Stupid Nurse Tricks (Or How To Look Incredibly Stupid)

[Ruby Vee]

It's been awhile since we had a stupid nurse tricks thread, so here goes: How to look Incredibly Stupid Without Really Trying:

Call in to work because it's snowed and it's "not worth your life to drive to work on those roads." Be in a bar down the street from the hospital when your best friend at work uses the "Find My Friends" app on her iPhone to check on when her replacement will get there in to relieve her. (Will you lose your job?)

You've got horrible abdominal pain, but you suck it up and come to work anyway. Yay, you! You collapse in your patient's room and are whisked off to the ER by your manager and an RT. You insist that you're infertile and couldn't possibly be pregnant as you're delivered of a full term baby girl. (OK, this one was a CNS and nursing student.)

Call in sick to work because you want to go to your manager's wedding and you didn't win the "get the weekend off" lottery. Catch the bouquet. (And lose your job.)

You're having palpitations, and you're a little lightheaded and slightly diaphoretic. Strangers at the mall are concerned and offer to call an ambulance. You decline, telling them you're fine. Then you think that you probably should go to the ER, but since you know from AN that you won't get a sandwich to eat, you sit down at Bertucci's and order a plate of ravioli. Then you drive yourself to the ER, park at the bottom of a hill and walk uphill to the entrance. You're surprised when the triage nurse takes you straight back. (Yes, that was me. I was fine.)

Tell everyone at work that you're young, you want to have fun, and you're going to a friend's Halloween party after work. Go to the party dressed as a sexy nurse, and be in lots of pictures. Post those pictures on Facebook. Now call in sick to work the next day at 06:50 for your 07:00 shift. You've friended everyone you work with on FaceBook. (And NOT lose your job. What are the odds?)

Steal money from your colleagues' bags in the breakroom. Get caught by a colleague with a black belt in tae kwon do. Be photographed with a 5 foot tall girl flipping you and then sitting on you until Security arrives. (Have your manliness questioned by everyone who sees the pictures.)

[Uknurse2314]

Ah, we don't change nappies all the time, just when parents are not on the ward! Parents can stay with their child 24/7 and a lot of them do, I don't know about in America?

[brillohead, ADN, RN]

Ah, we don't change nappies all the time, just when parents are not on the ward! Parents can stay with their child 24/7 and a lot of them do, I don't know about in America?

It's all in the wording/context... "I also took a nappy off a parent once" sounds like you actually removed the nappy from the parent's bum, not from the parent's hand after the parent removed it from the child's bum! LOL

Here in the States we would have said that we took a diaper FROM a parent, rather than "off" a parent... it just took a second to figure out the wording for those of us on this side of the pond!

[RNBearColumbus, BSN]

1: In order to save time when giving insulin injections, remove the sterile wrapping from an entire case of insulin syringes and stuff them all in the top drawer of your med cart. (Not me)

2: Your patient is unresponsive with a FSBS of 30. Decide to correct the situation by pouring packets of table sugar into your unresponsive patient's mouth. (Later, you have no clue clue why your co workers keep singing Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me" when you walk into the room) (Not me.. although I "may" have been the first one to do the singing....)

3: It's a hectic day at the nursing home, you are behind on your meds. A patient (Who just happens to be the biggest, whiniest drama queen in the facility) is hounding you for PRN artificial tears while you are working with another patient. In a rush, you reach into the med cart, pull out box with the eye drops in them, but fail to notice that some idiot has put the wrong bottle in the wrong box. You have now instilled 2 drops of Debrox into your patients left eye. The patient who is the biggest drama queen on the unit. The patient that is now screaming 'It's like fire!!! I'm going to go blind!!! My eye is melting!!!" Spend the next hour flushing the patient's eye with NS. (OK, I'll admit it, this one was me. The CNP I reported it too couldn't stop laughing and my DON has never let me live it down)

[martymoose, BSN, RN]

the biggest, whiniest drama queen in the facility) is hounding you for PRN artificial tears while you are working with another patient.

omg that made me lol

[meanmaryjean, DNP, RN]

We had an agency provide a sitter for a pt, who instead of coming to the desk for instructions went straight to the room and hit the code button "because no one gave me report".

We had an agency nurse show up for day shift a little early one morning. All hell was breaking loose at the time, and she wanted to help us, but it was her first shift and there wasn't a whole lot she could do. A call light went off and she bounced up and said, "Well, I can at least answer that for you guys!" Walked in the room and hit the Code Blue button (thinking she was turning off the call light). She turned out to be a great agency nurse- and she is now immortalized in ICU lore whenever we say someone 'pulled a Mindy'!

[rnaturcervix]

We use a roller device to move pts from OR tables back to hospital beds after C-sections. A night nurse once forgot to remove it after moving her pt. Back in the room, she pulled down the sheets to assess the pt's incision, and she discovered the roller! She calmly said, "ok, looks like your BP is good. We can remove this now"!!! Way to think on your feet!

Sent from my iPhone using allnurses

[aussiemum]

I was getting ready to give a patient PR Voltaren...had the lube pack ready...patient on her side ready...went to open the the suppository and as I opened it whoosh it went flying in mid air past the patients partner...I just covered up the patient and said what a slippery sucker that was and excused myself to get another one...

[BrandonLPN, LPN]

I put in a work order for a broken bed because when I pushed the "head up" button on the remote the feet went up instead.

The maintenance guy came up and politely informed me that the bed was just turned around with the wrong end against the wall.... The patient was lying with his head at the foot of the bed.......... I'll never live that one down.....

[sistrmoon, BSN, RN]

Yeah, I don't trust dead people. They will definitely still bleed and poop and pee all over you if you give them half the chance. I had a coworker give me a funny look when I was holding pressure over a central line on a recently deceased patient once. He went to take out the radial art line on the same patient after making fun of me for holding pressure and got sprayed. I was the better person - I didn't say I told him so, but I'm pretty sure the smug look on my face said it all.

We don't take out central lines on our deceased. I was told they are used to embalm. (Oh just reread your post, you were just putting pressure on the site, didn't take it out.) We do deaccess ports though and a coworker got a needlestick deaccessing the port of a deceased person. Had to be reaccessed for the screening bloodwork, oy.

[sistrmoon, BSN, RN]

Patient with IV pump that keeps beeping over and over and over again (night shift). Try everything from priming the line, turn it off, turn it on, reset the pump, complain about how out of date our pumps are, try everything from priming the line, turn it off, turn it on, reset the pump, complain about how out of date our pumps are, try everything from priming the line, turn it off, turn it on, reset the pump, complain about how out of date our pumps are. FINALLY (because I wasn't going to stop until the beeping quit) called a well seasoned co-worker into the room and tell her EVERYTHING I just did, and how we need new pumps, and how we don't have time for this..........she grabs the plug to the pump and plugs it into the wall and walks out without a word. Dang dilly ole' thing was low on battery and needed charging. Great. Crown me the Victor! Hey, I got the pump to stop beeping. :-)

The other fun one is when either the roller clamp or the IV itself is clamped and you don't realize it:)

[meanmaryjean, DNP, RN]

I put in a work order for a broken bed because when I pushed the "head up" button on the remote the feet went up instead.

The maintenance guy came up and politely informed me that the bed was just turned around with the wrong end against the wall.... The patient was lying with his head at the foot of the bed.......... I'll never live that one down.....

I was being all proactive and efficient one night as house supervisor. Got word that one of our 500# frequent flyers was coming in to the ED. Got the bariatric bed and wrangled it down to the ambulance bay, the EMS guys put him on it. We push him into an ED room and only then did I realize that he was upside down in the bed. (He stayed that way, too!)

[Bortaz, MSN, RN]

Do you change parent's diapers in the UK too?! Geez, they really don't pay us well enough for all nurses do!

That depends on the parent...