nursing superstitutions.....any truth in???

jmgrn65, RN · Jun 18, 2006

This is a fun thread. When I worked in the ICU some of our night nurses would put a quarter under the bed of a patient to keep them from dying. I don't know if it worked but they thought it would.

ALso our er would bring patients up with the shroud under them we though it was morbid. Now I know why, but still think it is morbid.

PedsER-RN, BSN, RN · Jun 20, 2006

i actually wasn't too superstitous before i began my job, but now.....

like others have said, never say "quiet", "slow", or "not busy", b/c then you will be. just the other night one of the off-going nurses was saying to someone (after she explained what a nice day they had), "i hope you guys have a quiet, quiet, night!!!" and then laughed (or cackled, rather). i was ticked, then at 2 am when we were slammed and kept getting abmulances, i though of her and a few choice words ran through my mind. grr......how evil is she? :gandalf:

we still have a dry erase board, and we never ever completely erase it, even if we're empty, b/c if we do, well, you know what will happen.

we don't have a room 13. our rooms skip: 11, 12, 14.

full moon=weirdo cases.

i try to never think when i'm going into work "hey, we haven't had a dr.___ trauma, or code/sz/whatever". i've done it a few times (not on purpose) and sure enough, guess what comes in??

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santhony44, MSN, RN, NP · Jun 21, 2006

"Like others have said, never say "quiet", "slow", or "not busy", b/c then you will be."

I'm really not a superstitious person. However, I will throttle you if you start to say one of these words!

I'm not so sure about the full moon. I think I'm just a nut magnet, period.

SaraO'Hara · Jun 21, 2006

I'm halfway convinced that flickering lights in a patient room point to a death. Yesterday, the lights in room 306 flickered three times in succession; a few hours later, the resident in the room next door died :uhoh3: It's probably coincidence for now, but if it happens again, I will be convinced!

a bit wonkaish · Jan 15, 2007

I am a nursing student and I work as a CNA right now at a long term facility...i wanted to know from all you "experienced" nurses if you believe that the Alzheimers/Dementia patients actually can see people who have passed?

I ask this because 2 years ago my cousin was killed in afghanistan..at the time i was working in an assisted living facility on the lockdown dementia unit..now my family and i were told that my cousin Ben was "missing" at first..I was at work the day shift before we found out that night he was dead and this patient was singing and happy(like her usual self) she grabbed my hand and all of a sudden started to cry...i asked her what was wrong and she said in a deep voice "i want to tell u that i love u and i will miss u". then let go of my hand and went about her day singing as if nothing ever happend!!!The same day i was doing my last rounds and this other patient who never talked (she was in her advanced stage)looked at me and said "all the good die young". That night we found out he had got killed. I never returned back to work because I was too freaked out. I now work at a LTC facility and my cousin Jen was feeding a pt and the patient started asking who that soldier was next to her and described our cousin to a T, same day we were doing our changes and another pt asked the same thing.....Do u think that they can actually see angels who are watching over us?

another thing happend at the LTC facility...i was talking to some nurses and staff about my friend who does paranormal studies and all of a sudden a mirror in someones room fell off the wall and nobody was in there..

a pt died (7-3 shift) and on the 3-11 shift his tv kept turning on and off with nobody in there....

SaraO'Hara · Jan 16, 2007

I don't know about you guys but on our floor, the deaths frequently happy in a certain room.[/quote']
Oh, definitely. Bed 114-B in my facility has had three deaths that I can remember since I started working in May (CNA in LTC). The only place where the turnover rate is higher is on our short-term rehab unit.

burn out · Jan 16, 2007

One of our surgeons gets really upset if his patient has to go into Bed 4 because he says it is haunted..Somehow one night he was doing some kind of procedure on a patient in that room when lightening came in on the IV pole and arched over to the patient somehow causing him to code. Another time lightening caused a power outage and in the few minutes to kick over to generator when the monitors came up the patient in bed 4 was asystole on the monitor(thank god he was a DNR). Another time when I did home care a patients wife who happened to live just two blocks over called and said her husband was dying and suddenly there was a loud crack of thunder and a streak of lightening and she then said "he just died". I guess some people just go out with a bang.

Soup Turtle · Jan 16, 2007

I love this thread, too!
When I worked evening shift in a LTC facility right after nursing school, there was an elevator right across from the nurses' station. I was told by the CNA's and a few of the other nurses that whenever the elevator doors opened and nobody was there, it meant there would be an imminent death. Soon after they told me this superstition, I was charting at the desk near 11:00 p.m. and the elevator door opened and nobody was there. Uh-oh, I thought, and charted a little faster. Well, the elevator began arriving and opening... with nobody there... something like 6 times in a row, certainly a malfunction of some sort, but I high-tailed it out of there as soon as I gave report, and took the stairs! (I don't remember anyone dying in the next few days, but empty elevators still give me the creeps! )

:roll :roll :roll :roll :roll :roll :roll :roll :roll :roll :roll :roll :roll

Sari_LPN · Jan 16, 2007

I work in LTC, my boyfriend says he never would want to be my favorite resident........ if I get really close to one of the residents they always seem to go downhill...............wonder what kind of jinx I have??

Nightcrawler, BSN, RN · Jan 16, 2007

I am definitely interested in the knotted sheet thing.....will usually try anything......

As for the code cart outside the room thing, I never even thought of that as a superstition, I always just got it because I was sure that we were going to need it in a hurry soon. Also, there have been very few times that I have gone for it that I haven't ended up having to use it. Since we now have a rapid response team, I now call them instead of going for the cart. I would rather have the team come and scoop the patient and run than have the full code on the floor.

salwalwol · Jan 16, 2007

I Love this thread.

We have a room we will not put a vent pt in. They just don't do well in that particular room. The bed controls will stop working, suction turns on by itself, lights flicker. Things don't happen when we have a nonvented pt in that room.

We put the shroud under the mattress of a pt doing poorly.

And we never mention frequent fliers even after they are no longer with us.

We had a nurse talk about one of our flier who had died over the weekend at another facility. 3hrs later we admitted his brother!

redem2 · Jan 16, 2007

I was never a supertitious person until things happen to me, like, always

get multiple admits , patients who are stable going sour, oriented pts getting disoriented just because I was on duty and it's full moon and friday the 13th. You'll never believe these incidents until they happen to you.Just ask the ER nurses.