As I've posted on these boards previously, I am a recent grad working nights in emergency at a hospital in the Detroit suburbs. I was recommended to the position by one of my old clinical instructors, who works as a night-shift case manager in this department when she isn't teaching. We had had a very good working relationship in clinical, and still do as colleagues in the EC.
There's just one slight problem. I'm a very calm, collected and generally squared-away individual. Instructor was a stand-up comedian in college. A few other nurses got in on the gag, and thus began the Great EC Prank War; or, Why Working With People You Know Can Backfire...
* Finding rubber vermin on one's charting computer. Always a classic.
* Explaining to patients that it's perfectly normal for their nurse to get prank calls from EC Care Management on the SpectraLink. "I'm reviewing a case you worked on... do you happen to know why exactly the MD ordered a Foley for this patient Mr. P. Freely?"
* Getting one's shirt-tail yanked out while working with hall patients. The nurse who did it ran down the hall yelling "Dweeb!", while the patient (a little old lady with abdominal pain) cracked up laughing.
* Invited to the Care Management office to "hang out with your old school peeps." Instructor had brought in a box of Peeps candies.
* Hiding a stuffed monkey in a fake tree outside the charge nurse office. Charge nurse looked through the window, saw the monkey and cracked up.
* Finding a "Go Buckeyes" sticker on my U of M Alumni coffee mug. Got the perp back by hiding a musical button programmed with "The Victors" under one of his patient charts.
Surely mine isn't the only unit with this kind of tradition. Go ahead and write 'em in!
Specializes in Med/surg, ER/ED,rehab ,nursing home.
While working in the ER one of our nurses fixed up a dummy on a stretcher and proceded to call a code. We had a nurse tech who was going to RN school, jump up in the middle of the stretcher and started doing CPR. It took nearly a minute before the adrenalin slowed enough for her to realize the "patient" wasn't real. She got a good laugh out of it, and a good report on her CPR skills. A reward for her good job was that she got to take the "patient" home as a gift for passing her classes. This was a soft sculpt figure that was life size, and had a nice wig and clothes. One of our nurses had a real talent for making them, and making them look so human.
I don't know about your facilities, but as much fun as this sounds like, my management would have a cow, little kittens, and/or a $%#&-fit if we indulged in any of these things. If anything like this was witnessed by management and patient and/or family was involved even as a witness to this, the staff involved would be lucky to have a job afterward. No sense of humor? You bet! We are all about professionalism now.
Glad you can have fun at work, and hope it doesn't blow up in your face someday. People just don't have the common sense and senses of humor they used to.
RN in the Beautiful, but overly politically correct PNW
Specializes in OR, public health, dialysis, geriatrics.
There is always the classic night or weekend shift page for Dr. Ben Dover--go ahead, say it out loud. Placing CPR dummies in closets, empty patient rooms, etc. KY on door handles, replacing computer mouses with rubber rodents, etc. having a sense of humor in nursing is the only reason I make it through some days. Also having a cast iron stomach...
I can't believe what I read here...... Perhaps my time was taken up with boring duties that y'all do more quickly, but it seems to me with all the complaints about insufficient staffing, there are more pertinent things for you to do than entertain each other.
LOVE this topic...I am night charge and am always looking for ideas to get my co-workers on those slow nights.
One night we had a "on call" nurse sleeping down the hall, we taped his door shut. We also try to make mysterious sounds in rooms at night, like a call light going off and not actually happening, stuff like that. It really gets some of the nurses.
I can't believe what I read here...... Perhaps my time was taken up with boring duties that y'all do more quickly, but it seems to me with all the complaints about insufficient staffing, there are more pertinent things for you to do than entertain each other.
...sometimes you need to have a sense of humor to keep from going off the deep end, especially now with insufficient staffing. On slow nights you can only do so much stocking and cleaning and charting, especially if your patients are taken care of.
One doctor I work with LOOOVESS pranks... his favorites are putting lube on telephones/doorknobs/pens/whatever. He also enjoys putting tape on the doors when people go into the backroom or bathroom or wherever so that when they try to come out they cant figure out why the door isn't opening! And of course your classic prank phone calls on co-workers. One time I couldn't find my pen anywhere, and he acted all hurt when I assumed he had taken it (I even felt a little bad for accusing him, he seemed so offended!)... of course, a little while later I found it taped up on the wall... WAY up. I had to get a step ladder to get it down.
One Halloween, my facility had a big trick-or-treating get-together for the residents, their families, and the community. My charge nurse took off her lab coat and left it at the nurses station while she did a few treatments. I took the opportunity to pick up a few dead beetles and put them in her lab coat pocket.
Later that night, she went back to the nurses station and put her lab coat on. She reached into her pockets to warm up her hands, felt the bugs, and let out the loudest scream -- in front of all of the residents, families, etc. Everyone stared.
Specializes in Cardiology, Oncology, Hospice,IV Therapy.
My favorite thing to do was to take a Baxter pump, turn it on, put it on hold, then turn the volume up as high as it would go and then place it in a closet. People used to go nuts trying to find the infusor that was beeping!
And then one time I was working with this guy that I was good friends with. He was at the nurses station one day, not a soul around. I walked past and saw the top of his underwear peaking out, so the little devil on my shoulder made me give him a huge wedgie as I walked past!!
The best prank I ever conspired to pull I can't tell because it would give me away for sure.
When I worked at a community health center, we did do a u/a once on a glass of apple cider and showed it to the straight-laced lab tech, who flipped and wanted to know where this diabetic patient with bloody urine was.
Where I am now (OB/Gyn/nursery), the residents sometimes come into the nursery on nights to see how many circs there are for the next AM. If we're not too busy, they'll ask if we can do them that evening vs. the next morning when they've been awake longer and are more tired. Anyway, this happened one night that just so happened to be April Fools Day, so the resident came in around 2030 wanting to do circs in an hour, there were 1-2 names on the circ list, so we say sure, we'll get ready. Between then and when he came back in an hour I added a bunch of fictitious names/rooms and at the end of the list wrote 'April Fools.... Resident flipped and then laughed.
Oh, and the remote control fart machine that one of our techs used on a bunch of new residents...
Perhaps my time was taken up with boring duties that y'all do more quickly, but it seems to me with all the complaints about insufficient staffing, there are more pertinent things for you to do than entertain each other.
bradleau
146 Posts
While working in the ER one of our nurses fixed up a dummy on a stretcher and proceded to call a code. We had a nurse tech who was going to RN school, jump up in the middle of the stretcher and started doing CPR. It took nearly a minute before the adrenalin slowed enough for her to realize the "patient" wasn't real. She got a good laugh out of it, and a good report on her CPR skills. A reward for her good job was that she got to take the "patient" home as a gift for passing her classes. This was a soft sculpt figure that was life size, and had a nice wig and clothes. One of our nurses had a real talent for making them, and making them look so human.