Scariest situation?

cannoli · May 2, 2004

Just curious if anyone had any situations that made them feel scared, or at least felt vulnerable. (i.e.- gave wrong dose to pt./had an aggressive pts who threatened to physically hurt them/dealt with families that were nightmares, etc. I realize this goes on ALL the time and many of you have probably had more than one incident...just pick your favorite.

Just curious if you are a nurse and why you are asking for this type of info?

jewelsg627 · May 2, 2004

Just curious because I am on my way to grad school to get my M.SN. and I would like to know what I have in store.

2ndCareerRN · May 2, 2004

Are you doing a Bachelors (non-nursing) to MSN program? If so which one? I am curious about these programs.

bob

moia · May 2, 2004

I have been scared a thousand times..sometimes I have been scared a thousand times in one shift.

Being in charge when a patient goes bad, when your own patient goes bad...that freaky moment when you can't remember if epi is mg or mcg..is it hour or minute?

Is that a shockable rythm? do I have to be the one to shock him? Where do the pads go?

All of us have had a scary moment and most of themhave nothing to do with an error...our fear comes from our pride and our ego..are we really as good as we think we are...everytime our patients test our skills can be at first scary and then exhilirating when we know we we challenged and despite our fear we did our absolute best.

KIMRNNYC · May 2, 2004

One of my scariest moments happened because we had 2 GSW patients admitted to our floor about 2 hours apart. Little did we know they were two rival gang members. When the visitors arrived on the floor for each patient, a full scale altercation happened in the middle of our nursing unit among the visitors. Security took forever to arrive. I quickly closed as many patient doors as I could to protect them from the "mob" spilling into their rooms. I was afraid that weapons would be used. They were cursing, pulling hair (the females in the group), fist fighting, rolling all over the floor-what a nightmare!

jbro · May 2, 2004

i had a exconvict, about 6'4", 250lbs, came into the icu as an attempted suicide, OD on rohiponol(sp?), he was unconscious, restrainted, and intubated on admit., and was pec'd b/c of the suicide attempt, when he woke up he ripped out of the restraints, extubated himself, got out of bed and tried to leave, when i tried to explain to him that he couldn't leave he became very violent, by this time someone had called security and some of my coworkers showed up, and he started swinging at people, it took 7 of us to physically get him back into bed, the whole time he was spitting on people, kicking, screaming, and threatening to kill people, of course we are no longer allowed to use leather restraints so i placed two restraints on each extremity until i could get an order for thorazine, which i suppose is pretty counter productive for a pt in with a drug overdose, but what else could i do, needless to say i kept him pretty sedated the rest of my shift until, i could get a room for him on the psyc. unit, it was a pretty intense shift

Tweety, BSN, RN · May 2, 2004

I was in my first year of nursing. We were very short staffed. I was working a med-surg unit, I was assigned 11 patients for four hours until help could arrive.

One of those 11 had an MI and took my time. When the next nurse arrived four hours later, I had to turn over patients that I hadn't laid eyes on, they could have been dead in those rooms for all I knew.

Genista, BSN, RN · May 2, 2004

3rd Shift Guy- How freaky! I had the same experience my 1st year nursing (10-11 patients and one w/MI).Nothing worse than not having time to check on your "other" patients...

Grant Morgan · May 2, 2004

Yeah, ive been scared alright!!!!!

When I was a third year Psych student we admitted a patient...........paranoid schitzo weighting 120 kgs and 6"3 tall. He had a black belt in Karate and gave a couple of the gaurds a good hiding the day before. :angryfire

Well, needless to say I survived without incident. :rotfl:

zenman · May 2, 2004

I have many but the funniest happened in psych hospital. RN (female) from another floor came to my unit to talk with the LPN (female) that was in the med room. Their voices got louder. (No, it was not a dark and stormy night). The RN was accusing the LPN of sleeping with her husband. I got up just as a mental health tech (female) was rushing in. The tech thought the LPN was having an affair with the RN, who was her lesbian lover. Can you keep this story straight? I grabbed the RN and escorted her out the door while other staff took care of the rest. All this happened on night shift and some patients witnessed it so had to write it up. All three were fired. Well, it was a slow night, anyway...at least with the patients.

Jailhouse RN · May 2, 2004

Which one, homosexual activities that need to be broken up or the last knock down drag out? Just another day at the office......Scared, yeah many times. But what a ride!!!