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.)
As a CNA I was helping a co worker change a brief on a very obese patient. They had a BM. CNA on the other side of the bed decided to sweep the bed with his hand to rid the sheets of poop balls from patients BM.
Hour or so later my friend says "what's that on your forehead?" Look in the mirror and had a poop ball plastered to my forehead like a melted m&m. *sigh*
Discharging a patient home, I put her overweight body in too small of a wheelchair and she starts yelling when the wheels start rubbing the sides of the chair, friction causing it to burn her hips. She was a good sport and we both laughed!
Specializes in Oncology; medical specialty website.
Taking care of a young A&O ICU patient (male, early 20s). Manipulating his IV catheter in his arm. My lovely sinuses decide to drip right onto his forearm. Gross! He was like, "that's cool". I was mortified.
I had something similar happen right when I was placing an IV. Fortunately, a co-worker was standing nearby, so she managed to keep hold of the IV as I got up, and taped it. I couldn't believe we didn't lose that IV. Talk about teamwork.
end of a long, busy, stressful day in the OR....last case of the day and everyone is tired and grumpy. The room is very quiet with only the sound of some John Mayer and the beep beep of the heart monitor when this circulator sneezes and accidentally farts (loudly). Needless to say, it lightened the mood of the room and picked up the tempo of the surgery and we came up with a new word....a SNART.
I was doing a blood sugar and talking at the same time.....when I pressed the lancet, I pricked my own finger. Quite surprised myself....after cleaning my finger reglove ect...the resident is apologizing to me.....we had a laugh over this. Not sure if I should try chewing bubble gum and walking at the same time.
I was on the code team and a code was called for a location right outside of the front doors. I hauled the code cart through the whole hospital to this location, didn't account for the "lip" on the door since it was outside. Pushed the code cart over the lip, code cart fell over after one of the wheels broke off, all of the drawers fell out, and the defib crashed to the floor. Then, because I'm awesome, I fell on top of the code cart and bruised my shins top to bottom. I had to carry all of the contents of the code cart back up to the ICU in a wheelchair while maintenance repaired the cart.
The kicker though - since this wasn't an inpatient patient, it was ED who was supposed to bring their crash cart, not me (from the ICU), I just had to respond to push meds. Oh, and the fact that approximately 15 people witnessed me crashing the cart and falling on top of it!
Specializes in Ambulatory Surgery, Ophthalmology, Tele.
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.
Curse you bladder irrigation clamps!
I worked on a tele floor and once in a great while I would get a CBI patient. One of the urologists was a CBI tyrant who would rant how HE didn't like HIS patients on our floor. Ugh....so glad I don't deal with CBIs in ophthalmology.
Specializes in Ambulatory Surgery, Ophthalmology, Tele.
end of a long, busy, stressful day in the OR....last case of the day and everyone is tired and grumpy. The room is very quiet with only the sound of some John Mayer and the beep beep of the heart monitor when this circulator sneezes and accidentally farts (loudly). Needless to say, it lightened the mood of the room and picked up the tempo of the surgery and we came up with a new word....a SNART.
The other day I was covering for the circulator during a long case in the OR. The scrub tech sneezed. A few seconds later the surgeon sneezed. He stopped what he was doing, turned around and looked at me and said, "It's your turn."
I don't have any nurse or student stories, yet, but I have a dental assisting story to share with the rest of the class!
The operatory room assigned to me was awfully tiny. Moving around was difficult, particularly when the chair was back for procedures. The dentist needed a particular instrument that I didn't have in my room, so I degloved and went to the room next to mine that had more room and more storage. I came back with the instrument, went to sit down and the rolling stool mutinied and slipped out from under me. I flailed slightly in an attempt to save myself, pulling out the N2O2 tubing from the patient's mask, in the process, flooding the room with nitrous (tiny room). The rebellious stool, meanwhile, has shot out from under me, hit the dentist's stool, surprising him enough that he jerks his head up and smacks it into the chair light.
The patient, still under the effects of the nitrous just starts giggling uncontrollably. Once everything is back in place and situated, it takes the patient a full 10 min to stop giggling so we can continue the procedure. The doctor, of course, leaves me in the room to monitor the patient, me being the source of the patient's hilarity. Ow, my pride! To top it all off, apparently I said something completely ridiculous as I fell, like "Whoopsie Daisy!" The dentist called me Daisy for quite some time afterwards!
I re-enacted a scene from Carrie. I had a critically ill patient we needed to pump blood in as quickly as possible. After spiking the bag, I rushed to inflate the pressure bag. Well the spike apparently wasn't in deep enough and it came out under the pressure!
Blood went everywhere! My socks, shoes, scrubs, the curtain (open unit), the patient and last but not least, the vent. It looked like something was slaughtered from above because the vent was COVERED!!
I was so embarrassed! My friends at work still talk about my Carrie moment!
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FlyingScot, RN
2,016 Posts
You owe me a new keyboard!!!