Practical jokes at work

[fedupnurse]

What are some of the best practical jokes you have ever pulled off at work?

I was in charge one night and we had a prisnor as a patient. The cop watching him until the county took over was a real jerk. He went out into the waiting room to sleep. An hour into his nap we moved the guy to a room down the hall. He, as well as the cop who was supposed to be watching him, slept thru the entire thing. Another hour went by and 2 county guys came in to relieve the township guy and found him asleep in the waiting room. As they came thru the closed fire doors into the unit we could hear the township cop saying "don't worry about it, he didn't go anywhere." The 3 of them walked into a room with an empty bed with a crumpled up sheet, gown and socks on the floor. All color drained from the cops face as he came out to the desk and stuttered "w-w-wher's m-m-m-my boy?" We nearly died laughing. When they started talking about APB's we fessed up and showed the 3 of them to the patient's new room. The county guys loved it!!

So what about the rest of you? Surgilube on phone earpieces and call the person? Water fights with 60cc syringes?? How do you blow off steam at work?????:roll

[thisnurse]

no micro......the doc didnt lick it ...the nurse did

[Mary Dover]

Yeah, and fedup, with laughter being the best medicine, just think of the shorter length of stays for pts. HMO's would LOVE us.

[VAC]

I had a practical joke played on me when I was a newer nurse on a med surg unit. We nurses had just been given internal portable phones. So one of my coworkers called me, told me she was in the bathroom stall and needed toilet paper. I went in to the bathroom and handed some toilet paper to the person in the next stall, which wasn't my co-worker but some visitor, who thought I was nuts. Shortly thereafter, these pranksters put a male resident on the phone to me with the same request for toilet paper, I didn't fall for it that time.

These stories are great for morale; laughter is the best medicine!!

[VAC]

Here's an idea - let's open our own 'Allnurses' hospital. Sure would be a great team to work with. [/b]

Where do I send my application??

[momrn50]

One slow night at the LTC facility I used to work for, one of the residents had a HUGE BM..as big as a loaf of bread....so being the sick folks we all were at that place, we got it out of the BSC, sat it on the floor, added 2 aspirin for eyes and straws for antennas and then called the charge nurse to come look at the big worm we found....she didn't find it the least bit amusing, but the rest of us did...shame she was such a tight-ass...the rest of us had a blast.....

[KRVRN, BSN, RN]

We have an older charge nurse that is especially prone to getting VERY uptight and panicky in tense, stressful situations. Well, she was working on Aprils Fool's Day one year. All the staff were in on a practical joke. The unit clerk told her that a woman just showed up unexpectedly and was in the process of delivering 25 week quadruplets IN THE LOBBY. Well, she went into high gear, telling everyone to do this, do that, get this ready, get that ready. I guess she was pretty panicked. To make it worse, everyone was deliberately being slow about "getting things ready." She was so stressed that they had to let her in on the joke within minutes!

[fedupnurse]

I wish I could take credit for this one but I wasn't working that night. We had an Assitant Nurse Manager with a fantastic sense of humor. On April Fools someone got her car keys and moved her car out in the lot. I think she was onto them though because she got them back the next morning by insisting on calling the police and started laughing before they fessed up to their "crime". This is the same person I put surgilube on the ear piece of her phone and walked down to the other end of the unit and said "I think I heard you phone starting to ring as I was halfway back down here" She started walking toward her office and I dialed her extension. She answered "Hel...I'm gonna kill her." Well she didn't kill me but she came back armed with a loaded 60cc syringe. Oh that was back in the good old days when we were allowed to have fun at work!

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

I wanna work at Allnurses Hosp too!!! As I was reading this thread, I was just dying, thought I'd fall off the chair!!!! You guys are great!!!

[boobaby42]

One day, a patient came in with her hair fixed funny. Her bangs were standing straight up above her head, kind of looked like a chicken or something. Well, I was awarded the duty of calling this woman back to a room. I tried so hard to stop laughing a be a professional. I did pretty good until another nurse knocked on the door to ask me a question. I said come in as I continued taking v/s. I turned around to see what nurse2 wanted. There she stood, with her bangs sprayed stiff standing on top of her head, like a chicken. Oh my God! I just about messed on myself holding back a burst of laughter. My face was so red by the time I came out of the room. Whe I looked up after opening the door to escape, everybody was waiting on me, with their hair sprayed stiff standing tall above their heads, kind of like a chicken.

[Goofball]

On April 1st, our charge nurse told one of our new grad 'green' RNs, when she walked in for her shift, that she was being assigned to a pt. who was being transferred from our hospital to one in San Diego, CA, 500 miles from us; that the pt. was currently under CPR; and that she needed to transport the pt. in the ambulance as the ACLS nurse, and would need to do CPR on him all the way there, for the entire 12-hour drive. She just said, "Oh, okay, what time are we leaving?" and she was serious.

[DelGR]

When I was in the Navy, the standard practical joke was to have a new young OR tech student try to find an Otis Elevator for the ortho docs. Of course, we finally had to explain to them that it was a passenger elevator in the hallway not a surgical tool.

The other joke was to have a new student go to the basement with an empty bucket to get "steam" from the boiler room to prime the Autoclaves in the OR.

One young lady covered the bucket with several towels and by the time she was back to the OR suite and the bucket was uncovered.. Lo and behold there was a large amount of steam that escaped. The joke was on the perpetrators and not the victim.

[fedupnurse]

Before my time here, there was a very very stupid resident. The head of Infectious Disease told me this story a few years ago. He said this guy was so stupid that one time during a code, the other residents sent him out to find the key for the heparin lock. Out he went! Came back a little while later and said he couldn't find it. So they sent him on a wild goosechase! Try the medical Library-no not there. Try security-they didn't know what Iwas talking about. He didn't say how long they sent him hunt for the "key" but apparently it was for quite a while. Another time a nurse put plastic fish in a suction cannister and called this guy and told him that the patient had aspirated his dinner. He had fish you know and now I am suctioning fish from his lungs! He believed it, called the attending....

He is now a wealthy attending physician out there. Be careful!!!!!!