Nursing School Bloopers

[Jabber964]

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.

[fiveofpeep]

Speaking of those dummies... we have one that I will name "george". We were moving him from the hospital bed to a table so that one of the students could lay in one of the beds for a demonstration... well half way from moving him from the bed to the table his member fell off.

that member always falls off! Ive dismembered it a few times

[DolceVita, ADN, BSN, RN]

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 :)

OMG That happened with me and my CNA partner. We had our lady all clean and everything...were about to towel her off and ...poop! Everywhere! They seriously needed to dial back the stool softeners at that place.

I felt really bad for our resident.

[teeniebert, LPN]

that member always falls off! Ive dismembered it a few times

direct quote from an instructor the day we did catheters in skills lab:

"Let me see if I can find another member so you all get a chance to practice."

[phoenixfire]

wow, some of these are pretty awesome, I'm laughing myself silly! Ok, one on me: begining of 4th semester, so hanging a new bag of NS should be a piece of cake, right? Nope. My instructor (a fearsomely smart woman who is not my biggest fan!) is standing there watching, and I manage to misprime the tubing! I wasn't holding the bag high enough, and so there were a boat load of bubbles all through the tubing. Took almost 100mLs to clear it.... thankfully, we were not in view of the patient, so he didn't hear my intructor tell me that it was gonna be okay. I mean, by this point, I should have been able to do it with my eyes shut, but having her standing right there, I just freaked... started crying and everything... ugh... and I'm SOOO not a crier by nature. Rest of that day went okay, but it seems like I only screwed up when she was watching me! Go figure...

One on a friend of mine: first semester, in the nursing home, she was assigned to help this thin elderly man get his morning shower... and she is super grossed out by poop.. (can you see where this is going?). We get him stripped in the shower chair, wheel him down to the showers, and all the way into the bathroom. Shower goes okay, but on the way back to his room, we realized that he had been eating Red Hots... and there was a traily of poopy Red Hots all the way down the hallway!! We had to take him back to the shower and do it all over again, as well as help clean up the trail! To this day, she can't eat Red Hots, or even look at them again...lol

[MyHopeIsUnchanged]

I had just started learning how to give IM shots (I had probably given around 5 or so) when I had this guy sit down in front of me and bare his arm to me. I was nervous, but I gathered my confidence and shot that needle smoothly into his arm. I thought the worst was over, but no! As I was depressing the plunger on the syringe, the syringe suddenly separates from the needle and I am sprayed with vaccine. It goes mostly all over my face. But I'm more worried about the poor guy who still has the needle planted in his deltoid. Quick as can be I swipe it from his arm and tell him that there's been a problem. He was pretty cool about it and so was my instructor. Lesson learned that day: always make sure that removable needle hubs are screwed securely into the syringe before use!

[murphyle, BSN, RN]

I was in my last half-semester of school and doing my preceptorship on CV-SICU, and my preceptor and I were assigned a woman who, frankly, had every life-threatening condition known to modern medicine. Among other things, she was profoundly comatose, trached and vented, had no rhythm underlying her pacer, was anuric r/t renal failure, and being fed via Corpak - and, since she was incontinent of stool, was equipped with a FMS (fecal management system).

We spent the next nine hours dealing with blown A-lines, see-sawing pressures, tons o' secretions, and the unholy nightmare that is CRRT. As we were bathing her at 0400, I noticed that her FMS bag was about three-quarters full. I told my preceptor that I was going to empty it, and she said "No, leave it till end of shift, and then we'll empty everything when we total her out - that way the day shift will start with a clean set."

No doubt you can see the impending doom... :chair:

0615 rolls around, I come in to do final vitals and totals, and the FMS bag is bulging. I go to get a basin to empty it, and my preceptor says, "Hang on, before you do that let's turn her first." She proceeds to grab the drawsheet and pull the patient toward her side of the bed - and the FMS explodes, covering me with horrific tube-feed, kidney-failure, liver-failure liquid poo. Preceptor takes one look and turns absolutely green. We didn't speak for the remaining 45 minutes of the shift (though that might have been because I spent that long in the locker room trying to de-poo myself!)

[obicurn]

Dear Lord. That last one about made me lose my lunch. You poor thing!!!

[bebe2010]

OK - here's mine. I had a pt who was admitted for complications of IV drug use - won't get into specifics, but it was a big deal and he was hospitalized for a long, long time. I had heard that he was grumpy, to put it nicely, so I was trying desperately to think of things to say to him to prevent him from grumping at me.

I went in to give him a SQ injection, and while I was prepping things, just to make conversation, I went ON and ON asking him if he was afraid of needles. DUH. I have no idea what caused that brain fart, but as soon as I realized it, I felt like the worlds biggest idiot.

And for the record, he said he's not.

I have seen IV drug users and those with tattoos afraid of needles lol

[313RN, BSN, RN]

First semester of school the third day of clincals another student called me over and asked if I knew how to turn the call light off in a patients room. I said I did, becuase I'd seen it done by my nuse on day two.

I went in and saw a panel with CANCEL on one button and CODE on the other. I still think I pused the CANCEL button, but apparently touching anywhere on the pad (yes, this is the stroy I'm sticking to) starts paging the code.

All of a sudden there's noise and alarms outside and the overhead speakers are paging the entire hospital (500+ beds) to come into this room. I start frantically pushing the cancel button and wondering why the hell they won't stop paging the code while the girl I'm with goes out into the hall and is waving her arms and trying to tell everyone it's a false alarm. When I looked into the hall I was sure there were nurses from hospitals in the next county who were charging towards me. It looked like a scene from Braveheart, only the armies were wearing scrubs.

I very seriously considered locking myself in the patients bathroom, at least until it all blew over.

In the meantime the patient is sitting up in bed, bright eyed and comfortable and looking around wondering what all the fuss is about.

The staff was very forgiving and said not to worry and it happened from time to time. My instructor never said a word, and everyone in my program heard about it before the end of the shift that day.

And I learned which CANCEL button is for the call light and which is for the code. Never forgot it.

[RN77]

A few things I can think of:

1. One of the other students, while giving her first IM injection, carefully marked out the area on the patient's hip, using her thumb and forefinger to outline the injection site. She carefully wiped the intended area with alcohol, then aimed and delivered......right through the web of her hand. She looked at the instructor, to say, "Now what?" She was told that the damage was done, so go ahead and finish giving the med.

2. Happened to me...giving IM to a very small, elderly patient (senior year, so I was independent in this), who had next to no muscle mass. I chose a one-inch needle and prayed. Despite my best efforts, when I introduced the needle, I felt a sudden, hard resistance. I had hit the femur. It gave me chills, but I proceeded to give the med. Then the REAL trouble started. As I withdrew the needle, the patient started screaming and, when I got it out, I saw that I had barbed the point when I hit the bone, so was literally tearing her muscle with it as I withdrew. When I told the instructor, she got pale, but pointed me to the I&A reporting form.

3. Another student. Our first day of clinicals, ever, and we were at a nursing home to do bed baths and bed changes. One poor student happened to get a patient who was incontinent, and as soon as she would clean up one mess and change the bed, along would come another mess. Both urine and stool were prolific, all morning. On the way back to school, the student burst into tears, saying, "I had no idea it was going to be like this. I thought all nurses are like the ones on General Hospital and (other medical shows of the time....36 years ago). They're never busy, never get dirty, and never they always look so cute in their white uniforms and caps." Surprisingly, she didn't wash out, but went on to be one of the best students.

[HollyHobby]

Two friends and I were delivering meal trays during a clinical rotation. Friend A, who was carrying a tray, noticed that a big piece of paper was overlapping the entree. The patient's last name, GRIEGO, was printed at the top of the paper.

Friend A said to Friend B, "Would you please take that Griego thing off of there?" since both of her arms were occupied with carrying the tray.

Friend B made a face of disgust, then delicately plucked the wilted lettuce leaf from underneath the mound of cottage cheese. She stood there with the lettuce dangling, digusted expression on her face. We just looked at her.

Finally, Friend A said calmly, "What the hell are you doing?"

Friend B replied, "You told me to take that green, ugly thing off of there."

[murphyle, BSN, RN]

Most of us have been very lucky individuals in our nursing education; we have rotated through hospitals that are well run, with medical and nursing staff that are committed to excellent patient care. Some hospitals, alas, operate to much lower standards. These few tales are dedicated to all the "St. Elsewheres" and "Mount Miseries" of the world, the places you wouldn't send your dog.

#1 - I took morning report on a patient under respiratory precautions for an unspecified illness (it apparently never occurred to the night RN to assess her patient or read the chart, so the chief complaint was "I dunno, some lung thing"). When I got to the room, I saw a large "Airborne Precautions - Tuberculosis" sign on the door, and a box of surgical masks outside. No gowns, no hats and - the biggie - no N95 masks. I found my staff RN and explained to her that my fellow students and I had not been fit for the N95, so what would she like me to do? "Oh, you can just wear a surgical mask, he probably doesn't have TB anyway." Well, you can play Russian Roulette with your lungs, but I'll pass, thanks! I found my instructor, explained the situation, and within three minutes was signed off the patient and in the ANM's office, listening to my instructor deliver a blistering harangue about patient and employee safety. Pity it didn't take...

#2 - My second patient the same day was a new admit from ED with chest pain. When I asked my staff RN for a Pyxis login for the patient's 0900 meds, I saw that the Pyxis indicated a patient med from home that the MAR did not. To make matters worse, the mystery med was just a few white tablets in a blank orange pharmacy bottle - no label, no name, nothing. I told the RN, who said "It's timed for 0900, go ahead and give it anyway." No thank you, I don't care to lose my license before I even graduate! Call the instructor (again), endure some good-natured teasing about being her "problem student," explain the situation. Back to the ANM's office. Turns out the mystery meds belonged to another patient, and they were in fact 660/10 Vicodin purchased off the street...

#3 - Next day, another student is assigned a cancer patient who's been stepped down from MICU. Staff nurse has no idea what's going on with this patient, since it's 0800 and she's got a (bleep) student which means she doesn't have to do (bleep) today, so she's (bleep) going on a (bleep) coffee break, (bleep) you very much. (This RN was known for having a mouth fouler than a C. diff bedpan.) SN goes in the room and finds the patient agonal breathing, barely-there HR/BP and having auditory hallucinations. She starts yelling for help; the instructor and four other students (note no staff RNs), arrive, and they call Rapid Response. RN comes back to find a room full of people trying to flog her patient back to life and demands to know what the (bleep) is going on, and this is why we don't let (bleep) students on a (bleep) floor, and so on. Instructor and ANM both tell her that the SN saved the patient's life, and the instructor suggests (amazingly, without expletives) that she may want to change her attitude.

#4 - Another day, another SN goes to the stock room for bed bath supplies (you can guess we were the only people who ever bathed or ambulated these poor patients) and finds three RNs playing cards. She, too, wound up in the ANM's office contributing to yet another instructor indictment of this unit's care policies.

I'm sure it will come as no shock that our rallying cry for the rotation was "Don't Be That Guy!"