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There’s a lot of talk about how nursing is hard on your body. It’s true: Nursing can be very hard on your back (especially), your hips (secondarily), your arms (oh Lord, let’s not even talk about it) and even your neck. Feet are an entirely different subject, and one that deserves its own book. I’m not going to bore you with statistics about how lift teams can make all the difference in keeping nurses healthy, or how nice it is to have a Hoyer on every floor—oh no. I’m here to tell you stories, my Chickadees, of the most amazingly random things I’ve ever seen anybody, including myself, do.
1. I won’t even mention the time I walked into a room that had fresh (and very slippery) stripper on the floor, and how I skated on one foot and, with arms flailing, right into the lap of my patient. Nice way to put down warning cones there, floor guys.
2. One of my coworkers once broke two toes by dropping an IV pump on her foot. This doesn’t sound so crazy until you learn that the IV tubing was still in the pump and the pump was still in use on a patient. At least the pump was cushioned enough by her feet that none of the alarms went off.
3. Another person I know (cough, cough) had several chunks of ponytail pulled out when she walked into the MRI room, having removed all metallic articles from her person except for the barrette holding back her ponytail. There’s a reason I rock a pixie cut now: Barrettes can lift and rotate in a truly astounding manner.
4. Another coworker dropped her beeper into the toilet by mistake, flushed without realizing it, then sprained her ankle trying to get out of the bathroom as the toilet overflowed. It was a long time before we let her forget that.
5. Once, a brand-new nurse I worked with had, for some reason, taken the top and foil cover off of a bottle of tube feeding…and then dropped the bottle. It was like something out of a horror movie, seeing the ProCal fountain up out of the bottle and cascade over her. We had to find a pair of shoes for her in the lost-and-found after she changed from the skin out. It wasn’t an injury, except maybe to her dignity.
6. There was the time that another nurse and I were hauling a patient back from testing on a stretcher. We lost the stretcher at the top of a very long, very gently sloping ramp with a 90-degree turn at the end, and had to chase it frantically in order to catch it before it, and the patient, hit the wall. Again, no harm done to anything but our pride (the patient was sedated).
7. Less amusingly, back in the olden days when we still had chart racks, a friend of mine had a chart rack fall over on her. She, thank Heaven, was unharmed—but the resident who flew to her side and dug her out from under the charts was Our Hero for several days thereafter.
8. In the Unfortunate Accidents to Clothing department, how about these?
> A nurse of my acquaintance once got her scrub pants caught in a continuous-passive-motion machine she was storing away in a utility room. The pants tore, spectacularly and irreparably, when she tried to walk away.
> Or the nurse who discovered that Domeboro solution will indeed bleach clothing if you leave it on too long.
> Or the nurse who discovered (again, cough, cough) exactly why more experienced nurses never stand at the foot of the bed of a patient with a fresh tracheotomy.
9. None of these nurse-accidents match what happened to a doctor friend of mine, now a seasoned and well-respected surgeon, back when I was a new nurse and he was a fresh-faced resident:
A patient coded. He, being the tallest guy in the room and thus having the best reach, started compressions on that patient. He had underslept that morning and so perhaps didn’t tie the drawstrings of his scrubs tightly enough—his pants came down about 30 seconds into his compressions.
And, of course, you can’t stop doing compressions to yank up your pants, even if you are wearing Batman boxer shorts.
The patient lived. The doctor almost didn’t. Be careful out there, people!
For more Wellness Tips pick up the latest issue of Scrubs magazine, available at a retail store near you!
I always worked nights and there was one nurse that was always falling alseep on the job well she fell out of the chair as I held back the laughter I realized she was hurt, hurt on the job hmmm wondered how she ever got workmans’s comp for that one!
I think (maybe), I would like to know why experienced nurses do not stand at the foot of the bed of a patient with a fresh tracheotomy.
I was working in the ICU of a local hospital as a CNA while in nursing school. I stood at the end of the bed while the MD was performing the tracheotomy…I had blood spatter from neck to waist! When that first breath in and out happen through that hole, WATCH OUT!!!
Do you have any idea how far and forceful bloody sputum can fly?
There is alot of extra fluid, and secretions, in a fresh trach. and one cough you will be slimed!
Someone accidentally bumped their head on the glass door of the supply pyxis when it opened and was out for 2 months with a concussion!
to shirley bosse: INCOMMING!!!!
This isn’t so much an injury to my person as to my pride; but as a brand new grad some 26 years ago, I was going around emptying Foley bags at end of shift. For reasons still unknown, I managed to dump one litre of multi-patient urine down my ankle and into my shoe. I will never forget it… (shiver)
Wonderful feeling eh? When I was in high school I used to volunteer at a local hospital. One day I was feeding an elderly gentleman some apple juice when he suddenly peed on my foot. wouldn’t do much to me now…but I was around 15 at the time and died a million plus one teenaged deaths. To this day I cannot drink apple juice.
Once as a new nurse I was waiting for some urgent news in my personal life so I wanted to keep my cell phone in my pocket. But I was wearing one of those useless scrub tops with only one breast pocket, no lower ones, so my cell phone was in that pocket. . .In short, I was about to empty a bedpan I had set down after cleaning the patient and my cell phone spilled into the full bedpan… yep- it was full of #1′s AND a #2. . . not proud of that one!
While doing travel nursing I always worked 6 12hr night shifts in a row…night 6 was always an adventure in ridonk. One night 6 I unthinkingly injected 60cc air into a HUGE vial of Mucomyst…before reading “Do not insert air, open vial HERE”.
Shower of Mucomyst over my face, hair, scrubs…even after getting new scrubs from the house sup I could be smelled down the hall.
My first day of clinicals, in my crisp, very clean new white uniform, I stepped back in a resident’s room and rubbed up against the bedside commode. I got poop on the back of my pants leg and didn’t know until my instructor pointed it out. It was a running joke all throughout nursing school.
Nothing like taking off a colostomy appliance to change it and have poop explode all over you and then run all the way down to the patient’s feet!
RN
Registered Nurse
that happened to me whe I was told to put in a rectal tube after someone had given the pt. and SSE and had left alot of soap behind. What a mess
One day at a hospital that I worked at, a nurse who at the time we didn’t know had a drug problem, was orientating another nurse. They had went to the basement of the hospital for something, and the nurse who was orientating the new nurse, had a grand mal seizure, right outside the morgue. That new nurse was utterly traumatized..but he survived.
did you really just say ‘orientating’ ?
In the days of white uniforms, I once reached above a patient’s flowers to get the vital signs clip board off the wall only to discover that there were Lillies hidden in the flowers. I had to wear a johnny shirt the rest of the day to cover the 4″ diameter bright yellow pollen smudge on my right boob. Then there was the nurse who struggled to open an NG cannister (pressurized of course) only to have it do so with explosive decompression. She was covered in bile. Happily we both survived.
One night in NICU, a baby boy peed a large amt of urine directly into my eye. The infant’s mother had a drug-using past, so I was whisked off to the ER where they flushed out my eye with 2 large IV bags of NS. The baby & I both had to be stuck & blood drawn to rule out blood-borne diseases.
One of the Dr’s on call fell out of a tree about an hour after delivering a baby. (never mind what he was doing in a tree) Did he have a radio-ulnar or tib-fib fracture? Or a spinal cord injury? Oh no, he ended up with an open pelvic fracture that required blood transfusions & transfer to a tertiary care hospital almost 200 miles away…….
About 35 years ago, during morning port, a lab tech came to the report room to report that Mt. X had gotten out of bed and was trying to get to the chair. He had a chest tube in, and the drainage apparatus was taped to the floor. Me, being the youngest, sprinted out of the report room, down the hall, and reached the patient just in time to catch him and we both fell, with me underneath. Right after we landed on the floor, everyone else arrived at the door, and one by one, they started to laugh. This was in the day of wearing uniform dresses, slips and pantyhose, and I happened to have on purple polkadot underwear which was clearly in view- because as I fell, my uniform developed a mind of it’s own and bunched up around my waist!!!!
The patient was fine, the chest tube remained in place, and I was blushing in embarassment for about 5 days everytime someone brought up the flying nurse!!!!!
As a nursing student, I was emptying a bedside commode. The patient was upset about something and threw her blanket on the floor just as I walking by. My foot got tangled in it and as I was falling, I got soaked in urine from my face down to my toes. Ran to the staff bathroom and practically showered in Purell. When I came home I stayed in the shower and scrubbed myself till I was all pruney.
When I was a nursing student I took a job during the summer out of state and lived with the director of nursing. She told about an MD who came in for a middle of the night code in the ER. The patient was not responding to compressions so his next step was to defibrilate. He called for everyone to “clear”. What he didn’t realize in his half asleep state, was that when he ran up to the patient’s side he positioned himself with the patient’s hand between his legs. They cleared, shocked and the team had to finish the code without him!
While I was backing a patient through her doorway in a wheelchair, I rolled over my baby toe with the rear anti tippers. I ended up having to go to the er with a broken toe. That patient still cracks a joke everytime she sees me.
The Nursing home a patient came from neglected to tell us he was violent.The security guard backed out of the way just in time for me to get my hand twisted and kicked in both knees.This happened in 2008.I had my right knee replaced in 10/09 and am recovering from my left knee replacement on 7/11/11.The hospital tried to fire me after this,but I resigned instead.It isn’t funny,and it is true.Please be careful out there.
RN
Registered Nurse
They tried to fire YOU for getting injured? I should have been a lawyer…
LPN
Licensed Practical Nurse
One of the nurses I was orienting to the floor went with me into the isolation room, with a trach patient with respiratory MRSA. I told her to wear a cap, along with the gown, face mask and gloves, but she didn’t think she’d need one. About half way to the bed, the patient hawked a big green sputum and it landed in this nurses hair. She’s freaking out and I’m spraying her hair with virex. She should have taken notice of the green splotches on the wall next to the door. She didn’t last long as a nurse there. I always hoped it wasn’t my help showing her around that did it. Most people can’t stand sputum or mucous. I took care of this patient for over 6 months before she expired. I can handle any body fluid mess.
I have been an LPN for 3 years. When there is an emergency situation, as all nurses know you just jump up & take action! I have not been hurt on the job but…..this past summer while playing with my kids at the park, I fell and broke my ankle. I laid there on the ground for over 20 minutes like nothing was wrong! Finally my daughter said dont you think we should call dad & get you some help? Thats the 1st time I understood what I had heard other nurses saying……you are always taking care of other people and their families, you tend to neglect yourself! I really just thought it was no big deal! I couldn’t even walk!!
RN
Registered Nurse
You know the nursing urban legend about the nurses trying to pull a pt up in bed and slipping on urine on the floor and slipping under the bed? It’s true. I did it, except one leg was bent under me, one under the bed and my scrubs soaked with urine from the floor. Luckily, no broken bones and no concussion, but everything else was bruised.
Also, as a nursing student I learned a very valuable lesson. If you have a war veteran, make a lot of noise as you go into the room and don’t try to quietly wake them up at the side of the bed. I’d never been in a choke hold against the wall before or since.
RN
Registered Nurse
We had a very ‘gung-ho’ resp. therapy tech-one of those guys who claimed to have ‘been there, done that’ all the way from serving in the Civil War to walking on the moon. Ya’ll know the type.
One morning, we were beginning a rather unspectacular Code when this tech, running at full speed so as not to miss anything, ran into the room and promptly SLID UNDER THE BED!
The doctor at the head of the bed who was performing the intubation stopped, looked, and with great aplomb, threw both arms straight out like an umpire and shouted ‘He’s SAFE!’.
RN
Registered Nurse
When I was very huried before their were syringe boxes in every rm I had recapped a needle and was going to the bathroom and the needle cap came off and stuck me in the butt> never told that story>
Also whe we were busy and needed a stretcher and i was working an off shift as I was cleaning the stretcher I released the side rail and knocked myself silly>
Imagine you are 8 1/2 months pregnant. At your last OB appointment the practitioner tells you the baby is feet first and if he doesn’t turn by the next visit you may be heading for a C-Section. The next day, in the med room, you are mixing a med and you drop the syringe/needle-you don’t hear it drop….then you look down….you could do your own amnio….
Pingback: Daily Snippet: July 18, 2012 « Gypsy Nurse
Pingback: Daily Snippet: July 18, 2012 | The Gypsy Nurse
As a labor and delivery RN I have had my share of injuries, but the worst was a rotator cuff tear that I didn’t notice until after helping a 350lb mom push for 3 hours and deliver her bundle of joy, I couldn’t move my right arm to chart and had to have surgery after an MRI showed the lovely tear. To add insult to injury my ortho doc was in disbelief that a nurse could do anything so physical as to cause this extent of an injury, after I retold my story he just shook his head and said he never realized how hard some nurses work. Really?