Let's hear about your worst shift ever!

Nurses General Nursing

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I work nights on a MedSurg floor and recently had what I like to call the worse shift ever. We were short staffed for the night and had no manager on the floor. During this shift we had two patients code and pass away and they both had the same birthday as me. I've only been an LPN for 9 months so this was my first experience with a night like this. I'd like to hear from the nursing community. So, tell me about your worst shift ever!

P.s. I'm sorry if there is already a thread like this. I wasn't sure how to look for that.

Bomb threat. Walter Reed.

I still cringe at the memory.

About two years ago?

Specializes in Acute Care Pediatrics.

Just peds codes in general make for a sucky night!

Thank you so much everybody for responding. It gives me hope. If you all have survived such bad situations and continue on as nurses, it gives me hope that I can get through my bad nights too.

This thread is very encouraging to read. It's nice to just see that we all have those bad shifts.

Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
"Maybe it was the shift where the guy climbed into the window of our ground floor nursing unit and herded all of the nurses into the med room at gunpoint, took the narcotics and left us all in there until the nursing supervisor made her rounds two hours later "

This reminded me of the day I answered the phone on the labor unit and the operator told me there was a bomb in the hospital, one floor below us. I then get a call from my husband (he's a physician), telling me that one of his patients is the aforementioned bomber. This a long time ago, pre 9/11, so we were not provided much information. A few minutes later, we heard this " rat a tat tat" noise and I felt something brush against my leg. It was a bullet from the floor below. There was no bomb, it was a guy on a "suicide by cop" mission. Apparently, he had taken some poor man hostage and then fired his weapon at the swat team and was killed. He left a note with his family about his plans. Yup...that really was not a pleasant shift. Luckily, no one was injured except for the guy with the gun.

Funny, until I read the above post, I had blocked it from memory.

I understand the blocked from memory part. When I read YOUR post, it triggered a memory of my first week at my first nursing job. A career criminal was on trial in a city about a 100 miles away. He got his hands on a deputy's gun and made a run for it, "borrowing" a car from the parking lot and driving the 100 miles with what I am now certain was very complete news coverage. It was an evening shift for me, so I got up at the last possible moment, showered and was out the door in record time and came strolling onto the hospital grounds with mere minutes to spare. I'm not sure how I got into the lobby -- probably just wasn't paying attention to the armed law enforcement officers positioned behind furniture and pillars -- but when I got into the lobby and a bunch of civilians huddled behind a furniture barricade gestured frantically for me to join them, it began to sink in that something wasn't quite right there.

In turns out that the shooter had wrecked his borrowed car trying to drive through a police barricade a block away from the hospital, and had made it into the lobby on foot. The police exchanged fire with him and he successfully committed suicide by cop. I think there was one minor gunshot injury to a civilian, and non-life-threatening injury to law enforcement.

My lateness was completely excused due to "the incident" (and I didn't volunteer that I would have been late even without the "incident.")

I mostly blocked that out, but your story brought it to mind.

And then there was the shift where I almost got shivved by a visiting prisoner (in custody.)

Specializes in Psych (25 years), Medical (15 years).

I was working as a Nurse with an Assertive Community Treatment Team for chronically mentally ill Clients who had a history of being institutionalized and were attempting to be integrated back into the community. Several clients were housed at an apartment complex which included office/meeting rooms for the Residential Staff.

A meeting was planned on particular afternoon for which I was dreading. While at the complex, I had a couple of other duties to perform. One was to check the specific gravity on a Client diagnosed with Undifferentiated Schizophrenia who had a history of water intoxication. The other duty was to give a deaconate injection to another Client.

After checking the specific gravity, I was walking with the other Client to their apartment when the Undifferentiated Client stabbed me in the back with a pair of scissors! I was stabbed a total of six times, but it could have been worse.

I could have had to attend the meeting!

Specializes in Med-surg, telemetry, oncology, rehab, LTC, ALF.

I don't remember if I've posted a reply to this before....hmmm.

I thought I had seen my worst shift as a new grad working on a medical-surgical unit. No doubt that the experience was pretty horrible, given the shape of the unit and the attitude of management. I lasted just 4 months on that unit, and I quit a few days after my "worst" shift.

Then I went into LTC and took up a position as a supervisor. Towards the end of my stent in LTC, it seems like every shift I worked managed to up itself. Countless times, I was dealing with multiple admissions and also sending pts out to the emergency room for post-fall injuries, MIs, DKA, sepsis, mental health crises, respiratory distress, acute HF, etc. Like most things in healthcare, all of this occurred at the same time. Then there were the elopements, family members wanting to file formal complaints, having to notify the state and fill out all of the paperwork. Waking up administration in the middle of the night to deal with some crisis or another. Being responsible for literally everything. in. the. building. including all fire alarms, security issues, any weather/environmental issues, etc. Monitoring all new staff members including the influx of new grads in the building. I was also responsible for the hundreds of retirement community residents who could call me at any point in time because they sneezed the wrong way (seriously). Staffing was a nightmare. Nurses and CNAs were regularly no-call, no-show and administration couldn't fire them because they had no one to take their place. I've seen nurses cuss each other out in the middle of the hallway, in front of residents and family members, and watched admin shrug as they plea with those same nurses to stay.

So, my worst shift ever was a mix of several of those things. I left 4 hours after my shift was supposed to end because I was cleaning up the wreckage of paperwork left behind, and the next shift would eloquently tell me that "it wasn't their problem." But if I didn't clean all of it up, they would be the first ones to make a complaint to administration. I cried on the way home. I was scheduled off for a few days after that. When I came back, I already had another job offer and start date. I turned in my notice immediately.

One night in PICU...a soft-spoken, beautiful cardiac "frequent flyer" teenager on our unit had just got her much needed heart transplant! The unit threw a party when we found out. The whole unit was so happy.

She came back to the unit after...her ABGs were stellar, she looked so good, they began thinking about an extubation plan! Picture perfect.

Fate is cruel...within 30 minutes back on the floor, she fully, randomly coded and we were crashing her onto ECMO...I left that room after about 30 minutes to run and get supplies when I happened to run past another patient's room (3 year old) who was eating a popsicle with her mom...and I watched her fall unresponsive right before my eyes. She was on Room air and some cardiac drips but was otherwise fine. I ran in her room (she had not choked) and I dropped the bed and started compressions, called our second code...she was out that fast.

Mind you, the ECMO crash code was happening one door down. Two codes, a resident running the code I witnessed and the attending bopping between the two as cardiac surgery was running the other code.

The heart transplant ended up brain dead after a three hour code and getting placed on ECMO. She ended up being an organ donor herself. The three year old ended up dying as well, as a result of her underlying condition after about an hour and a half code.

I can still hear the screaming of both sets of parents reverberating down the halls for hours. You could hear family members down the hall in the waiting room screaming through the locked doors of the unit.

I was the only nurse or doctor not crying. It's hard to explain. I was just...completely hollow. I was dead inside, the world didn't look real to me. There was no emotion, no nothing. I felt like I was just a walking robot, worse than a zombie. I have felt so much shame over the years since that night, that I couldn't muster one tear...

It took time to realize that my brain has performed the utmost act of self-preservation by just shutting down that part of me. I still had really sick, living patients to care for. I couldn't afford the luxury of sitting in the bathroom crying. There was still way too much work to do and it wasn't about me at that point.

But even in that moment of feeling like I was nothing more than a walking corpse, I knew that this night would forever be cemented as the worst one imaginable in my career. 5 years later and it still wins, hands down.

Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.

Walking into the PICU one evening- as soon as I got through the locked unit door- someone yelled "Clock in and get to room 7 STAT!"

Long story short- essential oils are NOT a cure for cancer.

There is no miracle, secret 'non-toxic' cure for leukemia in Mexico- or anywhere else for that matter. If I thought there was- I'd dig a tunnel myself to get to it.

I stood there while mom lied through her teeth about the child's follow up after her first chemo to the oncologist. While she rubbed frankincense on the girl's feet and tried to wake her up post code. While her father realized what he was complicit in by letting his wife explore these stupid 'non-toxic' treatments. While her siblings realized - finally- what was actually wrong with their sister, and it was not what mom had told them.

I gave 8 units of blood (along with countless bags of FFP and platelets) over the next 14 hours. Her H&H when I left was still terrible, but it was better than the 0.9 and 9 that it was when I got there.

I screamed in anger all the way home the next morning, then cried myself to sleep. And I will never, ever forget it.

Specializes in Med-surg, telemetry, oncology, rehab, LTC, ALF.
Another night with 8 patients and 1 coded while my pancreatitis is ringing from freakin' Dilaudid. I apologized to the patient but seriously, they were 2 doors down from the code so they knew what was going on.

My favorite is when the family steps in and tells me that they overheard the emergency and that they would want me to do the same for their family member. :up:

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