Tell on yourself, if you dare...

Nurses General Nursing

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What's the goofiest mistake you've made on the job? No, I don't mean the med errors or the medical mistakes you learned from. Those are important and often terrible experiences, of course, but this isn't about danger to patients or trauma.

I just really want to talk about the silly things we ALL do and can have the good grace to laugh about. It seems I find so many great stories in the nursing community because we often are under such stress, that we're so focused on those important details and avoiding the critical mistakes...so our brain tends to reserve less power on the things that don't matter as much.

Here's my confession. (And if any of my coworkers are on this forum, I'm outing myself gloriously, because we ALL had a good laugh over it...) My adolescent psych unit is in a small, private hospital, so though EMR has been promised to us, it's not quite here yet. A frustration of mine, to be sure...but that's another story. The kiddos were being super impulsive and just SO MUCH limit-testing going on, and I'm trying to get meds passed and RN assessments done and also manage patients and such. My awesome techs are working their butts off. The usual. One of my team asks if I can bring him "four soaps." That's a bit excessive, I think, but I also know, hey, sometimes teenagers want A LOT of body wash and our trial size containers aren't that big. Or maybe he's distributing them for hygiene time or something.

THIS IS WHERE I PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE QUESTIONED SOMETHING.

Cheerfully, I grab four of the small body wash vials, and bring them to him, and he's like..."what?" Because he meant four SOAPs, as in SOAP notes, which we do on each patient q shift...and he was asking me to bring him the charts...

Specializes in LTC Management, Community Nursing, HHC.

When I was a CNA years and years ago, I worked night shift at a local hospital and one of my responsibilities was filling water pitchers and taking vitals around 2AM or 3AM. I was assigned to a different unit one night and the nurse gave me a list of rooms and bed numbers for vitals. As I filled the water pitchers, I also took vitals if required.

One room was really messy with clothes all over the floor and one of the 2 patients in that room needed a temp based on the list I had. I proceeded to take their axilla temp because the patient was facing away from me and I didn't want to wake him up. Then I picked up all the clothes off the floor, filled up the water pitchers and left the room.

The next morning I was so embarrassed when one of the two "patients" i.e. a young intern came up to me and asked if I was the one who gently took his temp under his axilla the night before and tried hard not to wake him up!! The other intern later thanked me for folding all their clothes. They obviously were teasing me. Turns out the nurse had forgotten to update the info before she gave me the list for vitals, and that was an empty room that the interns had decided to sleep in while on call!

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Specializes in Med-surg, school nursing..

The next morning I was so embarrassed when one of the two "patients" i.e. a young intern came up to me and asked if I was the one who gently took his temp under his axilla the night before and tried hard not to wake him up!! The other intern later thanked me for folding all their clothes. They obviously were teasing me. Turns out the nurse had forgotten to update the info before she gave me the list for vitals, and that was an empty room that the interns had decided to sleep in while on call!

That gave me a good laugh this morning!

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Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.

I threw a metal chart at the solar plexus of an resident once. Big Teaching Hospital. And me a Rent-a-Nurse-staffing-plug on the 3-11 shift.

A young woman had come in with headaches of unknown origin. She had one test or another scheduled right on top of the next test. Good for the resident and interns for being aggressive in trying to locate the cause...however...she had not stopped crying since she was admitted. When the resident asked me to have her ready to go down to whatever dept for the next round of testing, at 8 PM, I was so disgusted, that's when I pitched the chart sideways and it got him in the gut.

I asked, rather vehemently, if it was HIS mom, wife, daughter, etc, would he keep pushing her through all of this without providing relief? Was he aware that it was a living, breathing person he was 'treating'? Because so far she hadn't been treated, only tested. Since the most crucial tests had been done already, I demanded she have pain med, and be allowed some SLEEP, if AT ALL possible.

Thought I'd probably answer for my temper flaring. I am slow to anger,but when I get there ... yikes!. I kind of held my breath for the next 24 hrs wondering if/when the hammer would drop on me; there were at least half-a-dozen others who saw what I did, but nobody said a word.

The orders for meds appeared and the further testing rescheduled for the morning. The patient got pain relief and a sleep-med got her several hours sleep.

I don't know whatever happened to her, because I wasn't scheduled for another shift there until the following week, for a different floor/service.

I don't recommend throwing things to get results, but it this case, well, "sometimes ya just gotta!"

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Specializes in Oncology.
When I was a CNA years and years ago, I worked night shift at a local hospital and one of my responsibilities was filling water pitchers and taking vitals around 2AM or 3AM. I was assigned to a different unit one night and the nurse gave me a list of rooms and bed numbers for vitals. As I filled the water pitchers, I also took vitals if required.

One room was really messy with clothes all over the floor and one of the 2 patients in that room needed a temp based on the list I had. I proceeded to take their axilla temp because the patient was facing away from me and I didn't want to wake him up. Then I picked up all the clothes off the floor, filled up the water pitchers and left the room.

The next morning I was so embarrassed when one of the two "patients" i.e. a young intern came up to me and asked if I was the one who gently took his temp under his axilla the night before and tried hard not to wake him up!! The other intern later thanked me for folding all their clothes. They obviously were teasing me. Turns out the nurse had forgotten to update the info before she gave me the list for vitals, and that was an empty room that the interns had decided to sleep in while on call!

Hahaha. This is a good story to use as a teaching point on why room number isn't an identifier.

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I have no idea what I would have done!! what did the instructor say??

My first day of clinicals in nursing school I went to take vitals on a dead person. Seriously, this happened. There was no butterfly sign on the door and we (Me and 3 other students) walked in to do vitals. There was a ton of family there and everyone was quiet. I looked over briefly and I guess we all thought the patient was asleep. Walked closer and didn't look at the patient, just went to get my bp cuff out and tell the family we were going to take vitals. The

daughter looked at me and said "But she's dead". Yup, never managed to live that one down.

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
I have made many goofy mistakes in my career. One I remember, involved a labor patient. The doctor told me she needed "Vitamin P" (meaning pitocin) but I missed his meaning. Several hours later, he came to the unit to check her progress, only to find she had not had any pitocin at all and her labor was essentially unchanged, progress-wise. He was quite a bit annoyed with me and spelled out what he meant. I felt like such a fool. It was early on in my career, like my first month. I totally missed his meaning.

I once asked for an order for "Vitamin V" (Valium -- this was a long time ago!) and the intern wrote an order for "Vitamin V 10 mg. PO Q 4 hours prn." At least he got the dose right. (And yes, that was the dose in those days.)

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
When I was a CNA years and years ago, I worked night shift at a local hospital and one of my responsibilities was filling water pitchers and taking vitals around 2AM or 3AM. I was assigned to a different unit one night and the nurse gave me a list of rooms and bed numbers for vitals. As I filled the water pitchers, I also took vitals if required.

One room was really messy with clothes all over the floor and one of the 2 patients in that room needed a temp based on the list I had. I proceeded to take their axilla temp because the patient was facing away from me and I didn't want to wake him up. Then I picked up all the clothes off the floor, filled up the water pitchers and left the room.

The next morning I was so embarrassed when one of the two "patients" i.e. a young intern came up to me and asked if I was the one who gently took his temp under his axilla the night before and tried hard not to wake him up!! The other intern later thanked me for folding all their clothes. They obviously were teasing me. Turns out the nurse had forgotten to update the info before she gave me the list for vitals, and that was an empty room that the interns had decided to sleep in while on call!

At least it was axillary. I once took a rectal temp on a sleeping intern. Because the room number was on my vitals signs list with a little "R" next to it. I think the Fellow nearly gave himself a hernia laughing, but never admitted to altering the vital signs list.
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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.
I once asked for an order for "Vitamin V" (Valium -- this was a long time ago!) and the intern wrote an order for "Vitamin V 10 mg. PO Q 4 hours prn." At least he got the dose right. (And yes, that was the dose in those days.)

I like my orders for Vitamin V(ersed)!

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I am not a nurse yet, but a few months back I was doing a PVR on an adult male patient and I didn't know why I kept on seeing >200 mL. Lo and behold, I had the bladder scanner on the child setting (in my defense, it looks like a little guy who is jumping). It was my fault for being a noob and asking a nurse who was unfamiliar with the device for directions. I had lots of laughs over that meaningful mistake of mine! Luckily the patient didn't mind having a PVR done twice within a 15-minute period! :yes:

Another embarrassing story:

1. When I was on orientation, I removed the clip from the rubber tube that comes from a foley drainage bag because I was flustered and somewhat clueless. When I realized what I had done incorrectly, I placed the clip back onto the tubing, but not before spraying myself and my preceptor with urine... in the face. Oh, and this was a contact precautions patient :alien:. Needless to say, we both scrubbed our faces with the Steris alcohol foam and laughed our butts off! I was grateful to not have been made to feel like an idiot.

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My patient had O2 per NC on with extension tubing so it would reach to the bathroom. Somehow my foot got tangled in it and I darn near ripped the poor ears off that fella. I felt absolutely terrible. He was okay. Now I laugh about it and always watch for that tubing! #embarrassing

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Not quite as bad as exploding and wasting a perfectly good bag of blood as others have done, but I disconnected a pt from the blood tubing and forgot to clamp it and poured about 30 cc of bright red saline/blood punch all over his freshly remade bed right at change of shift. Charge RN walked in at this inopportune moment and gave me the most pitying, disapproving look. And then promptly got me clean linens. :)

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I once had a confused patient pee in his drinking cup.

I recently had a confused patient who insisted that the urinal was his wife's water bottle.

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