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.

Specializes in clinical, nursing home.

I had a local police officer come in to the clinic for an office visit, his fee slip said f/u ED, I stupidly assumed this was an ER follow up. So I checked him and asked him about his emergency room visit, he looked at me funny and said "um I was not seen in the ER" turns out he was in for refills on his Viagra for his erectile dysfunction, to make matters worse he thought it was so funny he told the physician, I was very embarassed.:imbar

Another time I was assisting our surgeon in a simple lesion removal, when he asked for the specimen container to place the sample in I spilled it all over the floor. The formaldehyde was so strong we had to move the patient to another room to finish suturing him.

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I was hanging a new bag of saline and went to pull the tab where the spike goes in to the new bag out and i had a little trouble and resistance. Well lets just say my arm shot out and hit the water pitcher on the bedside table and doused my patient in around 24 oz of ice cold water....he was in good humor about it and joked while i changed his bedding and stuff...i was mortified though

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Specializes in Respiratory, Med/Surg.

Back when I worked as a CNA, a co-worker and I were boosting a patient up in bed. He was a fairly large guy, and my co-worker was small, so I pulled as much as I could. Apparently she did too because we pulled him hard enough for his head to go OVER the bed's headboard and hit the wall! Luckily it wasn't hard and the patient had a good sence of humor.

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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.

Believe it. Most nurses I've known say they've done the same thing. Once. I have. Once. Those who say they haven't...they're either covering up or just haven't had their moment yet.

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Specializes in Community, OB, Nursery.
Believe it. Most nurses I've known say they've done the same thing. Once. I have. Once. Those who say they haven't...they're either covering up or just haven't had their moment yet.

*raises hand*...It happened to me too. Once. :D

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Specializes in Neuro ICU and Med Surg.

OMG this just happened to me. I was trying to get a bottle of 3%na acetate off the pole. The previous nurse had the tubing so short on the pump when I pulled the bottle up to get it off the pole the spike came out and at least it didn't totally drown my foot. I was cursing (not out loud) the nurse that did that before me. They did the same thing with the neo drip too. Good lord why would you even think to put the tubing that short?

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here's another one. you know you're a nurse if...

...you've used a tongue depressor as a spoon.

I do that all the time.... Everyone gives me odd looks. :lol2:

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Specializes in LTC.

I am going into my last semester of nursing school, and since I haven't had any bloopers myself yet, I am scared that I will have a major one- Psych and Cardiac clinicals coming up.

I do have bloopers from when I was an anesthesia tech though. My favorite was the day I learned to release the pressure from the pressure bag before unspiking the heparin, never even crossed my mind that I would get a shower. The other- I think it was the same day, I was using a 19g needle to get the air out of an IV bag for a trauma (rapid fluid infuser) and I stuck the needle through the bag and my thumb.

On our Maternity rotation my friend and I stayed late to watch a vag delivery (in the hosp we were at they have a low rate of vag deliveries) We were so excited. But it was an awful experience. So on our last day there our CI let us watch another delivery. My friend was going to give the vit K and I gave the erythromicin. Well when my friend went to open the ampule it shattered every where. There was glass in the bassinet, which luckily was still empty, and on the floor, and she cut herself. She was horrified. They had to get a new bassinet, and the father was looking at us like we had 10 heads.

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Specializes in ICU, trauma, gerontology, wounds.

I was working night shift in the ICU. We weighed and bathed the patients on nights. (Back then, the beds did not have scales in them.) We had to turn the patient to place a rolled-up full body-length sling under her, then turn her again to unroll and attach it to an overhead scale. Once when we were turning a somewhat large elderly female patient, my friend and fellow nurse Eileen got a phone call and had to leave. I blurted out, jokingly, "Oh, sure, thanks for leaving me holding the bag." The patient fortunately had a sense of humor and laughed with us.

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Many years ago when I was in nursing school a classmate came to me in a panic. Our frazzled nursing instructor told her to "Put 10 drops of this into orange juice and go give it to your patient". The student did as she was told.

Then my classmate came to me, clutching the bottle from which she had given the 10 drops of liquid. It was labeled Potassium Iodide on the front, and displayed a large skull and crossbones on the back label. The poor girl's hands were shaking and she wanted to know if I knew anything about why our nursing instructor would tell her to do this. I told her I thought I remembered something about avoiding thyroid storm with iodide, but I wasn't sure. I told her that she needed to contact our instructor right away. Our instructor carried a walkie-talkie so that she could stay in contact her students, and everyone on the floor (including the patients) could hear bits and pieces of our communication. So my classmate goes to the base unit and yells "Mrs. Walker, come quick. I think I may have just poisoned someone!" Within about 10 seconds all the call lights on the floor were going off!

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Specializes in Emergency Department.

First semester of nursing school my instructor announced one of the the students had a pt that needed a cath. All of us were excited, the gal, not me I promise, who ended up doing the procedure did not get it quite right. The pt was an elderly woman and we all know what happens to that area. The sn got the foley inserted... her call light went off about hour and a half later. The woman said her bed was all wet the sn went and got the instructor to help her out. Turns out she inserted the foley into her lady parts rather than the urethra.

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This wasnt in nursing school, i had a few in nursing school but in CNA school....was my BEST!!!

so my first bath i am going to give, not a bag bath...a bath bath is a lady with Colon cancer. it was me and nother student doing this together. They warned us not to let her go to the bathroom (number 2!) before her bath. she received a shower, not a bath. their shower was set up so she would sit in a chair with a hole in the bottom, just incase....and i would be on the outside assisting her...there was a wall type thing i could stand behind so we wouldnt get wet.

Well...were givin this lady her shower and all goes well, then all of a sudden she poops EVERYWHERE!!! it was like water poop. not only that..the drain is clogged, and its going everywhere. its going out the door into the hallway, my white pants are soaking it up (Yes, the poop too) im yelling at my fellow student to turn the water off, YES!! she actually continued to let the shower run. Meanwhile im standing on the toliet to avoid my white pants from soaking up sewage backflow from the clogged drain and watery poop. im throwing towels on the floor infront of the door to prevent it from going outside. were yelling for help and a CNA puts her arm in the door and gives us...

a freaking toliet plunger!!! No towels...nothing, except a toliet plunger. im like "what im a supposed to do with this?"

she replies....

"they must not plunged it yet we had issues with it this morning"

so we had to plunge the shower drain with this poor old confused lady sitting naked on the chair, we had no towels left over... eventually it came unplugged.

never will i forget that. the other girl was balling!!! literally...i just kinda laughed. oh well :) :yeah:

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