped the danged floor wax, too... :o

(first roach I saw in TX was at a bus stop....thing chased me for 1/2 a block. If I would have stepped on it and "missed", it would have scaled my leg; I'd still be lying there all mummified with my mouth agape and eyeballs bugged out :D)

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The visual for xtrn is just too funny tears in my eyes funny long as nobody dies and you didn't break a million dollar equipment machine besides they have insurance. So long as its fixable you'll be okay

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Specializes in CICU.
Exactly !!! 3 inches of roach doesn't care about a shoe sole - just lubes it up to send the 'predator' sailing...but doesn't kill it :eek: That's why I needed the rubbing alcohol. :D Something to strip the suckers cell structure :D Stripped the danged floor wax, too... :o

(first roach I saw in TX was at a bus stop....thing chased me for 1/2 a block. If I would have stepped on it and "missed", it would have scaled my leg; I'd still be lying there all mummified with my mouth agape and eyeballs bugged out :D)

Where I was in Texas, folks kept referring to them as "Palmetto Bugs"... and I kept thinking, are you crazy? that is a big a$% cockroach... I guess it was something like putting lipstick on a pig...

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Specializes in Ortho, Neuro, Detox, Tele.

these are crackin me up!

Mine was I had a confused guy in wrist restraints sitting in a bedside chair. He was convinced he was in prision. got a hold with a folding chair, and threw it through the window. 5th floor of the hospital courtyard. lol

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Specializes in Emergency/Trauma/Critical Care Nursing.

this may seem like a silly question, but why did the water back up so much that it flooded the floor? did you have the drain stopped up or was it not working correctly? If the drain is backed up it is technically an equipment malfunction and therefore not your fault. Either way, you won't be fired, you made a HUMAN mistake, not a nursing mistake. i guarantee that a year from now when you're off orientation and settled into this new job you will look back on it and laugh, maybe even tell it to the new orientees who may be feeling like everything they do is wrong and to make them laugh :p

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Specializes in Med/Surg/Onc, LTAC.

I worked with this nurse who emptied the HUGE peritoneal dialysis bag by setting it half over the toilet and she could walk away. Well the other heavy half that was on the other side of the toilet and was not draining pulled the bag to the floor, and multiple liters of peritoneal fluid (with a lovely yellow color lol) drained all over the bathroom floor and ended up... wait for it... dripping through the ceiling below, which happened to be our super corrupt CCO's office... all the nurses hated her and her bonuses she'd get to cut corners, so karma can be a beautiful thing!!!

And NO, the nurse who made the mistake has made a thousand others much much worse and she's still there. Can't ya tell that place rubbed me the wrong way? :p

I would definitely not worry about it!!!

Also, on my 1st day on the floor at another hospital, I broke off the handle to the huge metal fridge- the handle was like solid metal and I snapped it off and held it up like "uhhh omg!"... No one even thought twice about it, except that it was funny and I was beet RED.

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Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.

Oh Man I love this thread.......I have done the stupid maalox bottle spraying everywhere..... but at least it's white. I have done it but with activated charcoal.:eek:.....It went EVERYWHERE!!!! Ah Methylene blue....that stuff gets out of NOTHING. I remember in the old days when we used the mercury sphygmomanometer to celebrate the monitors dropping it and mercury going everywhere....we chased that stuff for hours...:lol2:. Once in the ED when we used the pressure bags do get blood in quickly.....the EDMD was screaming "faster, faster" being very young I did and the tubing popped off the end....It was a blood bath....:eek:. In the "old days we used a lot more glass bottles and pharmacy had delivered a ton of TPN but left it on a bedside stand.....when transferring a code into the ICU I "rear ended" the tray and several bottles went crashing to the floor. We stuck to the floor for days..:cool:

Defecation Occurs........:smokin:

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