The Funny Moments in Your Worklife
Compiled by Natalie Winters

Working as an administrative nursing supervisor in a busy inner city hospital has its moments.  Once I released a patient to the funeral home staff and as the vehicle was going up the hill leaving the morgue entrance, the nurse with me yelled.  “Oh my God!  Look at that!”  As I turned around, I saw the stretcher with the body flying back down the hill to the morgue.  I looked at her and said, “We do such a great job here that they are dying to get back in!”  We caught the stretcher, called the funeral home staff to come back and pick up the body, and died laughing for the rest of the night.  From then on, we always checked to ensure the door was locked on the funeral home’s vehicle when we released a body. After all, you never know what to expect from beyond!

Dianne S. Mahaffey, RN

An elective Caesarian section was scheduled and I was assigned to be the neonatal nurse to take care of the baby once it was safely delivered; to stabilize it and its vital signs, apply the required I.D. bracelets on the arm and leg and complete the necessary paperwork with the Apgar score, etc. etc.  I might mention here that the obstetrician was not the most popular man on staff and the scrub nurse had been recently hired.

 As the baby was lifted up for the final stage of delivery, the young scrub nurse dutifully took the forceps to clamp the umbilical cord.  Did she clamp the cord?  NO!!  She firmly placed the clamp on the obstetrican’s “pinky,” which for all the world, in size and covered with his surgical gloves, looked like the umbilical cord!  All I could see was this man, rolling his eyes to the celing, dancing up and down and shouting profanities that couldn’t be repeated.  All the young nurse could say was:  “I”m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry”.  As I settled the newborn in the Isolette, I only hoped that my chuckles were not detected. “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy!” 

Barbara Sorensen, RN

I was working night shift in a basement ward of our old hospital on a busy neurology unit. We had a patient who was quite a gentleman, ambulatory, but confused from a stroke. Making rounds that night, we found him missing from his bed. We quickly ran up and down the halls looking for him. We checked the bathrooms, the elevators, the cafeteria, everywhere we could imagine he could possibly have gone.

As we became more and more concerned and perplexed about where he could be, one of the nurses felt like she should check on the rest of the patients, while we continued our search. A few minutes later, the nurse came to find us and tell us the mystery was solved. Our gentleman patient had crawled into bed with a female patient (who was also confused) and they were both sound asleep, their arms wrapped around each other and with a peaceful smile on their faces.

Susan Prather, RN, MSN

And the winner is..
I did my best to make each oncology patient as comfortable as possible during chemotherapy treatments. One elderly gentleman arrived for a four-hour session. As soon as the medication was infusing, I reclined his chair for comfort, removed his shoes, and covered him with a blanket. When the treatment was finished, I proceeded to prepare him for discharge. I placed his right shoe on without incident, but had much difficulty replacing the left shoe. I pulled the laces apart as far as I could and twisted the shoe from side to side, to no avail. Finally, I pushed really hard, and lo and behold, the complete leg flew to the left and landed on the floor! My mouth flew open, my eyes were about to pop, and I didn’t know what to do. He was sitting there cracking up laughing like crazy. He was wearing a leg prosthesis and never bothered to tell me.

Myra Gravely-Hairston RN BSN