What have other nurses done that have freaked you out?

Nurses General Nursing

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What have other peers done intentional/unintentional to freak you out? Good or bad. Happy or sad.

On my FIRST day as an LVN, (LTC) a res was screaming in her room as I was walking out to leave. I went in to see what was going on. She was having an anxiety attack and severe pain (post stroke). I pulled the call light, and no one came. Uggg.

So I peeked out the door and saw my CNA walking down the hall, and told him to come sit with res. I went down to get her a Xanax and a pain pill, well relief nurse was in the restroom, and relief CNA (with call light still going off) was sitting behind nurses station reading a newspaper. I told CNA to tell the nurse to get a Xanax and pain pill for res. She said OK. I go to relieve my CNA. Said goodbye to him, and stayed with res. after 10 minutes, CNA COMES INTO ROOM WITH XANAX AND MORPHINE PILL. She is soooooo shocked to see me still there, she hands me the pills and RUNS to the relief nurse. I could NOT BELIEVE WHAT I JUST SAW!!!!

(I did immediately call DON and tell what happened. Luckily, my CNA was still checking on another res, and saw the whole thing.--------they got a slap on the wrist! that was it!!!):madface: :madface: :madface: :madface:

Specializes in CCU MICU Rapid Response.

I was working midnites as a CNA during 2nd year of nursing school. the staff at the hospital were generally helpful and enjoyed teaching opportunities, as i am always wanting to learn so i accompanied to watch a foley insertion. mind you, i have inserted them, but everyone's technique is different.

the LPN set up, tried and tried. male pt, maybe enlarged prostate? replaced the foley in the tray. returns with a coude(?) and attaches it to the bag. she picks up an opened packet of lube that was sitting on the window sill from some prior other use, dips her foley into it and states that there are no sterile foley insertions....as if she is justifying the fact that she is using icky old lube... :o no wonder every foley pt has a raging UTI. as an op mentioned, maybe not 100%sterile, but gee, there is a line.. sigh

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Specializes in Community Health, Med-Surg, Home Health.
You have no idea how many times I have came to this thread. I am greatful to learn from their mistakes, but goodness it can be funnnnnny.

I'd rather learn from these, than make the huge mistakes that I have been reading. I can't wrap my brain around some of these, though...amazing. And the interesting thing is that these nurses are probably STILL working...

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Specializes in Community Health, Med-Surg, Home Health.
This happened just the other day - I work in acute care and I was working with a RN doing med surg overflow with six patients (I am a Secretary/CNA). At 2pm we were told there was no staff to replace us at three, so we had to move all of our pt. by 3:30pm. The RN called one of our med-surg floor for report and explained to the RN taking report that she was sorry but not all of the orders were noted. The med-surg RN exploded and screamed at my RN using both profanity and screaming. I could hear her loud and clear as I was sitting right next to the RN giving report. I can only imagine how that sounded at the med-surg station. What's up with that, I understand that the recieving RN might have been having a bad day but that is no reason to treat ANYONE in that fashion. Makes me wonder if nursing is like that everywhere, and I for one do not want that kind of behavior in my facility. Any thoughts?:o

Cursing each other out is average behavior at my hospital. I had a nurse beat up a doctor, literally..she pushed his head against the door, then, slammed his hand in the door. Now, she got promoted to case manager.

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Specializes in Onc/Hem, School/Community.
This happened over 20 years ago, and it still creeps me out....

I was working in an acute neuro unit at the time. I had been off for a few days, and when I got back I had a pt that was new to me, but she was was 3 days post op from a craniotomy for a bening tumor. She was doing very well, in fact the only reason she was still in acute care was because there were no empty step down beds. a very nice, spry 78 yr old lady.

After introducing myself to her and talking a little bit, I told her I needed to do neuro checks on her. SHe got a real cute grin on her face, and told me to go ahead.

When I checked her pupils, her right eye was reactive, but her left was fixed and dilated. I kept calm, she kept smiling and talking while I cooly(I thought) checked the chart for her previous pupil checks. ALL WERE PEARLA! I checked again, trying to act like nothing was wrong, and the pt kept grinning at me, but that left eye just looked, well, a little odd!

I finally said,"Have yoiu ever had any problems with that left eye?"

She said,"Now, honey why would you ask me something like that?"

I started to explain pupils reacting to light,etc, and she laughed out loud!She said,"I have had a glass eye for 25 years, And not one person has noticed before you!" She was right, she had had 5 nurses in acute neuro before me, they had all charted PEARLA in her neuro checks. I also read all the progress notes, the neurosurgeon hadn't caught it, either!:uhoh21:

Great job! You sound like a great nurse. If I'm ever in a neuro unit, I hope you're on it! :bow:

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Specializes in Med/Surg, ER and ICU!!!.
I was still a CNA at the time.

I entered a pt. room with my nurse of 30 some years exp. The pt only spoke Spanish, so I was there to translate.

The nurse was to re-start an IV line as the other was not patent. All began well enough, but about 2-3 min. into the arm with an 18 gauge, the nurse still can't hit the vein.

About now the pt begins tearing up in pain. She is starting to squirm a little. The nurse says, "Stop moving!". Another minute or so go by, 30 year nurse finally sees that the pt is actually in quite a bit of pain from the fishing around. The nurse tells her, " Quit crying you big baby".

At this point I am holding the woman's hand trying to comfort her to little effect. She is squeezing my hand so hard. Her eyes are almost pleading to me to get this person to stop hurting her.

I began to get dizzy from the whole scene and had to exit stage left. 30 year nurse never got the IV start. Pt surely went home believing nurses are the Devil's handmaidens ! :o

Mark

How awful for the pt! When I was 17 I had my first of two kids. He had several VSDs and ended up with open heart surgery. I was so young and did not know that I could stand up to a nurse. She tried over 8 times:angryfire :angryfire to get his IV during a CHF hospital stay. It was horrible. I then let loose. I will never allow someone to stick more than 2 times now.

Also, I do not want anyone to flame me for having a child so early, ect. He is the best thing that has happened to me.

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Specializes in LTC, home health, critical care, pulmonary nursing.
Cursing each other out is average behavior at my hospital. I had a nurse beat up a doctor, literally..she pushed his head against the door, then, slammed his hand in the door. Now, she got promoted to case manager.

I can't fathom that. If I were the doc, I'd have pressed charges. It just goes with my saying that nurses are...

And texas_lvn, lots of people had babies early. Maybe not the most ideal situation, but God made those kids for a reason!

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Specializes in Med/Surg, ER and ICU!!!.
I can't fathom that. If I were the doc, I'd have pressed charges. It just goes with my saying that nurses are...

And texas_lvn, lots of people had babies early. Maybe not the most ideal situation, but God made those kids for a reason!

Yeah, you would be surprised at how unaccepting people still are today. I love this site and would hate to be asked to leave *I would be unrelenting to anyone who demeaned him in any way* because that is a sore spot. I NEVER EVER EVER want my child thinking he was a "mistake" ect. He reads behind me sometimes and I would hate for him to read anything neg about him. You dont mess with a momma bear:lol2:

Thanks for the support!;)

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Specializes in LTC, home health, critical care, pulmonary nursing.
Yeah, you would be surprised at how unaccepting people still are today. I love this site and would hate to be asked to leave *I would be unrelenting to anyone who demeaned him in any way* because that is a sore spot. I NEVER EVER EVER want my child thinking he was a "mistake" ect. He reads behind me sometimes and I would hate for him to read anything neg about him. You dont mess with a momma bear:lol2:

Thanks for the support!;)

I knew a lady once who had serious issues about getting pregnant if you weren't married. You were a horrible person if you did. Yet she had no problem with premarital sex, just pregnancy out of wedlock, (and as, ahem, experienced as she was, she got lucky). Most teens don't plan to get pregnant when they're in the backseat. It was okay to be in the backseat though. I never got that.

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I am a CNA and heres one for ya.... I have seen this at not one but two LTC facilities. NIGHT shift that does "Change rounds" but don't change gloves OR wash hands between each resident... example 55 residents that need a change at 0500 and one pair of gloves to do it all.....

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Specializes in PICU, Nurse Educator, Clinical Research.

just caught up on the thread and remembered a good one...i might have posted it before, though....

I was working as a CNA in a neuro ICU. We had a patient with a frontal lobe injury from being thrown off a horse. He spoke no english, but he communicated his feelings quite well with his hands- he had what I learned were typical frontal lobe injury-related behaviours, and continually pantomimed masturbating (even in restraints) whenever a female passed his room. If you had to get anywhere near him, he grabbed your boobs and held on for dear life. he was a strong little dude, and was constantly working his way out of the restraints- he had the order because he kept trying to pull out his ventricular drain. I spent a LOT of time with him, as he wasn't a 1:1 and the charge seemed to always assign him to a nurse with a very critical 2nd patient.

One morning, I came in to get his vitals and empty his foley. The night nurse was a traveler who was known for being lazy- both on our unit, and at another hospital where she'd worked as a new grad. I always checked to make sure lines and dressings were still intact when I did my rounds, as the nurses often ended up stuck in another patient's room for long periods (I never touched the lines, of course, and only resecured dressings that I was able to touch within my scope of practice).

On this particular morning, I looked at the tegaderm covering his ventric- ms. lazy had stuck 3 additional tegaderms on top of a ventric that was ALL THE WAY OUT. He had CSF leaking onto his pillow. (This was right at change of shift, and the day shift nurse was still assessing her other patient.)

I hit the call button and yanked one of the residents, who happened to be walking by the room, in to help. At shift change that evening, the charge nurse confronted this nurse, who had initialed the tegaderm and charted that the line was intact at 0653. Ms. Lazy responded with, 'oops. i didn't notice- my bad.':angryfire

But- as a tangent- the REALLY interesting thing happened later that afternoon....

I walked by the room and saw this patient- still in wrist restraints- STANDING BY HIS BED. he'd flipped himself over, so his arms were completely rotated inward behind him. He was pulling and bucking like a dog on a chain. Ventric was all the way out, laying in the floor. I yelled for help, and another resident and I got him into bed quickly- the attending came running, and announced that they had to drill another hole in this poor dude's head.....NOW.

I was lying across the patient on one side of the bed, holding his opposite arm and leg down- he was going for his central line by this point. Ten docs and nurses run in and place the sterile field over me, as there was no time to restrain him any other way.

As they were positioning the drill, the patient got his hand around my waist and stuck it RIGHT DOWN THE BACK OF MY PANTS. :stone He proceeded to full-on grope my rear end- but I couldn't move, and nobody could reach to remove his hand- plus, we couldn't exactly break the sterile field at that point.

So, for ten minutes, I had to stand there while he basically felt me up. Once the surgeon realized what was happening, he asked if I was okay- I said I was- and the surgeon started giggling a little. The other four nurses restraining the guy (he was strong) got to giggling, too. Once the new ventric was in, I yanked his hand out of my pants, moved back- and totally cracked up. I mean, I understood it was his injury making him act that way, so it's not like I could've been angry at him. Everyone in the room was laughing out loud by then, and the surgeon said, 'well, rach, looks like you have a new boyfriend.'

The rest of his stay in the ICU, this patient was referred to as 'rach's boyfriend' amongst the staff. I visited him a few days after he transferred out to the floor, and he was as nice and polite as could be. I still laugh when I remember that day. :lol2:

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Specializes in Medical and general practice now LTC.

I remember once a about 10 years ago we had a bad flu outbreak leaving the hospital very short staffed and a call went out for nurses still registered but not working to help out. One retired nurse offered to help out and was assigned a ward and had to give one of the patients insulin sliding scale and when she went to get it checked with another RN she had drawn 20 units up as 2 units "didn't seem a lot to give" :eek:

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Yes, slipping medications into a nurse's food is low down. I have seen that done before as well where I worked as a psych tech about 15 years ago. At that facility, we were certified to give medications, and there was another tech that used to sneak into the employee's lunchroom and eat our food (even if it was labeled with your name). Anyway, someone got sick of her stealing their food, and someone slipped some sort of liquid psychtropic medication in a soda bottle. The woman had a great deal of nerve stealing food, so, she sort of got what she got, but I would have NEVER done that.

i have the more innocent version of this story, just to demonstrate that you don't have to be totally evil to teach people a lesson.

a good friend of mine at uni had a big problem in his kitchen (shared between 10 residents. someone would go to the fridge (shared by 5 residents), open his bottles of coke and take a swig out of them. he tried labelling them, he tried putting them in a different part of the fridge, he tried complaining loudly to me in the busy kitchen that it was happening, but whoever it was kept doing it, so he smeared lignicane jelly all around the top of the bottles.

stopped the theivery in it's tracks.

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