Nursing School Bloopers

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Anyone have any funny nursing school stories from their past?

I had to change an IV bag and went in with my instructor to do so. My instructor always made me nervous but I was determined to remain confident and do the task....it wasnt difficult. She proceeded to ask me what was in the bag and I told her normal saline. She told me "ok, go ahead" and stood back to watch. I proceeded to pull out the line to put it into the new bag, but didn't take it off the IV pole before doing so. I received a saline bath with the remaining fluid that was in the bag. My instructor ran to get a towel and we cleaned up the wet floor. She then asked me to step outside the room. I thought I was going to hear it. What I heard was her laughing and telling me that I had to laugh sometimes and "everyohne has a saline bath once and then it never happens again." I still don't believe her but its funny looking back now.

OH THANK THE WORLD! After reading through this entire thread (and that's a lot of posts), I now feel so much better. I'm finishing clinicals for my second semester in the ADN program. On Saturday, I got my first needle stick, and I somehow got it in my head that I am the ONLY student to ever make this mistake!

Here's how it happened. At this particular hospital, we use the novolog pens. I have administered it a number of times now, but my instructor was standing over me, which makes me very nervous. He likes to direct step-by-step even if I've done it before, and this makes me very flustered. Needless to say, I forgot to take the needle off before I recapped the pen, and since the cap doesn't fit over the needle, well... You can see where this is going. Yes, I had already given the insulin to the patient so I had to go through the whole process of filling out the paperwork and waiting for the patient's blood test results to come back. That never concerned me. I was far too concerned with the fact that I had just given myself a needle stick because I am clearly the ONLY person to ever do this before, and how would this affect my clinical grade and my ability to become a nurse if I already got my first needle stick? Wheh!

I knew joining this site was the best thing I could do to keep my sanity during nursing school!

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I am kinda nervous reading all of these bloopers. I start nursing school next week and I am praying I don't have any that are too bad.

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Specializes in NICU.

Not me (thank god), but a fellow student learned the hard way that when doing an occupied bed change on a pt incontinent of stool... take your stethescope off from around your neck, lest it fall in an unsavory puddle. And it was such a nice Littmann, too...

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Specializes in ortho/neuro/general surgery.
Lets hope I get through nursing school someday with my nerves.

I drop things, trip over things, lose things quite frequently. I understand the nervous shaky hands. We've all been there. Hang in there! :stdnrsrck:

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Specializes in Telemetry.

I'm in my 4th semester and these are both about me:

My very first time ever checking blood sugar. We'd had a very quick orientation on how to use the machine. I didn't have to have an instructor with me for this, so I go into pt's room. Stick his finger, get the blood in the appropriate place on the little slide thing (I'm so sorry for the terrible terminology, my brain isn't working all that well tonight, apparantley), insert the slide into the machine, only for it to give me an error. I thought I didn't get enough blood on it. So, the poor guy, who was awesome about the whole thing, I should add, I had to stick him again. Same thing. After the 3rd stick with the same result I go and get the nurse. Turns out I was inserting the slide upside down. :idea:

Luckily the guy was very understanding and nice.

My second was the typical saline shower. I guess when hanging a new bag you shouldn't "unspike" the old bag spike side down when there is still a bit of saline left in it!

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Specializes in NICU.
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My second was the typical saline shower. I guess when hanging a new bag you shouldn't "unspike" the old bag spike side down when there is still a bit of saline left in it!

Just be glad it wasn't TPN. The dextrose makes it incredibly sticky and the MVI makes it stinky. I've had to scrub that off the floor a couple of times, and the smell doesn't really come off your skin too well. Blech.

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Specializes in Utilization Management.
Just be glad it wasn't TPN. The dextrose makes it incredibly sticky and the MVI makes it stinky. I've had to scrub that off the floor a couple of times, and the smell doesn't really come off your skin too well. Blech.

I'll never forget when I was a new grad and one of the more uppity new grads spiked a bag of PRBCs wrong and literally got a blood bath.

:innerconf I was sorry that it happened, but sooooo glad that it didn't happen to me!

(I have done the TPN thing. Ugh. It's like baby formula with 10 packs of sugar added.)

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A fellow student and I were in clinicals at LTC. A very confused patient came up to us in his wheelchair and asked us to take him to the bank (which is located inside the facility). We did this for him. He spoke to the teller for a little while and when it seemed like he was finished we were going to take him back to his room. We didn't know which room was his and he was no help. We ended up going to one of the nurses stations and they said "That's Mr. XX, He's in room 301". We joyfully took Mr. XX to room 301. We wheeled him into his room and started to walk away. We were just about out the door when the patient started yelling "I DON'T WANT TO BE IN HERE!!" Thinking that he was bored of spending all his time in his room, we decided to take him out near the nurse's station. As we were wheeling him out of the room, my friend said to me "didn't the nurse say that his name was Mr. XX ?" I said "yes" She said "that's not the name that was on the door!" We ended up trying to leave this poor old man in some one else's room!! That's why he didn't want to be in there. We were going to leave him in 301S, his room was 301N. How embarrassing. :smackingf

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I had an awful "poop" experience during a clinical. PT asked me to help her get a patient up (I knew nothing about the patient) and I went to assist her. The patient had a fecal management system in (apparently not something PT knew about). As we assisted her to a standing position, the FMS was pulled out and the trail of liquid stool flew across my uniform and shoes. Well, the unit secretary called down to get me some scrub pants. Little did they know, my school required us to wear dresses, so the pants weren't enough. I had to stand outside the patient's room covered in nearly orange poop waiting for someone to get me a complete set of scrubs. All the docs made a point to come check on the "poor little nursing student covered in poop" I was mortified to come back ever again!! I did not throw away my shoes or the uniform though. Dresses are expensive--I bleached the heck out of it.

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I'll never forget when I was a new grad and one of the more uppity new grads spiked a bag of PRBCs wrong and literally got a blood bath.

:innerconf I was sorry that it happened, but sooooo glad that it didn't happen to me!

(I have done the TPN thing. Ugh. It's like baby formula with 10 packs of sugar added.)

what makes up a TPN? I heard that it's 60% glucose. I wanna know if it's mized with anything else. thank u. :):):):nurse:

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Specializes in NICU.
what makes up a TPN? I heard that it's 60% glucose. I wanna know if it's mized with anything else. thank u. :):):):nurse:

TPN is a mix of dextrose, amino acids, and electrolytes. I have NEVER seen 60%. In the babies, the highest our central lines can take is 25%. I've seen anything from D5 on up to D25. It's dependent on what the patient needs.

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Ok.. I can not spell.. at all.. but I usually catch my mistakes.. my last CI, who I think is amazing, told me I was going to make a great nurse, I got all excited, then she goes.. "Your one real weakness is spelling, you might want to work on that." When I just looked at her like what, she explained that on all my care plans I had written "ASSES the pt" instead of assess.. she said that might look funny if I ever had to go to court :) everyone still teases me about it.. asking if I have grabbed my pt butt today.. :)

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