What have other nurses done that have freaked you out?

Nurses General Nursing

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  • Specializes in Med/Surg, ER and ICU!!!.

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stillpressingon

225 Posts

I saw a nurse sniff and then lick her finger and exclaim... "Yep, it's Jevity"... she touched goop that was around the stoma of a G-tube.... I damn near stroked out

:barf01: :imbar :eek: :barf01:

caliotter3

38,333 Posts

My DON who was stealing controlled substances from the LTC facility frequently would go into rages and tantrums on the floor and in the hallways. Her behavior became more and more erratic as time went on. I heard that eventually the administrator got rid of her. Until I found out she was stealing drugs, I thought her behavior was just her way of dealing with things. The running of the facility deteriorated along with her behavior. There were lawsuits and complaints to the state authorities that piled up as time went on with her and her special employees in charge. Quite a horrorible place.

tatgirl

150 Posts

Specializes in Geriatric and now peds!!!!.

I work LTC on one of 3 units. One evening at around 1030pm I heard a page saying my name to go to room *** (which was not on my unit). I go to the room and the resident is c/o chest pain radiating to her left arm. This resident has had a MI before, and had just came back to the facility for tx of thyroid cancer. I assess her quickly and determine that she might be having another MI. I go to find her nurse and ask her to call the pts m.d. The nurse refused saying "I dont have the keys to the med cart"'. WTH???? I didnt tell you to get her some meds you dummy. I go ahead and call 911 and then call the MD to let him know that I was sending her out. By the way, the resident did have another MI. Last time I checked this could be considered neglect of duty.... Several nurses told the DON what had happened but nothing was done to the neglectful nurse. I did however get a thankyou from the DON....... I have to wonder did this nurse get her license from a cracker jack box?????

Wendy

LPN

Wendy

Agnus

2,719 Posts

A pediatric nurse educator and resource nurse for peids (30 yr experience)l injected a medication (do not recall probably a narc) directly into an iv line where blood was running. The patient (an adult) questioned it. The nurse replied it did not matter. The pt asked her not to do it. Guess what she did it.

The pt told me. I had the pt report it. Since I was not witness to this. The pt reported it. Our hospital has a" non punitive policy we never discipline nurses because nurses are so precious and we have such a shortage." Note there are 3 count em nursing schools. and 2 LPN schools in a town with a population of 140K. Yeah a big shortage. (by the way only hosp in town 300 bed).

EmmaG, RN

2,999 Posts

This one is about a doc actually and we laughed for weeks on this one. Secretary asks me to read an order the doc wrote because she must be reading it wrong....well she wasn't, he ordered a CHOCOLATE MILK AND HONEY enema for a 65 yoa woman who was constipated...when shock wore off, and I finally stopped laughing I called doc to verify. Yes, that was what he wanted her to have as the milk was mild but would stimulate her and the honey was for lubrication! charge said we had to do as ordered, but I got a non-confrontational way out when I was told by dietary that we had no chocolate milk and the only honey we had were in the graham crackers....still can't drink chocolate milk without thinking of him.
Milk and molasses enemas work like a charm. Our gyn/onc orders those when all else fails...

Makes one hell of a nasty mess tho'.

Luvelyone

74 Posts

Specializes in Cardiac Stepdown and CVSICU.

i can remember on one of my med surg clinical rotations, i was assigned an 86 year old patient that had chf and pneumonia. i did my assessment around 3 pm. the patient had very labored breathing, 86% o2 sat, falling bp and pulse. she was completely non responsive; respiratory had cranked the o2 to the max. they were only doing comfort measures as she was a dnr. when i went to chart my assessment, i found that the nurse that had just came on for the 3-11 shift had already charted the assessment (she never came in the room while i was in there)...and had charted the patient a 15 on the gcs. she had charted that the patient was a&o x 3 and denied pain. i couldn't believe it! i told my instructor who then check the patient for herself and said there was no way that she could have looked at that patient. when the instructor and i tried to talk to the primary about the patient's charted assessment, she became extremely angry, and told us not to assess or bother any more of her patients that day. that patient went on to expire before 7 pm that evening.

to make matters worse, the primary called the family and told them to come to the hospital (as her condition deteriorated). by the time the patient's son arrived, it was too late and instead of taking him aside, the nurse just allowed him to walk right in the room. he thought his mother was sleeping and said he would come back later. the nurse, coldly told him that she wasn't sleeping but had died 10 minutes prior. mind you, this patient was in a semi private room. upon hearing this, the other patient burst into tears as she wasn't sure what was going on and the nurse just ignored her.

i hope to be a better nurse than what i saw.

Kirsti1181

16 Posts

Specializes in peds, med surg, ER, Home Health.

I was working med-surg and one of the CNA's came to tell me that a patient's accu-check was 16 and she couldn't find the patient's nurse to tell her. The patient was on tube feeding so there was no way his sugar should have been that low. I found his nurse to tell her what the sugar was and that I was going to push D50 when she tells me "The CNA already gave me the accu-check for him and I gave insulin". Turns out she found a slip of paper with room numbers and accu-checks on it on the med cart and assumed that those were her sugars for 11:30 and gave insulin according to that without confirming it. Turns out that those were the sugars from 6:30 that morning. :uhoh3:

nursewannabee

72 Posts

I work as an aide on a cardiac floor. One of the patient's had a foley that was leaking so I informed her nurse. This nurse took the foley out of the patient and let the part that was inserted fall onto the bed. The nurse then reinserted the same foley back into the woman. Can anyone say contamination?

RedWeasel, RN

428 Posts

Specializes in RN CRRN.
I don't know if this is the same thing but, there is a CNA here who wears white when she is told not to, and when the patient's family, and nursing students doing clinicals, not realizing who she is, tells her important information or asks questions she shouldn't answer, she doesn't pass it to the right people or say "I'm not a nurse." She just shakes her head in the affirmitive, says something she thinks a nurse would say, and keeps going.:confused:

I think I work with her.

kstec, LPN

483 Posts

Specializes in Geriatrics/Family Practice.

I was doing a clinical rotation at a family practice clinic and I was a observing a RN give a immunization to a 5 year old. Of course being a student I assumed this nurse would show me proper procedure. Well due to not holding the child appropriately the child ended up with 5 pinholes in her leg because when the child would move the nurse would just poke her again, until the medicine was gone. I didn't know which hole to put the one bandaid I had brought in. Needless to say I've given many injections to children but have yet poked them 5 times with the same needle or even more than once. Through that experience I've learned how to hold them down either by myself or bring in help.

sjdevoe

3 Posts

Specializes in CVICU, MICU.
I'm not surprized at this AT ALL, including the slap on the wrist. When I was a CNA, I had an LPN ask me to give a patient her medication one day because actually, she was too freaking lazy to walk to the other side of the unit. Stupid me, at the time, I was 'honored' to do my 'nursing duty' and almost gave it to the wrong patient. The lady looked at me and said "This is NOT my medication". I turned right around and told the nurse to give her own meds. That situation remained in my head when I went to nursing school and now, am an LPN. It was a good learning experience, especially since I wound up not giving it. Oh, and by the way, it was digitalis.

When I was a CNA then nurses used to give me meds to give the residents all the time. I had no idea that I wasn't supposed to do that. I thought it was a compliment that they trusted me. Really I think they didn't have the patience to wait around for our confused residents to *finally* open their mouths.

squeakykitty

934 Posts

i can remember on one of my med surg clinical rotations, i was assigned an 86 year old patient that had chf and pneumonia. i did my assessment around 3 pm. the patient had very labored breathing, 86% o2 sat, falling bp and pulse. she was completely non responsive; respiratory had cranked the o2 to the max. they were only doing comfort measures as she was a dnr. when i went to chart my assessment, i found that the nurse that had just came on for the 3-11 shift had already charted the assessment (she never came in the room while i was in there)...and had charted the patient a 15 on the gcs. she had charted that the patient was a&o x 3 and denied pain. i couldn't believe it! i told my instructor who then check the patient for herself and said there was no way that she could have looked at that patient. when the instructor and i tried to talk to the primary about the patient's charted assessment, she became extremely angry, and told us not to assess or bother any more of her patients that day. that patient went on to expire before 7 pm that evening.

to make matters worse, the primary called the family and told them to come to the hospital (as her condition deteriorated). by the time the patient's son arrived, it was too late and instead of taking him aside, the nurse just allowed him to walk right in the room. he thought his mother was sleeping and said he would come back later. the nurse, coldly told him that she wasn't sleeping but had died 10 minutes prior. mind you, this patient was in a semi private room. upon hearing this, the other patient burst into tears as she wasn't sure what was going on and the nurse just ignored her.

i hope to be a better nurse than what i saw.

sounds like she was falsifying the charts, and she was getting defensive that someone would catch on.

i hope she got reported to the bon in delaware. http://dpr.delaware.gov/boards/investigativeunit/filecomplaint.shtml

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