GETTING WRITTEN UP: What is the most ridiculous thing you have been written up for?

Nurses General Nursing

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One night the Don of the LTC place where I worked handed over last month's MAR's and TX sheets and asked me to go through and find the "holes'' and fill them in. I filled out missing blood pressures, weights and accu-checks that I searched through Nurses Notes for and left the rest blank.

I can't believe I got busted for not forging paperwork. :uhoh3:

I got written up by my facilities QI department because my signature on charts is not legible, ie, you can't actually read indivdual letters. I was told that I wasn't a doctor, therefore, I cannot sign illegibly!

Of course, my response was - "If that signature is so illegible, how do you know it's mine?".

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Specializes in Utilization Management.
Educate me on this one.....what did the MD originally order? was it supposed to be just 5mg IV? I am confused as to how this happened....maybe I am not seeing the big picture, but why would anyone ever give 25mg IV of Lopressor?

Hope you don't mind if this has already been answered by someone, but I had to jump in right after I read this.

Normal dose of Lopressor IV is 2.5 mg - 5 mg so obviously someone missed the decimal point. Someone who was also completely clueless about the drug that they were to give.

PS. I've gotta know--did the patient survive this?:uhoh21:

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Specializes in Case Management, Home Health, UM.
I got points taken off my eval for not wearing makeup.

An MD screamed at me on the phone and hung on me. I charted the incident and my UD tried to have me fired for it.

It's amazing what people in high places are allowed to get away with...yet, if we f**t sideways, we hear about it. Being held accountable for one's behavior and actions is a two-way street, but they don't look at it that way. :angryfire

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Specializes in Rodeo Nursing (Neuro).
I've had a few occurence reports as well. People mistake incidence reports for write ups. I love the threats of another department "I'm going to write you up for such and such....." My answer: Sorry, only my manager or higher has the authority to write me up. You as a housekeeper/rt/xray tech/doctor can not write me up. Feel free to talk to the manger". What's funny is when I've had my moments of when I've had to get assertive, stand up for myself or whatever, when I've said to the supervisors "write me up or fire me, but I'm not......." and I never get wrote up. Couldn't get wrote up if I tried. :rotfl:
God bless you! My biggest gripe about the whole healthcare industry is that everybody in the %&**$!! hospital thinks they are my Nurse Manager. I've had a dietary assistant threaten to write me up because she sent a tray for a patient who had been transferred to another unit before my shift, a housekeeper was going to write me up because I didn't have my wastebaskets emptied before he came to get the large waste receptacle, and a Charge Nurse threatened to write me up for taking a patient to ICU without a nurse to monitor him, after I asked about six people, "Don't we have to take a nurse?"

Nothing came of any of these. The dinner tray and transfer probably should have been incident reports, but I wouldn't have been principally responsible for either. The housekeeper was...impacted...and knew it.

I have been written up--twice, now, for tardiness. All I could say was, "I'm sorry, I'll try to do better." And I have written incident reports myself on patient falls that I wasn't able to prevent (2).

What kills me is that I have made a couple of potentially serious errors, early in my career, that could have been grounds for a serious butt-chewing, at least, but my NM took them as opportunities to educate as to what I should have done. So the people who actually have some authority are trying to create a wonderful working environement, while the people with no authority are trying to be tinpot dictactors. Aaaargh!

I'm getting off-topic, here, but I also hate those who figure, "My patient is sicker than yours, so I'm more important than you."

Er, I also had 3 Safety/Professional Conduct violations during my first semester of Med-Surg clinicals and had to have a meeting with the head of the program. We had a nice chat about ways to manage anxiety. Again, it was all very constructive, and helped me avoid repeating the same mistakes.

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Specializes in Education, Acute, Med/Surg, Tele, etc.

I once had to hand write a MAR up for a patient that did their own medications at my facility (assisted living) for a woman I did a B12 injection for. I couldn't find any MAR for her anywhere in the MAR book...so I wrote one up by hand..and signed. I also documented in the chart what I did, and in the nursing notes for shift changes...everyone knew I did it!

Well...guess whomever checked MAR's for missing signatures didn't see that I wrote one up by hand (how can you miss that!), and wrote me up for not signing and not putting in a page for her. I got a 'written and verbal warning' and told that was neglectful.

I insisted I wrote one, but back then I was new and they didn't believe me. I found that sheet, brought the chart notes, and asked the patient to tell them when and where I did the shot, and gave all that information to them and asked them to remove that write up from my file. They told me once a write up is done, it is a perminent part of my record and can not be removed!!! So I had them 'write up' a correction for my 'perminent' chart! LOL!

WHat a hassle that was, and admin was less than pleased I stood up for myself, and felt that I must have forged a MAR...but after I showed them all my dated documentation..they had to believe me!

I mean come on...is this what nurses or admin have time for in a day???

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Specializes in ICU/CCU/CVICU/ED/HS.

I got wrote up one time for ...telling jokes:uhoh3: ...the NM was blonde (bottle) and took offense. The rest of the nurses (two of whom were actually blonde) were laughing. The NM said my jokes were "discriminatory." :uhoh21:

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Specializes in Education, Acute, Med/Surg, Tele, etc.

OH EMS boss...I totally forgot about that one for me! LOL!!!!!! OH and it was a good one, but the other nurses didn't understand my humor and wrote me up!

You see, I was being 'initiated' my first day as a med/surge nurse straight out of school. You know what that means..anything they don't want to do is my job! So I get a man who has just passed away from cancer, and I was sent in to clean the body.

I did a great job! He was so well groomed, cleaned down to every fold and undernail. I was lucky to have some clothing for him that was nice (family supplied) and dressed him by myself and he looked so dapper! I was very pleased, it was the least I could do for a man who suffered so much over the past few weeks!

During my cleaning, I had to remove a folley cath. Well that was about the only time I had another nurse in the room with me. And oh yeah...my very first dead body...so I was a bit nervous, and when I get nervous my coping mech is to use a little humor. I learned quickly that with my training with EMS, my humor is very different from med/surge nurses I worked with for sure (oh my, I did tell them as I left that darned job that if they smiled their heads would cave in so never do it! LOL!!!!!).

So I removed the cath, and the other nurse yelled "you did deflate the balloon didn't you!!!". I looked at her with the cath in hand and said "did you see him jump or something? Of course I deflated the balloon!". Okay...my instant humor and nervousness outweighed the fact that I just made a joke that can SO be taken the wrong way...oopsie! OH she so wrote me up! Hello to day one at that place!

Anyway...after that point I really didn't joke much at all (learned my lesson fast...but a road I had to take to learn the differences in humor between different departments) and kept things to myself. THen I got to know, and was quite popular with security, ED personal, all the RT's and they really had the same type of..well almost morbid or ironic sence of humor. Pretty soon this was noticed, and all those nurses on that floor I was on started assuming the same style in humor! I started the trend I guess..and the story of me asking if a dead patient jumped because of a folley removal became classic!

Took 6 months for those idiots I worked for to get that joke I guess! LOL!

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I was written up for saying "I don't know" twice to the same doc when she asked how and where her patient was. I was taking care of my own unstable patient at the time. Turns out she was in the wrong end of the unit. But....... I got a level 3 write up anyway. One step from termination for not being more "helpful". Getting the charge nurse, the chart, or finding her patient. Never been written up for any ever in my 12 years as a nurse. Seems it didn't matter what I was doing at the time. She needed her hand held, and I didn't hold it.

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Specializes in Critical Care, ER.
Hope you don't mind if this has already been answered by someone, but I had to jump in right after I read this.

Normal dose of Lopressor IV is 2.5 mg - 5 mg so obviously someone missed the decimal point. Someone who was also completely clueless about the drug that they were to give.

PS. I've gotta know--did the patient survive this?:uhoh21:

I once gave a chronic hypertensive 30 mg (yup, 6 vials) metropolol IV q 8 hrs and that still just barely touched it (didn't brady her either). Can't remember why she didn't buy herself a Nitro drip...

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Specializes in Utilization Management.
I once gave a chronic hypertensive 30 mg (yup, 6 vials) metropolol IV q 8 hrs and that still just barely touched it (didn't brady her either). Can't remember why she didn't buy herself a Nitro drip...
Guess that proves it's pretty rare, eh? I would've been on the phone to the Pharmacist to question the order in a (pardon the pun) heartbeat. ;)
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A couple of years ago the clinic where I work had the "Fish Philosophy" program going, about the Seattle area fishery where they throw fish and have fun at work. We had to watch videos, had fish and related toys hanging around the clinic. We has a dept meeting in which we discussed ways to decorate our dept and participate in the "Fish" business. I expressed my feeling that although decorating and whimsical things have their place, this is still a medical clinic and should look so. We see patients with some pretty serious problems. I hate to think we are giving the impression the place is a big party. But this was just my opinion.

Anyway, I have my yearly review and I get called on this. Mind you, this is at least six months later. I think the whole problem was that my view was not shared by my nurse manager, who seems to love decorating. Several of my co-workers shared my opinion, but I was the only one who spoke up.

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