What is the most incompetent thing you seen a fellow nurse do?

Nurses General Nursing

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There were two patients in a double room on a 38 bed tele floor. One was an old fart with a sick heart an the other was a 35 year old male who was in an MVA being observed for a myocardial contusion. The old fart coded and died. During the code, the CNAs moved the 35 y/o to a private room. The charge nurse, thinking she was calling the wife of the old fart, mixed up the names and called the wife of the 35 year old gentlemen. She passed on the news that her spouse passed away and that she needed to come in. The wife had to be brought in by neighbors and brought to the floor by a wheel chair because she was too histarical to walk. She was wheeled into the room only to find some dead old guy she never met. She came out of the room yelling "That's not my husband!" "Where the #$%# is my husband? (!)" She found him in a private room down the hall watching Sunday football. She had to be restrained by her neighbors and the male CNAs and male Nurses from beating the crap out of the charge nurse.

My, My, My! WHY do we so DELIGHT in our own mistakes while the doctors stick together and bury theirs? At least we nurses are more honest and forthright (Mostly) Should I begin with my coworker who hung a sandostatin gtt instead of NS on my blood tubing? Pt had a Minnisota Tube and died a few hours after her 300cc bolus. OR my coworker who didn't check placement on her NGT and fed glucerna to someone's lungs for 4 hrs? OR the time I was showing a nursing student how to dress a central line and while I trimmed the dressing I cut the line in two? (Thought my career was over on that one! But I was new in the Trauma ICU and untold nurses all had tales of shaving the cuff's on the ET Tubes and having to reintubate making me feel SO much better!)

Obviously these posts are all words to the wise. We know at anytime in our career it might happen to us. I tell all my friends and family "Stay OUT of the hospital, it's the most dangerous place you can go" All I wonder is who is going to be taking care of me in the next 30 years when I need to access some health care delivery?

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Originally posted by Teshiee

Well I have known nurses to infuse lipids in a preemie in one hour luckily that baby was fine but I can imagine what that little baby was feeling.

Teshiee,

What do you think the baby felt? Would the baby feel all crazy, or would the baby's liver hurt really bad? I am curious what running too much lipid into an IV can cause a person to feel like. Thank you

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I've only worked in a hospital as a cna now for almost 2 months. I went two months before coming to the worst I've seen. My mouth activaed, and I started bad feelings on nurses part, and nurse wound up bad mouthing me and ??.

Pt is young guy recovering from rollover auto accident, head trauma+ body. I am a sitter, and the night before he pulled out his trach. Then his foley was removed. He's a nice young guy, his mom spent time with him, but the nurse rarely came in, said they just got back from vacation, and the sentences were broken when she spoke. by days end, the poor guy scratched his head wound (lil blood) and keeps trying to stand up to urinate (like a male would) after having the foley removed.

In CNA school, and in nursing school so far, the use of restraints is mentioned often as a last resort. They say you need a DR's order every time. So I am conditioned to believe yewd need a dr. to come in and say put them on. They really emphasize restraints are last resort.

Nurse makes a cameo appearance in the room, sees a little blood on his hand, and over reacts. She starts drilling me about not noticing it. Pt tried to stand up (he can't too well) and the nurse starts barking about putting him in restraints. Her voice and demenour were bad. I just said one word, "threat" and she left the room in a tizzy angry at me.

I think if your gonna use restraints, for a patients own good, you should just puttem on and not talk about it. And not threaten their use. The nurse had no empathy for this patient at all.

All these stories are very interesting, and I learn much from reading them. The vocabulary I reap is what I am thanking you for, and the introduction of various scenarios as well. I can not feign to understand all the drug names and proceedural descriptions, but I am loving to imagine.

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in the state that i work in, lpns are not allowed to give meds ivp. unfortunately, we had one that didn't feel it was necessary to ask a rn for help and decided to push all of her meds. pt had an order for 2-4mg ms ivp q2-4'. the lpn gave 10mg instead of 4mg twice. couldn't figure out why her once aox3 post op surg, was now lethargic?!! took us awhile to figure it out...after an intense review of her chart, the med sheet, the narc sheet, assessment....we found the med error. thankfully after some narcan she was fine.

do you guys report all of this on your risk report sheets? i just went to ed day today and they said that it isn't tattling, but providing them a way to review the system and see what can be done differently. what does everyone think of this?

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Mario

I have seen many things that are said and done by nurses. Not all of them good. you see, take the best of what you see and incorporate it into your own practice.

Your own practice is just that. Yours.

YOU have to decide what kind of nurse YOU want to be. Compassionate, caring, understanding........ you get the picture.

Sometimes nurses become impatient, frustrated, and loose sight of their BEST practice.

Take all of it in, grow from it. You will see all kinds of things.......doesn't make it right.

Be strong.

J.

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just yesterday i answered a call light..complaint that his iv was stinging. walked into the room and found an k rider 20meq in 100cc, infusing at 300cc/hr!!!! thank goodness the patient was with it enough to notice. i spoke with the nurse and she said she must have hit an extra 0....no biggie. omg, i almost lost it. where do we find these people? no biggie?!

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Many years ago when we used kangaroo pouches and didn't have infusion pumps, I witness an RN hang a bag, apparent forgot to check it. It went in a full drops per minute, the pt. aspirated and died. Then this same nurse misread an order for Dilaudid 2 mg Im and gave 4 mg IM (total 2cc each one in their own carpuject, so she had to combine then, ) then have the gall, to say "well, I didn't kill him." We whispered (this one you didn't)

She has since had a car accident and has brain damage and would you believe she is still practicing as an Rn, but it's on a rehab unit, where needles are seldom used, and she only works part time. She's past the age of retirement, we'll all breathe easier when she does, until then, we check just about everything she does.

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In ER, there was a new graduate I worked with that was always checking my work (I'd been an RN for 5 years then), trying to find something wrong with it. He was a male, and seemed insecure, so I always kind of just took him with a grain of salt.

Sunday, we had an 18 year old young man with terminal bone cancer (who also had cancer in his heart-first time I ever heard of that) come in. He was very end-stage, but was AAOX3. His young wife and his parents were at the bedside. Their baby was with the other grandparents.

Anyway-this patient was assigned to the aforementioned male nurse. For some reason, the patient was to receive a heparin bolus, IVP, that was to be 30 units. Somehow, our Einstein thought it said *30,000* units, and gave him that dose, IVP!!! The charge nurse happened upon a whole stack of empty heparin vials, and asked who used them all. When Einstein said that he had, we all sucked in a deep breath, at the same time. When she found out that he had given them all to one patient, we all groaned, almost as one. This wasn't bad enough-EINSTEIN WASN'T WRONG!!! He got the chart, to show us that we were the ones that were wrong, and ruh-roh, busted! The charge nurse told me to leave trauma and hand over my patients to this smart a**, to do one-on-one with the affected patient and his family. As she called his PMD to report the incident and get orders, it was left to me to esssplain what was going on, to the family. When we got the order for the protamine zinc, another nurse was sent to Pharmacy to get it. They brought it in the room, along with the syringe and the order, for me to draw up. After I gave the med, his doctor came in-a very bright woman with the nickname "Ice Queen" for her lack of personality with the nursing staff. She was wonderful with the family, and very nice to me. She told me that I was not to leave the patient's side for the next 4 hours, as PTTs were to be drawn q4h until it was within normal range.

The patient and his family were wonderful, and I got to know them very well during the 4 hours I was with them. The story was heartbreaking-although, even that day, the patient looked very healthy, they had been told his demise was imminent. He was a high school football player who had some chest pain, and went to get it checked out. Bammo! CA of the heart! They then found it was all in his bones, brain, etc.

I was finally able to get him upstairs to a room. I brought the stretcher back down to the ER, locked myself in the restroom, and cried my eyes out-for the patient, his little wife and child, his parents, and because the people he trusted to take care of him had let him down!

Mr. Einstein left me alone after that, but never would admit that he had done anything wrong, even though the evidence was there, and he had admitted giving the drug! What ego!

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Oh, Cathy...such a sad story about the 18 yr old with cancer and mets...sometimes it's soooooohard to be a nurse and this is one of those times. It IS different when the patient is older and has lived their life. Young folks and kiddos tear my heart out.

In my opinion, this nurse you described is THE MOST dangerous of all....he thinks he can do no wrong, and knows everything. :(

A cautious, thoughtful nurse who knows he/she is only human is much more competent and safe! :)

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.

What an interesting and scary thread. I work with one nurse who has done some pretty unusual things. One night soon after she came to work in our unit, she was assigned to a teenager who had skiied into a tree and KO'd himself. The kid was really out of it at the start of the shift, but along toward midnight, he started coming around. We had him intubated and ventilated because his airway protective reflexes had been iffy and his GCS about 6. Well, he sat up in bed, circuit dragging on the ETT, reached down and yanked his foley. Our charge nurse climbed up on the bed and knelt on his shoulders to keep his head down (she in a dress, I might add) while his nurse was asking for a foley tray... We all were a little confused by that. A- airway, b- breathing, C- circulation... F- foley is pretty far down the list. Lately, a good three years since she came to us, she is still doing things that make me go "Huh?" She routinely aspirates nasojejeunal tubes q4h.Why? Because she's always done it. These days she has taken up outpost nursing, where she's the only game in town. I wonder how long it will be before we get a really sick admission from her post.

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Specializes in Everything except surgery.
Originally posted by 911fltrn

I didnt witness this but aprrox 3 weeks ago a nurse hung norcuron thinking it was an antibiotic. Pt wasnt intubated and norcuron was found by code team. Pt expired. Supposedly nurse still has job and got a pay raise.

I also didn't withness this...but came on that nite to hear about a new RN doing about the same thing. But she didn't think it was an antibiotic...she gave it to hiim ...to put him to sleep. Guess what?? It worked...:o..:eek: Wouldn't you know it ...she was one of those I know more than you people...oooh well!:cool:

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I work for a small county hospital in med-surg. I occasionally get floated to the 4 bed ICU as the "second" nurse. I usually don't have a problem with this because the ICU nurses always give me the less complicated patients. One day I was working in ICU with an RN who was new to our facility. I am not sure how long she had been a nurse or what kind of ICU experience she had. Anyway, her 75 year old female patient had a HR of 100, then 110, then 120. This kept going on for a while. I finally hinted that maybe she ought to call the doctor. She decided that she would call the doc. By this time, the little old lady's HR was in the 140-150's range, and her B/P is going down the drain. She calls the primary doc and just acts like the little old lady is just tachy. Didn't tell him about the high HR, the dropping B/P, and her increasing SOB. The family doc orders for our internist to consult. I ask "Jane" if she was going to page Dr. N for this patient. She called his office and they said he would be in his office about 2. This was like at 0900! :eek: I don't like to butt in on somebody's else's patient, but at that time I needed to. I told her that the internist needed paged STAT. She replies, why? I am going because the little old lady is going to code if we don't do something fast. :eek: I paged the house super, and told her of the situation. The super informed the nurse that she WOULD beep the internist STAT. :D Our internist who is a gem, of course came right away and the lady survived. :)

Had another nurse about a year ago that was really scary. She would sign of meds that she never gave, knowingly let IV's infiltrate and not pull them, did rotten assessments on patients. After about 6 months of her and numerous write-ups, she finally was released from her job. Caught her falsifying a chart.:eek: :eek:

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