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...
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.
I once had a pt with a J tube that was always clogged on me, usually resulting in a spray of water. One evening I went in to give him meds and he and his son both opened up those little cocktail umbrellas to " keep themselves dry".
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
In one of my last days of clinicals in nursing school I woke up not feeling very well. I only had one day left for absence and I really wanted to use it on my last day. After all I wasn't throwing up just having some mild diarrhea I think I ate something that didn't agree with me. I went to the store and got some of those chewable peptos and went to clinicals. One of the patients I had started having chest pain and she was on IV antibx and lyte replacements and I was running back and forth. I had to draw a tropinin lab and she was in one of those reverse iso rooms and they are a little warmer than other rooms. Anyways I was standing at the bedside drawing up blood and I started sweating and in my head I was like "oh no I'm going to throw up" the whole time I was kinda breathing through it and when I was done I like pretty much ran out of there but luckily I was near the nurses station. One of my classmates had the keys to the bathroom and I'm like power walking to her demanding her to open the door NOW. She was like jangling the keys trying to open the door but it was too late.. I started throwing up all over the floor and there was a big trash can on wheels next to me so I ran to that but it has no trash bag in it. I was mortified. And the EVS guy was like "it's ok it's not my trash can today." But I saw him wheeling the trash can down the hall to take it to get cleaned.... ugh
YUK!
I stopped at MacDonald's on may way to work night shift -- it was an unseasonably hot day, and all I wanted was a salad. So I ate my salad and proceeded to work. I felt kinda funny, and I must have looked a little "off", because the woman who was giving me report kept asking me if I was OK. I kept saying I was because I was new to the job and didn't have any sick time yet. Finally, I just KNEW I had to throw up -- the waste basket wasn't there where it was supposed to be, so I went into the patient's room to get a trash can . . . only it was overflowing. In the end, I ducked into the patient bathroom and ended up projectile-vomiting all over the toilet, the walls, the floor . . . the offgoing nurse just stood there looking horrified. I must have drawn quite a crowd, because when I was finished the manager was standing there with a towel saying "Just go home. It'll be fine." I worked there 14 years and never lived that down!
Still new and I'm sure I've blocked the abjectly ridiculous things I have done so far because my gaffs are escaping me but, GOOD GOD, there are a lot of blood bag mishaps (and not just here, but from previous preceptor experiences, too). This is making me very nervous handling blood products from now on. I think the worst I can think of was my preceptor was helping me stay sterile by holding distal tubing from a nephrostomy that I was irrigating. I pulled the slip tip syringe out of the proximal side a little briskly and ended up slinging a bunch of urine/blood/saline onto my preceptor's neck and face. Much mortification for me.
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.
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.
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 checking my patient's gastric residuals, my least favorite thing to do, eck. The pt had a 12 Fr PEG tube, it was tiny. Apparently I got way too ambitious when giving the contents back, I pushed too hard and gastric contents squirted all over my face, all over the RTs face, and the patient. The RT was freaking out, I was freaking out; our co-workers were getting a good 'ol laugh from outside the room. I washed my face like 27 times that night.
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!
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I think the worst I can think of was my preceptor was helping me stay sterile by holding distal tubing from a nephrostomy that I was irrigating. I pulled the slip tip syringe out of the proximal side a little briskly and ended up slinging a bunch of urine/blood/saline onto my preceptor's neck and face. 
Much mortification for me.
OMG this is the best thread ever!!!!! 
IrishCMSRN, BSN, RN
49 Posts
Watched a surgeon re-insert an elderly gentlemans prolapsed colon at the bedside.....I can no longer eat sausages.