Nursing Funnies: Hilarity from the Trenches

A random collection of nursing and student humor from the author of "The Paws That Refresh Us: A Series of Unfortunate Events" .

Nursing Funnies: Hilarity from the Trenches

Here are some more funny stories and quotable quotes from the bedside, if you want them.

1) One of the more unusual practices in the last nursing home I worked in was the "hazing" of new CNAs. It was basically harmless and took various forms, and no one ever knew exactly what was going to happen. But while nobody was ever hurt or even more than mildly embarrassed in the process, the pranks produced some hilarious results.

As it happened, I was on duty the night my son, a brand-new graduate of the facility's nursing-assistant program, was sent into room 212 to get vital signs on a late admission. He looked somewhat ill at ease, but crisply professional in his brand-new scrubs and stethoscope as he approached the darkened room and knocked on the open door. "Mrs. Smith?" he inquired politely, just as he'd been taught, and gave his name and purpose for being there. No answer. He then attempted to turn on the light, which didn't work. Still no response from the patient in the window bed.

My son tiptoed in, trying to see in the dim light from the streetlamp outside, and pulled the cord on the overbed light. The room remained dark. "What the......?" he muttered, obviously flustered but still trying to maintain his composure. "Mrs. Smith, I need to take your vital signs." He reached for her wrist to take her pulse..........and let out a yell that could've been heard in the next county. "OHMYGAWD!! I think she's dead!!" he hollered as he raced out of the room, tripping over a chair and a trash can in his panicked flight. He saw me. "MOM!! You've gotta go look at her, she's cold.....oh CRAP!!" It was all I could do to keep a straight face as I informed him that he needed to get the charge nurse for that unit, as I had my own work to finish before report.

At this point, the two CNAs who were working with him broke up, and one went into 212 and brought the "patient" to the nurses' station.....a life-sized practice dummy used in the skills lab, which was dressed in a gown and wearing a wig borrowed from a resident who lived two doors down.

I don't believe he's ever forgiven me for being in on that joke. It was totally worth it, though.

2) You know you've been in the medical field too long when you're changing the bed of a patient who's getting the GoLytely treatment, and it reminds you to pick up a box of chocolate cake mix on the way home from work. Or when you refer to various bodily fluids in terms of food: "Tea-colored urine", "lung butter", "cauliflower ear", and the ever-popular "toe-jam".

3) Our family pediatrician from years ago was notorious for being a great doctor with an acerbic wit. When the boy in the above story was four months old, he was admitted to the hospital for RSV; since he'd weighed well over ten pounds at birth, he was a beefy little guy in whom it was next to impossible to get an IV. Every nurse on the peds floor had tried and failed, and finally Dr. Carol came in to attempt it. I watched in amazement as she deftly restrained my son's flailing arm, cannulated a hand vein, slid the needle out and attached the tubing, all in a fluid, one-handed movement.......then promptly got bollixed up in the tape. I mean, she had pieces of the stuff everywhere---all over the IV, wrapped around her own fingers, stuck to the sheets, even dangling from her hair.

She looked at me, unsmiling, and deadpanned:"Tape is our friend."

4) I've told many stories of my own less-than-graceful moments at work; now I'll share one about a good friend I'll call Donna, who graduated with me and is, for my money, one of the greatest nurses working today. I'd want her to take care of me if I were ill or injured. Heck, I'd want her to take care of my husband, kids, or grandkids. But I'd hate to see the Press-Gainey scores from one of her recent 12-hour shifts because, as she tells it, she out-klutzed even me.

She started out by tripping over one patient's catheter tubing (ouch). She dropped another patient's dinner tray....twice. She ripped a nurse-server door off its hinges. She raised a bed to do a dressing change and broke the overbed light when the attached IV pole hit it. She fumbled a sterile tray while assisting with a bedside chest tube insertion. She even committed the new-nurse error of removing the spike from a hanging IV bag and dumping half a liter of D5W all over the patient. At that point, I'd have seriously considered turning my keys over to the house supervisor and asking another nurse to take over......but Donna, ever the professional, didn't miss a step. In fact, she told me she logged over 12,000 of them on her pedometer in that single shift, mainly from running back and forth to the janitor closet and the supply carts.

5) Have you ever noticed that no matter where we are on the spectrum of life, "gross-ology" never really goes out of style? When I was in college, a group of us older nursing students basically took over the small cafeteria in the main lobby and studied, ate, and socialized there on class days. We'd also hash over the skills we'd done in clinicals---like suctioning trachs and doing wound care---often to the dismay of other patrons who lacked our cast-iron stomachs.

One late afternoon toward the end of the program, about ten of us were gathered in the middle section of the little eatery, snarfing hamburgers and chatting about the endlessly fascinating topic of flesh-eating bacteria. I'd had the dubious distinction of being assigned to the lone patient in a three-county area who had it; the disease had started in her lower leg after she'd accidently cut herself on a garden tool, and now it involved the entire extremity plus her hip. Naturally, the other students were intensely curious, and without divulging names or personal info, I gave a colorful and descriptive rundown of what I'd seen.

A woman seated at a nearby table glared at me with an expression of disgust and harrumphed, "I'm eating".

One of my classmates held up her burger and grinned broadly. "Yeah?" she chuckled. "So are we. What's your point?"

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VivaLasViejas

About VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN

Long Term Care Columnist / Guide

I'm a Registered Nurse and writer who, in better times, has enjoyed a busy and varied career which includes stints as a Med/Surg floor nurse, a director of nursing, a nurse consultant, and an assistant administrator. And when I'm not working as a nurse, I'm writing about nursing right here at allnurses.com and putting together the chapters for a future book about---what else?---nursing.

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keep'em coming guys! we need that to lighten up the day! they are also very informational (is that word english?) :confused:

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Specializes in school RN, CNA Instructor, M/S.

I can always count on you to brighten up my day, particularly MONDAYS!!! :p

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

I told you guys those stories because I forgot to tell you this one.

When I was fresh out of nursing school, I took a night shift charge nurse job in a 100-bed LTC facility that was known throughout the state for its quality of care. Oh, we had some good times.......like the night I was doing a dressing change on a patient with gangrenous toes, and two of them fell off in my gloved hand as I removed the old dressing. Or the night six residents fell between 0430 and 0600, and two roommates got into a fistfight over who got to use the bathroom first.

Then we had the residents who still had most of their wits about them plus a warped sense of humor. One such resident was a lady I'll call Margaret; she was 93 and bedbound, but she was as sharp as a tack and she had a wicked deadpan delivery that never failed to crack us up. She also had a habit of not having a BM for five days to a week at a time, then birthing a gigantic 'food-baby' all at once. I mean, these things were prodigious in both size and volume: most times, they took up the entire commode bucket.

One night, an aide summoned me to Margaret's room and showed me the contents of the bucket. "Look at THIS," she cried. "I've never seen anything like it." Inside was one of Margaret's patented BMs---an eight-pounder by the looks of it---but what made it unusual was its shape: an exclamation point. A perfect, ginormous exclamation point.

Of course, I couldn't help commenting to Margaret that she'd really outdone herself this time. Whereupon she looked into the pan, unimpressed, and sniffed: "Hmph! I was going for a bow, but didn't make it." :eek:

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Specializes in Nurse Educator; Family Nursing.

I was a fresh GN (we used that term then, not RNA) and was working on a small peds unit in the hospital where I trained (and I can tell you it was "training" back then). A person from admitting brought up a child and the mother and left the admission sheet and bracelet at the desk. I took the bracelet and put it on the child's arm and took the mother and child to the room. I told the mom I would be back in just a minute to get the history and the vital signs and left the room. The mom proceeded to get the child undressed and into the bed. I went to the desk and looked at the admission form for the admitting diagnosis and was puzzled, but there wasn't anyone else on the unit to ask what the diagnosis meant. The form read "Left Nose Disease". So, I go back to the room with the history and VS clipboard and proceeded to take the child's pulse, temp, respirations and B/P. The, I asked the mom "Why did Dr _________ send your child to the hospital today?" The mom said (drum roll) "His glands are enlarged." This is a Kentuckyism. Glands are the term laypeople often use to refer to lymph nodes. The diagnosis was "Lymph Node Disease". Hope this causes a chuckle.

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Specializes in Care Coordination, MDS, med-surg, Peds.

I was working in a state facility as a CNA/CMT, and was giving showers one evening. I was helping a women from the toilet to the shower stall, when to turned to me and said, "here", so I reached out and was given a nice warm handful of......poo!!!

Gotta love giving patients!!!!

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Specializes in 7 yrs Peds/ 3 yrs adult med-surg.

I love hearing about other nurse's experiences. You guys are giving me some good laughs. When I first graduated from nursing school I was working at a LTC facility and like one of the previous posters we had some residents with plenty of their wits about them and some, well, some, not so much. I was helping residents get to the cafeteria for dinner one night when I see one of them wheeling herself down the hall in her wheelchair. She had gotten herself dressed and I thought I would die laughing as she had her red bra on over the top of her shirt. The best part, none of the other residents even noticed and neither did she until I commented on it!! I also had an incident when I started hospital nursing on a busy med-surg unit that was mostly geriatric pts. I had an order for one of the residents to receive one beer at bedtime. Well, his beer would come up on the dinner tray. On this particular night the cafeteria sent him some off brand instead of the usual Bud that came up. He proceded to throw the beer at me and tell me "This ain't the right kind". It went flying across the floor, exploding and spraying me and another nurse, completely drenching us in the stuff. Well, I had to take pain medicine to another pt immediately following this episode and when I went to his room. He looks at me, winks, and says quietly, "can I have some of what you're drinking". Needless to say, I continued to receive comments like this for the rest of the night by the other nurses. Everyone had a great laugh!

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Too funny!!! :)

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my recent favorite was an excellent young nurse who needed to get a urine culture from a patient with a catheter. This particular unit has a foley cath in a patient about once a decade so she had never had any experience with them.

She thought it would be a good idea to get a specimen from that nice handy port on the side of the catheter instead of the one on the tubing ----

yep got all that water out of the balloon and out came the catheter!

She immediately realized the error and was so upset that I was able to not laugh until later. It all turned out fine as the docs decided to just leave it out.

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Specializes in LTC, CPR instructor, First aid instructor..

This is a hilarious story from my trench. I have a one legged neighbor friend who visited me one day while my 9 year old granddaughter was here. After he left, my granddaughter told me his barn door was open. Not catching on right away, I was puzzled, so she went into detail with the explanation. I told him about it, and he said that was because she was at fly level where she could see. He doesn't wear underwear due to having his one leg, and he needs to use a urinal.

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Specializes in Critical Care.

These are too funny!!

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  • I had an elderly patient from a local nursing home come in with chief complaint of shortness of breath. I was helping her to undress and get into a gown for her exam and xray. When I reached behind her to unsnap her bra, she told me it fastened in the front. She was generously endowed and her bra had nearly 20 fasteners on it. I said, "Goodness, I have never seen so many snaps on a bra!". She turned her head and looked apprasingly at me. She then poked me in each breast with her pointer finger. Grinning, she said, "You probably havent, I dont expect you would need more than one or two!" I had a tech in the room with me who immediately burst out laughing. A moment later the doctor came in the room. By this time, the tech, myself and the patient were all laughing so hard we were crying. He looked at all of us, turned around and left the room without saying a word. Gotta love our patients!

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