42 of the Scariest Things in Nursing – Can You Relate?
It’s important to realize how the things we do every day can impact patients, not just in a good way, but if not performed correctly can negatively impact our patients.
Here are some things that nurses do every day, that are enough to scare most people to death.
1. Taking the NCLEX exam
2. Calling a code
3. Calling mean doctors, especially in the middle of the night… yikes!
4. Performing CPR
5. Performing CPR on an elderly patient that you know won’t make it but the family demanded a full code.
6. Dealing with mean, scared family members
7. Assisting with intubation
8. Inserting a foley catheter
9. Pushing narcotics
10. dealing with sudden drops in O2 sats.
11. Helping a patient with very high or very low blood sugar
12. Dealing with a patient who is in respiratory distress
13. hearing a patient scream in pain while you’re trying to help them
14. Making a medication error
15. Trying to decide when it’s time to call the physician
16. Treating decubitus ulcers
17. Monitoring a patient following surgery
18. Seeing a trauma patient for the first time with multiple severe injuries
19. Watching a patient die when there is nothing else you can do
20. Learning how to start an IV
21. Giving an injection for the first time
22. Learning that your patient has an airborne disease when you’ve already been caring for them without protection
23. Getting stuck by a needle and waiting for test results to come back
24. Watching surgery for the first time
25. Taking ACLS
26. When your patient falls during your shift
27. Dealing with anaphylactic reactions
28. Reading an EKG for the first time
29. Suctioning a tracheostomy
30. Hanging IV medications
31. Resuscitating and admitting a neonate
32. Caring for patients with opiate withdrawal
33. Watching a Doctor bore a hole in a patient’s skull for ICP catheter to monitor intracranial pressure
34. A patient in status epilepticus and being unable to stop it
35. Precipitous deliveries with no MD in the house
36. Delivering a baby because the physician couldn’t make it on time
37. The first time you deal with a GI bleed
38. Taking your first body to the morgue
39. Seeing your first stillborn
40. Seeing another nurse not washing her hands between patients
41. Assisting with a chest tube
42. The first time you perform peritoneal dialysis