As promised, here it is. Post your bonehead moments in nursing.
1. I'm a community psych nurse and I have more than once gotten to my patient's house and realized I had forgotten to bring the needle for injection. Had to drive 25 minutes back to the office and then right back to patient's house. Sorry for wasting state funds for gas and travel time guys. I'm a bonehead.
2. Could not remember "QTC" while talking to the ICU nurse taking care of my patient. Just brain farted. My mind just locked up. Stood there and said "NP discontinued the seroquel because of prolonged Q... prolonged Q... uhhhh.... abnormal ekg."
3. As a nursing student I squirted a patient in the face with saline. Duh.
4. One of our checklist assessments has a typo on it that says cynotic instead of cyanotic. I got so used to it that I thought cyanotic was the wrong spelling and cracked a joke about someone being the color cyan when I saw the correct spelling. Derpity derp.
I told a guy I was setting up an IV fluid for him and jokingly said, as I had done before with other people, its vodka, he was a recovering alcoholic...
Doctor with heavy accent is dressed in sterile garb at the bedside in ICU, hands gloved and up in the air, gown on, yelling “Pants! Pants” Everyone tries to figure out what he wants.
Finally the nurse comes up behind him, reaches around, unties the drawstring, and yanks his scrub pants down to his ankles in one motion.
I’m sorry, I don’t know what he was really saying but this is a true story as every nurse in my community will attest to.
His underwear were jockey style, blue.
Like the Chinese doctor that would say to patients, UUUUUUUUeeeeeeeeeetttt several times in a row repeatedly.
After some time I realized he was asking patients if they were eating and I would interpret.
My good friend; a nurse for several years, spiked a bag of blood through the side of the port and emptied the contents on herself, the bed and the floor. She said it looked like something criminal had happened in there and of course the clean up was a nightmare.
I will have to ponder what all I have done, it could be a long list and I need to edit.
This one is bad and I hate to admit that I did it, but this is anonymous right?
Any who, I was trying to set up a PureWick which I had no experience with. OJT of course. So, when I went back to check on it, it was not suctioning into the canister, I rearrange things, changed out canisters, move tubes from here to there, look at it, ponder on it, then I took the tube from the patient straight to the suction on the wall bypassing the collection canister. I guess I thought maybe the wall suction wasn't working or something, who knows, but in any case, I'm sure some urine went straight into the wall! OMG! Yanked that thing out of there quick and thought what the heck am I doing? I wondered if the whole wall would have to be torn out to repair or that the entire suction system in the hospital would shut down or be contaminated. I told no one and worried about it for days.
While doing a GYN case in the OR while I was a student nurse anesthetist, I was trying to give the patient a bolus of propofol in the IV, but I didn't realize the stopcock was turned the wrong way. So I pushed the plunger on the 60cc syringe as hard as I could, and it popped out of the line, spraying the surgeon's head with propofol!!! That was pretty embarrassing.
At my first ICU job, all of the patients got Metamucil down the feeding tube. It was tricky to administer -- you had to mix it with cranberry juice and then give it quickly, before it had a chance to congeal. But very few of our patients had tube-feeding induced liquid stools. In those days, we put blue food coloring in all tube feedings, so the stools would come out looking like little round, rubber bouncy balls. Our unit was 8 beds, fairly close together and surrounded by privacy curtains that ended about a foot from the floor. I'm sure you can guess where this is going.
My friend and I were cleaning up a patient, and set the used bedpan at the end of the bed, where the patient promptly (and most likely accidentally) kicked it off the bed. Those little blue turds went bouncing out of the bedpan and under the curtain, where they bounced across that patient's area, surprising a visitor whose shriek caught everyone's attention, then rolled two beds over. The worst part was going from bed to bed, looking for errant bouncing turds.
And then there was the time Dr. Worldfamousinfectiousdiseasespecialist came walking into my patient's cubicle for a consult just as I was pushing liquid Tylenol -- that obnoxious red stuff -- into a feeding tube that turned out to be clogged. I sprayed myself, the patient and Dr. Worldfamousinfectiousdiseasespecialist with bright red, sticky liquid Tylenol. The patient was pretty forgiving, his wife thought it was hysterical but Dr. W was decidedly NOT amused.
The bouncing blue turds is about the funniest thing I have ever heard! Thank you. I really am having a great laugh. A big belly laugh. It is actually therapeutic. My abs hurt! Just about literally ROFLOL.
As for Super Doc - well, he might have just been in shock. Give him some time to get used to these things. LOLOLOL
Forest2
625 Posts
Oh that is so cringe worthy.