diary of a doll

Since I've been looking back at my nursing education, I have been reminded of some of my not so fine moments over the years, and thought why not share my embarrassing stories with you!

I had to cut the list short, as there have been many...but heres a few that stand out

1. This first one that has happened on numerous occasions. There have been (far too) many times that I've attempted to take a blood pressure on a patient only I accidentally put the cuff on inside-out so that as it's blowing up you can hear the velcro coming apart and then it embarrassingly just pops right off their arm. The patients always look up confused, which is when I say... 'oh, weird...that's never happened... must be a machine malfunction'. Then turn the cuff right way around and do it again.

2. Having a patient with dementia call a coworker in close and say in a terrified quite whisper 'There's something behind you". Only to have the coworker then turn around, slightly worried, and see that the only thing behind her was me, standing there smiling obliviously.

Patients with dementia are always interesting...another asked me if my mother was an alcoholic whore.

3. Working in the emergency room and walking straight through the closed curtains to see what was going on in the trauma room, and just as I do suddenly have a bunch of people all yell "X-RAY" at me. I naturally assumed that they were asking if I was the x-ray technician and so my obvious response was "No, I'm an ESN (student)" but what they were actually doing was warning me that they were taking an XRAY and I was stupidly standing there being exposed. Opps.

4. Doing a neurovital check on a patient, including checking there pupils for reactivity and reporting my findings to the nurse:

Me: "I tried several times, but I found the patients right pupil had no reaction to light...?"
Nurse: Well thats good.
Me: Why would that be good?
Nurse: Because it's a glass eye.