Please stop! Little things that are just bad practice.

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Little things that are just bad practice.

Like looping IV tubing back into itself (against our policy, and they went to great lengths to hand out caps to carry in pockets). And not even cleaning off the port you looped it into!

Disconnecting a running IV to take a pt to the bathroom.. and just leaving the bare end hanging from the pole. Don't interrupt IVFs ! Take the blinking pump with you!

What are yours?

Why on earth don't they do the smart thing and get your mother a bedside commode??

That is exactly what I was thinking as I read that.

Specializes in Pediatrics, Emergency, Trauma.
It is quite common for people to steal toilet paper.

Yes...even some coworkers will do it as well, in my experience. :blink:

Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.

We, one of the 'most trusted' of professionals, exposed as toilet paper thieves. Oh, the shame.

Seriously, hospital TP is just one step up from using newspaper,and newpaper has at least got the benefit of looking completely normal tucked under your arm when you exit the building. Whereas that tell tale shape of a TP roll is fairly conspicuous....

Stop giving patients a Percocet when they're complaining of chest pain.

If I were in charge and found out that someone heard the words "chest pain" come out of a patient's mouth for the first time and didn't get a stat EKG I would fire them on the spot.

Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.
Stop giving patients a Percocet when they're complaining of chest pain.

If I were in charge and found out that someone heard the words "chest pain" come out of a patient's mouth for the first time and didn't get a stat EKG I would fire them on the spot.

There is more to it than that. One size fit all rules are always bad. I am privileged to order and preform EKGs on my own. I don't need a doctors order. Plenty of "chest pain" complaints do not get an EKG. You have to take the patient and their history into account when deciding what tests are called for.

There is more to it than that. One size fit all rules are always bad. I am privileged to order and preform EKGs on my own. I don't need a doctors order. Plenty of "chest pain" complaints do not get an EKG. You have to take the patient and their history into account when deciding what tests are called for.

Well yeahhhh I know that each case is different. I'm more referring to a particular instance in which someone, who ended up having a STEMI, was given Percocet twice before anyone got an EKG or informed a doctor, because this patient was a notorious complainer.

And I was under the impression that if someone complains of any sort of chest pain when coming to the ED, they get an EKG and troponins drawn to be safe. Maybe that's just my facility, it's the only one I've ever worked at.

Also, I had no idea that at some places a doctor actually had to order an EKG for a nurse to do one. At my hospital, of course the doctors order them for certain times, but if we called and said a patient was having chest pain, we'd be expected to have an EKG the same as we'd be expected to have fresh vital signs.

But I'd also check someone's blood sugar without an accucheck order if they were cold, clammy, and lethargic, and I'd put O2 on a patient who whose sats were in the 80s. And then let the doctor know...is this not common everywhere?

Specializes in retired LTC.
We, one of the 'most trusted' of professionals, exposed as toilet paper thieves. Oh, the shame.

Seriously, hospital TP is just one step up from using newspaper,and newpaper has at least got the benefit of looking completely normal tucked under your arm when you exit the building. Whereas that tell tale shape of a TP roll is fairly conspicuous....

It's a shame that there's no longer the good old Sears catalogue around any more (I don't think it is). Along with toilet paper being unavailable is also the problem of light bulbs not available. (Families get very PO'd that the bed overhead light or bathroom light is out!)

Uncapped or looped-over IV lines is a problem everywhere but what amazes me is that the guilty parties seem to be nurses who otherwise have very good practice techniques. So it always surprises me when I see issues with tubings. That nurse should know better!

Like toilet paper and light bulbs being unavailable, so too freq is all isolation all equip, gowns, gloves and masks. In many LTC places, we just don't have access to the storage areas. Even then, sometimes a run on equip can leave reserves non-existent. So I have been one of those nurses who has reserved my disposable gown for reuse and have hung it on the back of the door. Now I'm one of those dinosaur nurses who practiced when isolation gowns were yellow FABRIC and we were actually taught in school how to remove a gown for reuse (in the days before disposables!). I'm sure some of the other old-timers remember it.

My personal pet peeves include dirty enteral feeding pumps - hskpg is resp for cleaning poles from the pump DOWN but nsg is resp for the pump UP (so as to not disturb the controls). I just can't believe the sloppy nurses who don't clean up after themselves. My OCD kicks in and I HAVE TO mop up the drips.

Another complaint is when a prior shift fails to restock suction equip at the bedside. Does it not make sense that suction equip must be at the ready for immediate use? And leaving a filled canister is just unexcusable. And don't you love it when the prior nurse says "Oh, I didn't need to suction - the yuck is from the shift before me!!! Right, so you leave a yucky canister to nauseate the family looking at it all **** while it grows whatever --- 2 wrongs make it right?

And the other pet peeve I'm thinking of - that of unemptied bedside commodes. It is not hskpg to empty it after use. They will only terminally sanitize it when it's empty in the dirty utility room. That's one of the reasons that some places I've worked no longer use BCs.

Don' know how I missed this post - but I enjoyed the vent!

Specializes in Acute care, Community Med, SANE, ASC.

Report! Get to it. I float, so every four hours I'm going to another unit. I find the night shift staff coming in at 7p to be worst about this. I recognize that they are just starting their shift and they want to chat and maybe don't care if report takes an hour because they have the next 12 hours to pull it together. I, on the other hand, need to give report so I can get to the next unit where I'll be starting late no matter how fast I can give report so please don't make me 45 minutes to an hour late to start my next 4-hour assignment. It's hard enough to pull it all together in 4 hours without starting any later than necessary.

And please try to find me. I work in a huge hospital and I don't know everyone's name on every floor so it's hard for me to find all the people I need to give report to, particularly when they're wandering around the nursing station chatting.

wearing soiled gloves and touching other things/patients over and over. They know they wouldn't want that done to them.

Specializes in Med/surg, Onc.

Like toilet paper and light bulbs being unavailable, so too freq is all isolation all equip, gowns, gloves and masks. In many LTC places, we just don't have access to the storage areas. Even then, sometimes a run on equip can leave reserves non-existent. So I have been one of those nurses who has reserved my disposable gown for reuse and have hung it on the back of the door. Now I'm one of those dinosaur nurses who practiced when isolation gowns were yellow FABRIC and we were actually taught in school how to remove a gown for reuse (in the days before disposables!). I'm sure some of the other old-timers remember it.

my hospital has fabric isolation gowns but they area still single use and go into the supplied soiled linen bin that's in every room anyhow.

Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.
Well yeahhhh I know that each case is different. I'm more referring to a particular instance in which someone, who ended up having a STEMI, was given Percocet twice before anyone got an EKG or informed a doctor, because this patient was a notorious complainer.

And I was under the impression that if someone complains of any sort of chest pain when coming to the ED, they get an EKG and troponins drawn to be safe. Maybe that's just my facility, it's the only one I've ever worked at.

Certainly not I hope. 8 year old admitted with trauma to chest R/T bike crash complaining of chest pain doesn't get an EKG and troponins "just to be safe".

We had a bunch of newer nurses in my hospital doing EKGs and calling RRT for complaints of "chest pain" on post op CABG patients. They weren't having "chest pain" they were having incisional pain.

Sometimes the cause of the chest pain should be obvious and addressed first.

Specializes in retired LTC.

To melizerd - I graduated nsg school 1974 and at times, it was common practice then to reuse iso gowns. Sometimes you just had to as there was no such thing as disposables. There was a specific technique you did to maintain clean and dirty sides of the gown.

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