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.)
I was talking to a patient one night and said something along the lines of, it's so nice that your husband is staying here to help you. Yep, you guessed it, that was her son. What makes it worse is that the day shift nurse warned me ahead of time. I blame her for planting the idea in my head. :)
I also learned the hard way that our CBI tubing has clamps that have to click multiple times to be closed. I clamp both sides, spike one bag and hang it. I remove the other bag and saline starts pouring out all over me and the floor. Graceful, I am.
Agree to work a double, and realize 2 hours in this was a bad idea. Your comfort care patient peacefully expires. You call the family to notify them. They seem surprised but state they will be in shortly. As they are coming down the hall, they are met by another one of your patients, a 90 year old gentleman wearing nothin' but a smile. You herd the gentleman back to his room and then realize you called the wrong family.
They graciously accept your apologies, relieved their loved one is still alive.
Another night shift. Your co-worker beckons to peek in on her patient and his spouse asleep on the cot next to him. He has a penile implant (a single tent pole beneath the blanket), she has breast implants (dual tent poles).
You attempt to sneak a peak and realize both are awake and looking back at you.
It took me awhile before I learned to laugh at myself, behaving stupidly at work. Now I have to laugh at all these completely understandable mishaps of other nurses and recall a few of my own. Most memorable to me are those that occurred while I was a student.
As a student on a surgical rotation, I was observing a surgeon doing a hemmorhoidectomy. They have all sorts of different less invasive techniques to deal with that problem now, I'm sure. But this procedure had the physician positioned on a stool facing the rectal area of an anesthetized patient in stirrups. The scrub nurse was trying to hand him things over his right shoulder. The surgeon asked me to clip a sterile towel to his back. So I did...with towel clips, through his gown and literally right into his back! I have amnesia now for what he said!! But I remember that another nurse removed the towel from his bloody back and replaced it with a new one, clipped to his scrubs, this time.
During the same rotation, I was to assist with a T&A. Simple enough, I thought. Whenever the surgeon pulled his instruments out of the patients mouth, I was to go in with suction. There was so much blood and I was so anxious to get it out that I kept banging heads with the surgeon over the patient. He kept repeating, finally shouting,"No! when I come out, you go in!" I understood, but got so rattled and embarrassed I could hardly finish.
The procedures were all interesting, but from then on I mostly just watched. This is how I made an early decision not to aim for a career as an OR nurse!
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
As a first semester nursing student proudly wheel portable mercury sphygmomanometer into patient's room to complete vital signs. Notice something doesn't look right and bend over to take a closer look putting face right near the bubble of mercury coming out of the bottom. Face is about 4 inches away when tube bursts and mercury and glass shards spray out. Have clinical instructor bend you backwards over the sink and pour 2 bags NaCl over face and then burst into tears when you are told you must go to the ER. Spend last 3 hours of clinical in ER having eyes swabbed with fluorescein by painfully good looking resident thereby missing the excitement of patient evacuation and mercury spill clean-up. Spend next 2 weeks fielding calls from hospital and university OHS departments.
While I feel for your poor face, I'll admit to laughing til I cried.
Win Miss State for the Miss America pageant while in nursing school. Use "I want to be a nurse" as your platform. Quit nursing school immediately after.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
Agree to work a double, and realize 2 hours in this was a bad idea. Your comfort care patient peacefully expires. You call the family to notify them. They seem surprised but state they will be in shortly. As they are coming down the hall, they are met by another one of your patients, a 90 year old gentleman wearing nothin' but a smile. You herd the gentleman back to his room and then realize you called the wrong family.
They graciously accept your apologies, relieved their loved one is still alive.
Why is it wanderers always strip first?
I've called the wrong family . . . what an awful feeling!
I was charge in CCU, and getting two patients from the ER with similar names -- something like Don Johnson and John Donaldson. We had two empty beds, and they were coming up at the same time. Then ER called a code, followed by a call to me saying "Johnson's on his way up to you, but Donaldson just coded, and he isn't likely to make it."
So we got our ER patient settled into bed and started on the orders, etc. ER calls and Says "Forget Donaldson, he died." Family comes in looking for Donaldson, and I refer them back to the ER. They pushed back, saying they'd traveled hours to get here, they were being shuttled around, etc. etc. "The ER just sent us here."
"Just now?"
"Well, no, we stopped at the cafeteria for a bit."
So finally, backed into a corner, I tell them that Donaldson died. Johnson's family, by the way, arrived on the unit and was directed into the room -- only to emerge shrieking that "That's not Dad!"
You guessed it. ER screwed up. Johnson coded and died; Donaldson was in our room. And I had to explain the whole mix up not only to both families, but my manager, the nursing supervisor, the Administrator on duty and both attendings. Not fun.
I'm a nursing student in a VN program 4 months until graduation! Mine isn't as funny as some of yours but I'll share anyways.
Awhile ago at clinical I had a feeding tube patient. I've had a couple of these now so I knew how to do it. Well apparently I didn't put the syringe all the way in the tube because when I went to flush it I got a nice shower of water and left over feeding. Yum! It was all over my face and hair. I found chunks later. I can't count how many alcohol swabs I used. And my patient was awake and alert and laughed! At least it somewhat smelled of vanilla?
Another time, I was showering a combative old "dear" who took a swing at me. I ducked and managed to take the tiled-in ceramic soap holder off the wall. With the back of my head.
In my very first code, I managed to trip over the IV tubing, falling straight onto the ground in front of everyone and worse, managing to pull out the only access the patient had. Luckily one of the docs was able to get an IV in pretty quickly. I was still pretty embarrassed!
Aurora77
861 Posts
I was talking to a patient one night and said something along the lines of, it's so nice that your husband is staying here to help you. Yep, you guessed it, that was her son. What makes it worse is that the day shift nurse warned me ahead of time. I blame her for planting the idea in my head. :)
I also learned the hard way that our CBI tubing has clamps that have to click multiple times to be closed. I clamp both sides, spike one bag and hang it. I remove the other bag and saline starts pouring out all over me and the floor. Graceful, I am.