What is the scariest thing that has happened to you while working as a nurse?

[caffeineRx]

Any stories?

What is the scariest thing that you have had happen? Or perhaps the most stressful?

Maybe it wasn't stressful to you, but normally considered a very high stress situation.

Please do tell your stories. I'm curious. :paw:

[Pepper The Cat, BSN, RN]

Damn Ruby - you really need to write the book! I admire you for your bravery and your attempts to keep your pts safe.

Your last post is extremely scary.

Reminds me of a time when we had a pt on our unit that we were worried someone else might come after. Our Manager's solution was to "hit the code blue button" if something happened, because it would bring extra people fast. I never had the chance to tell her that this was the dumbest idea in the world because it would bring people running into a situation that they a) knew nothing about and b) would not be prepared for and c) would not bring Security or Police which is what we needed most!

Stupidest manager I ever worked with.

Luckily the pt was discharge without anything ever happening.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

damn ruby - you really need to write the book! i admire you for your bravery and your attempts to keep your pts safe.

your last post is extremely scary.

reminds me of a time when we had a pt on our unit that we were worried someone else might come after. our manager's solution was to "hit the code blue button" if something happened, because it would bring extra people fast. i never had the chance to tell her that this was the dumbest idea in the world because it would bring people running into a situation that they a) knew nothing about and b) would not be prepared for and c) would not bring security or police which is what we needed most!

stupidest manager i ever worked with.

luckily the pt was discharge without anything ever happening.

thanks for the kind words, but i'm really not all that brave -- i was shaking so hard i could barely navigate!

i've never understood how some people get to be managers when they have dumb ideas like that one! i'm glad your patient was discharged without incident.

my friend was nursing supervisor and was called to talk to a patient who was unhappy with his care. when he got to the patient's room, "i was looking down the barrel of the biggest gun i'd ever seen," said bo, who hadn't seen that many guns. it was only a .22 pistol.

the article in the newspaper said my friend was shot while "bravely trying to negotiate" with a patient "suffering from ptsd."

"why did you stay and try to negotiate with him?" i asked. "i would have run away as fast as i could!"

"that's what i was doing," said bo. "he shot me in the ass."

[Riseupandnurse]

This happened before I was a nurse. I was in nursing school and of course we all worked as nurse aides in the hospital on evenings. One of my classmates and I were the aides that night on our usual floor and we came around the corner to find a huge man in a hospital gown holding an oxygen tank above his head and trying to decide who to throw it at. We ducked into a restroom while security and pastoral care came running down the hall and eventually talked him back to bed. The next day he was transferred to a state mental institution, where I later read he pulled his new room-mate's testicles off and stuffed them in his mouth before killing him.

[Anisettes, BSN, RN]

One night in the dead of winter in the ED around 0400 this little middle eastern man comes running into the department screaming in unknown language and gesturing at us. We don't know what he's saying and we make out "Bebee ou, beebee ou" or something like that and we follow him out to a Yugo (seriously) with 4 wide-eye terrified little kids all under age 5 crammed into what passed for a backseat and a woman in the passenger side with a blue baby hanging legs first between her legs, the head still inside her.

We had a hell of a time getting her out of that microscopic car as her legs were all bunched up under the dashboard and there's this little body just hanging out between them. We couldn't get her on a gurney the way the baby was hanging because she was too big to lift and there were only 3 of us there so the security guy took her under the armpits and the Doc took her legs and carried her into the ED with me holding the baby's body in case it popped out suddenly.

We had L&D all down there now trying to deliver this poor baby's head which they finally do and while they're desperately trying to resusitate this newborn, lo and behold the woman delivers a second baby and then a third. And we only had the one warmer down there. It was a complete charlie foxtrot, people running into each other trying to take care of 20 different things at once, very little of which we were prepared for.

She'd had no prenatal care and had no idea she was pregnant with triplets and she didn't speak English. They did manage to resusitate the first baby, but no one knows how long she went without O2 and I never did know what eventually happened to her. The other 2 infants were fine. It wasn't scary as much as surreal, I can still see the steam rising from between her legs and that headless baby body as we carried her into the ED because it was so cold outside.

[Anisettes, BSN, RN]

where I later read he pulled his new room-mate's testicles off and stuffed them in his mouth before killing him.

Damn

[trmr]

when I was still a fairly new nurse and my fresh abdominal post op patient TOTALLY dehised as I was attempting my first NGT. Exciting yet I felt like I was going to fall straight to the floor, and my legs turned into jello!!

[sharpeimom]

i later read he pulled his new room-mate's testicles off and stuffed them in his mouth before killing him.

:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

:omy::omy::omy::omy: :chair::chair:

my husband says that after having that read aloud to him, that he won't be able to unclench his legs for at least a year...

kathy

sharpeimom:paw::paw:

[diane227, LPN, RN]

Lady tried to hit me over the head with her crutches.

Any one of the numerous shootings we had in the ED.

Some guy hitting me while we were doing a take down.

Guy threatening to shoot me, putting his hand into his jacket, left his gun in his car.

Anyone on PCP.

Needle sticks by pts with AIDS (twice).

[caliotter3]

Being stalked by someone due to the job; being physically attacked.

[el_peon]

I had just arrived for my shift in ICU, and was given the first patient. I got report from Endo, who told me "she has esophageal varicies" So, i'm thinking " and that makes her an ICU patient because.........why? Later on in the report somewhere between I&O and vital signs, she mentions that air evac has been called and they are enroute. Then tells me, that i need to get an NG down, because she's swallowed so much blood. "hold on.....what?!?" Of couse she had just come on herself, hadnt laid eyes on the patient and "was only telling me what she had been told in report".OOOOOK. So i told her to get her up to the floor asap and DO NOT try to put down an NG. Hung up on her and called the Endo Doc that did her, who laughed at the esophageal varacies story. This woman had an aneurysm that had gotten big enough to rub a hole through her esophagus and was leaking into her stomach. As she arrives to the floor, she begins to vomit a wash basin completely full of blood. We pumped so much blood into that woman, i lost count. It honestly looked like a horror movie in her room. Everything, including us was dripping. Sent her with a box of blood for the chopper trip to UK. She coded several times enroute. Never made it.

[el_peon]

In the ICU that i worked in, you could see all of the beds from the station except one. That one had a camera in it with a monitor at the desk. The assistants had been giving the little guy a bath and pushed the camera to the ceiling to preserve his privacy. They forgot to put the camera back on him when they finished. The little guy was probably in his late 70's, early 80's and had seemed mentally OK at the begining of the shift, but had evidently started to sundown. He had had a cardiac cath earlier in the day, and was going to have to be sent to another facility for intervention, as our hospital didnt do interventions at that time. SO, the sheath was left in place and the patient was on a heparin drip. I noticed that the camera wasnt on the patient, so i went in to adjust it. I found a buck naked little guy standing in the middle of a room full of blood spattered kleenex (looked like a bloody snow storm. I had no idea there were so many kleenex in 1 box), holding a little corner of a kleenex to his groin. He had gotten up and pulled his sheath. He just kept saying "i'll clean it up hunny...dont you worry" over and over and over.