What's the goofiest mistake you've made on the job? No, I don't mean the med errors or the medical mistakes you learned from. Those are important and often terrible experiences, of course, but this isn't about danger to patients or trauma.
I just really want to talk about the silly things we ALL do and can have the good grace to laugh about. It seems I find so many great stories in the nursing community because we often are under such stress, that we're so focused on those important details and avoiding the critical mistakes...so our brain tends to reserve less power on the things that don't matter as much.
Here's my confession. (And if any of my coworkers are on this forum, I'm outing myself gloriously, because we ALL had a good laugh over it...) My adolescent psych unit is in a small, private hospital, so though EMR has been promised to us, it's not quite here yet. A frustration of mine, to be sure...but that's another story. The kiddos were being super impulsive and just SO MUCH limit-testing going on, and I'm trying to get meds passed and RN assessments done and also manage patients and such. My awesome techs are working their butts off. The usual. One of my team asks if I can bring him "four soaps." That's a bit excessive, I think, but I also know, hey, sometimes teenagers want A LOT of body wash and our trial size containers aren't that big. Or maybe he's distributing them for hygiene time or something.
THIS IS WHERE I PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE QUESTIONED SOMETHING.
Cheerfully, I grab four of the small body wash vials, and bring them to him, and he's like..."what?" Because he meant four SOAPs, as in SOAP notes, which we do on each patient q shift...and he was asking me to bring him the charts...
Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.
Years ago I was working a PDN case, my guy had a g-tube. I learned that you NEVER should add cough syrup to the formula disappearing down the tube , because when those two liquids meet they turn to a kind of almost solidified sand-gel-glue, and NOTHING moves. Tried all the tricks, ALL of them, to no avail. My patient had a very strongly verbalized demand: "I will NOT go back to the ER or the Hospital!"
I worked and worked, quite creatively I might add. An hour and 15 minutes later it was FINALLY patent again. My secret weapon? A steel stick for kabobs. You have to be very, very careful, naturally. We don't want anything untoward happening now, do we! I'd break some of it up and then holding the insertion site and stitch very securely so it wouldn't dislodge I'd roll the tubing between my thumb and forefinger, little by little I'd be squeezing, gently milking out little blops of glop.
Certainly unconventional, and if known by anybody but my patient and me...mighta got me in deep doo-doo.
When I was in the student nurse float pool I had a little old woman with diarrhea ring her call light … I ambulated her to the toilet to explode in horrible ways, and with the walker ambulated her back to bed. All tucked in, cozy and comfory - until that look of horror passed over her face! "Gotta go again!" … Up we go back to the bathroom, but we didn't make it. About 2 feet from the door she explodes - it was like a brown keg of dynamite. My shoes, the walls, her legs, the floor in a 4 foot circle, and the tip of my long ponytail. We washed her down (while I try not to ralph and heave). I got her back to bed but the housekeeping guy gave me the stinkeye like he wanted to kill me as he kneeled cleaning up the circle of yuck on the floor. I wanted to apologize, but I didn't cause the explosion. He never forgave me, even after I graduated, but I really was not to blame! Poor guy!
Reminds me of when I went to see an uncle in a cardiac unit several years ago. He told me that he'd been really constipated, and that he practically made them give him 2 different laxatives. Then he paused, looked me right in the eye, and said "Don't do that". Ha ha... he said he was pooping on the way to the bathroom, pulled out several EKG (or whatever) leads, etc.
I thought about starting a new thread on this, but nah, it's not a mistake I made - but clearly, someone at the pharmacy we get meds from was uh, kind of asleep or mega-distracted... unless this looks-like-a-Lantus-vial really is some new type of injectable Tamsulosin! :^) The nurse on the next unit came over to show me this tonight.
O.K. This is really gross but every word is true. I was working as a tech in a burn unit, tasked with doing hydrotherapy and non-sharp debridement. Our tank was a "Hubbard"- style PT tank that, looking down on it, looks like a giant hour glass. I had a 65-year-old man with chemical burns over 60% of his body. He had been pre-medicated with Ketamine and morphine; went into hypovolemic shock (interstitial) and arrested in the tank. I hit the Code button and tried to start CPR. I hit the "RESUSC" switch on the lift to raise the litter he was suspended on in the water but still couldn't reach him from the side. I wasn't about to let him just pass on so I climbed into the tank and got good CPR started. The team arrived but I was still giving mouth-to-mouth (in 1970 !). The man regurgitated his high-protein milkshakes and hit me in the face. I reached into the water to splash-clean my face. What I got was a huge piece of skin I had removed from his leg during treatment just prior to the arrest. It squished against my face and slid off over my lips. I managed a few more breaths until the MD got a tube in him. We wound up putting him on a stretcher and rushing him back to our Burn ICU. By then I was vomiting so hard there was food from a former life coming out; "I don't remember eating that!" The Head Nurse gave me 50mg Phenergan IM and a fellow tech took me home. I slept well into the next day and soon returned to the burn unit. I could not eat KFC for months !! Still have PTSD triggering sometimes at barbecues and fish fries.
I'm ready for some IM Phenergan from reading that.
Years ago I was working a PDN case, my guy had a g-tube. I learned that you NEVER should add cough syrup to the formula disappearing down the tube , because when those two liquids meet they turn to a kind of almost solidified sand-gel-glue, and NOTHING moves. Tried all the tricks, ALL of them, to no avail. My patient had a very strongly verbalized demand: "I will NOT go back to the ER or the Hospital!"
I worked and worked, quite creatively I might add. An hour and 15 minutes later it was FINALLY patent again. My secret weapon? A steel stick for kabobs. You have to be very, very careful, naturally. We don't want anything untoward happening now, do we! I'd break some of it up and then holding the insertion site and stitch very securely so it wouldn't dislodge I'd roll the tubing between my thumb and forefinger, little by little I'd be squeezing, gently milking out little blops of glop.
Certainly unconventional, and if known by anybody but my patient and me...mighta got me in deep doo-doo.
I had a fresh post-op who was now on a regular diet. She had finished eating, then called me to her room. I walk in and she says she is going to vomit. Apparently the nausea affected her arm movement because she wouldn't hold the wash basin (because when has an emesis basin actually held emesis?!) So I bend down to hold it in front of her and she vomits all over the side of my face- I really wasn't that close to her, but it all spewed out. As much as I wanted to move I just stayed there with vomit dripping down my face and hair.
I pushed the call light and yelled for someone to bring me towels and 4mg of Zofran. The nurse that came in just about vomited herself when she saw what had happened. She said "Honey, I got this, you go shower!" And shower I did.
That poor patient felt so bad. But after that I learned to stand back a ways if the patient wasn't going to hold their own bucket.
O.K. This is really gross but every word is true. I was working as a tech in a burn unit, tasked with doing hydrotherapy and non-sharp debridement. Our tank was a "Hubbard"- style PT tank that, looking down on it, looks like a giant hour glass. I had a 65-year-old man with chemical burns over 60% of his body. He had been pre-medicated with Ketamine and morphine; went into hypovolemic shock (interstitial) and arrested in the tank. I hit the Code button and tried to start CPR. I hit the "RESUSC" switch on the lift to raise the litter he was suspended on in the water but still couldn't reach him from the side. I wasn't about to let him just pass on so I climbed into the tank and got good CPR started. The team arrived but I was still giving mouth-to-mouth (in 1970 !). The man regurgitated his high-protein milkshakes and hit me in the face. I reached into the water to splash-clean my face. What I got was a huge piece of skin I had removed from his leg during treatment just prior to the arrest. It squished against my face and slid off over my lips. I managed a few more breaths until the MD got a tube in him. We wound up putting him on a stretcher and rushing him back to our Burn ICU. By then I was vomiting so hard there was food from a former life coming out; "I don't remember eating that!" The Head Nurse gave me 50mg Phenergan IM and a fellow tech took me home. I slept well into the next day and soon returned to the burn unit. I could not eat KFC for months !! Still have PTSD triggering sometimes at barbecues and fish fries.
I was once rolling a patient when I felt an almost stinging in my foot. I thought "hmm, that's odd...wait...that's warm.
As I rolled the patient his catheter had come unclamped and about 700cc's of urine went onto and into my shoe.
I didn't want to walk into the hall with a urine filled shoe, so naturally, I took off my shoe and my sock. Well, of course I didn't want to walk in the hall barefoot, that would look silly, so I grabbed a large glove and put it over my foot and walked out. (I obviously didn't think this through)
Meet several people in the hall, including my floor educator. Everyone had a nice laugh.
Im sure the glove was much more dignified than a sock.
O.K. This is really gross but every word is true. I was working as a tech in a burn unit, tasked with doing hydrotherapy and non-sharp debridement. Our tank was a "Hubbard"- style PT tank that, looking down on it, looks like a giant hour glass. I had a 65-year-old man with chemical burns over 60% of his body. He had been pre-medicated with Ketamine and morphine; went into hypovolemic shock (interstitial) and arrested in the tank. I hit the Code button and tried to start CPR. I hit the "RESUSC" switch on the lift to raise the litter he was suspended on in the water but still couldn't reach him from the side. I wasn't about to let him just pass on so I climbed into the tank and got good CPR started. The team arrived but I was still giving mouth-to-mouth (in 1970 !). The man regurgitated his high-protein milkshakes and hit me in the face. I reached into the water to splash-clean my face. What I got was a huge piece of skin I had removed from his leg during treatment just prior to the arrest. It squished against my face and slid off over my lips. I managed a few more breaths until the MD got a tube in him. We wound up putting him on a stretcher and rushing him back to our Burn ICU. By then I was vomiting so hard there was food from a former life coming out; "I don't remember eating that!" The Head Nurse gave me 50mg Phenergan IM and a fellow tech took me home. I slept well into the next day and soon returned to the burn unit. I could not eat KFC for months !! Still have PTSD triggering sometimes at barbecues and fish fries.[/quote
This might not be the stupidest, but it is definitely the most disgusting. Hats off to you. I can't top that one. Excuse me while I go have a sympathy vomit.
I had a fresh post-op who was now on a regular diet. She had finished eating, then called me to her room. I walk in and she says she is going to vomit. Apparently the nausea affected her arm movement because she wouldn't hold the wash basin (because when has an emesis basin actually held emesis?!) So I bend down to hold it in front of her and she vomits all over the side of my face- I really wasn't that close to her, but it all spewed out. As much as I wanted to move I just stayed there with vomit dripping down my face and hair.
I pushed the call light and yelled for someone to bring me towels and 4mg of Zofran. The nurse that came in just about vomited herself when she saw what had happened. She said "Honey, I got this, you go shower!" And shower I did.
That poor patient felt so bad. But after that I learned to stand back a ways if the patient wasn't going to hold their own bucket.
Live and learn. Boy do we learn interesting things.
Glycerine82, LPN
1 Article; 2,188 Posts
One time I poured water into the little plastic pill cup.
Oops!