Your most bonehead moment in nursing. Or 2. Or 3.

[FolksBtrippin]

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.

[BSN-to-MSN, ADN, BSN, RN]

Broke off the pleurx bottle, and the tip was left inside the connecting point.. hate those things ever since.

[Davey Do]

On 8/7/2019 at 5:54 AM, kbrn2002 said:

I did that not long ago with tube feeding. Spiked the bag of formula, primed the pump, took the cap off the tubing, turned it on. Only problem was I kind of forgot to actually attach it to the resident. That stuff is sticky! Housekeeping was not impressed.

Housekeeping at Wrongway would have refused to clean up the mess because they don't clean up "body fluids".

"Hey! It's a fluid that goes into the body ain't it?!"

[Davey Do]

On 8/7/2019 at 10:39 PM, Crash_Cart said:

I once thought about describing a pt's bowel movement in the progress notes as, "BM appears consistent with the chili they are serving for lunch in the cafeteria today."

Hilarious, Crash!

A few years ago, an NP questioned me on the consistency of a patient's diarrhea:

[Davey Do]

On 8/9/2019 at 10:35 PM, ThePsychWhisperer said:

- During nursing school prior to reading the chart, I told a double AKA to "hop out of bed," so I could change his linens.

Several years ago, "Capt Ron" was a patient on the men's psych unit and I believed him to be evil incarnate. I had a difficult time remaining professional with him because I really wanted to inflict the same sort of pain on him that he inflicted on others.

I felt some degree of satisfaction when a threat Cat Ron made toward me ended up getting him sent to the state facility!

Some years later, I caught word that Capt Ron was going to be admitted to geriatric psych and I dreaded doing the admission. However, Capt Ron was subdued and in a w/c, unable to ambulate, due to paralysis resulting from a s/p spinal infection.

As he sat in his w/c and I was doing the admission, I asked Capt Ron how tall he was. He looked back at the handles on the w/c and flatly said, "Right now, about four feet".

I had difficulty suppressing a laugh and Capt Ron smiled at me.

During the assessment, I noted, among other things, that Capt Ron suffered from traumatic hypospadias which he informed me had occurred from a long term urinary catheter placement as he was fighting the spinal infection.

One night, later on, while Capt Ron and I were chatting, he asked me, "Have you seen my evil twin? I heard he had been a patient her some years back". We then talked about his previous admission, the accident which cause his spinal injury, what he had been through during its treatment, and how he saw his life from a totally different perspective now.

I told Capt Ron that he embodied an extremely rare occurrence: He had a change of consciousness, an epiphany, due to a revelation resulting from him dealing with his trials and tribulations; he truly was a changed man.

It was a very touching moment, I believe, for the both of us.

[spotangel, DNP, RN, NP]

The ER was very busy with an unusual amount of pediatric patients, a few of them wailing infants. As I focused on getting a line into an old lady with spider veins, she whispered "Nurse Annie, check your scrubs". I look down to see 2 big wet patches. I had started to leak with the "let down effect" listening to all those infants crying! I felt like diary queen, smelt of milk and was mortified! Luckily I kept extra scrubs in my locker----!

[zbb13]

I removed the spike from an IV bag that was half full, while it was still hanging. I had been acting pretty cool and know it all until that point. I had an unintended shower.

I helped a postpartum patient to the toilet. I bent down to remove her old, super blood saturated pad. I’m still not certain what happened, but the pad flipped, spraying blood everywhere. I had new bloody freckles on my face, in my hair, and a little on my lips. Ugh!

Much to the relief of my patient, I came in to remove her IV heplock. I’m such a cool, competent nurse. I’m sure she was impressed. Fifteen minutes later, I walked in to deliver her last dose of IV antibiotics. Yes, IV antibiotics. I am a little forgetful sometimes. She had such a laugh. Thank goodness her physician (my cousin by some odd coincidence) said I could d/c the meds as she was sufficiently covered. Phew. The patient was very happy.

I could continue on for pages and pages, unfortunately.

[Kitiger, RN]

It was the end of a long, weary shift (I work private duty homecare, pediatrics). I noticed that my kiddo had hyperactive bowel sounds, not an unusual occurrence for him. I sat down to chart it, but this insistent niggling thought kept running through my head, "Are you sure?"

So . . . I grabbed the stethoscope and listened. Nope. He had normal bowel sounds.

. . . ? . . . . . . ? . . . ?

(I made it!)

[latebloomer74, LPN]

Locked my keys to the nurses’ office in the nurses’ office. And they didn’t have a spare. Had to have one of the nurses who went home come back in to let me in the office. ?‍♀️

[nursej22, MSN, RN]

You just reminded me of my first job as an LPN in LTC. There were a total of 4 sets of keys for the carts/med rooms. Some how I ended up with 3 of those sets and left the building with them at 11pm to enjoy some adult beverages with co-workers. I realized I had them and had to walk them in to the very straight-laced night nurse who I was sure would write me up and/or get me fired. I must have looked so scared that she took pity on me and let it go. Or maybe she couldn't detect the rum and coke on my breath. And my co-workers sat outside in their cars laughing their behinds off.