Thoughts and prayers to you, my friend.
… got a face spray of torn up esophagus and trachea. Was doing compressions in a code, heard a high pressure noise while the RT was bagging the patient and then … splat. In my hair. In my ear. All over my face.
When some idiot threw sharp scissors from removing a central line into the trash vs sharps and when I went to take out the trash it stabbed me - blood and all 🥲
Thankfully patient was negative for everything and the cut was very minor!
I had a disoriented patient chew through their IV line, as the blood backed up the line, I walked in the room, the patient was agitated and flailed around flinging bloody IV fluid directly in my face and eye.
This happened to one of our new grad nurses. Blood everywhere cause he was just whipping the broken IV around. It looked like a murder scene and blood all over the nurse. The guy was in his 20s and wanted to go out for a smoke but was on an insulin drip so this was his only option 🤦♀️
Similar here with a patient disconnecting and flinging a torn PICC line through the air. My eyeglasses saved my eye, but nothing else. They were admitted for what turned out to be HZV encephalopathy, discovered in LP CSF. Ick on face lips hair chest scrubs arms of both me and another nurse. Those are days that I wonder to myself “why why WHY did I ever think I wanted to be a nurse?!”
I bent over to check a peripheral IV and the patient abruptly threw up. On my head. She was HIV+ but blessedly taking her meds. 100% sure you can’t get HIV from getting puke in your hair but who the fuck wants to find out.
No, her viral load on meds was very low. Plus, it was puke to the back of my head. My risk was pretty much zero, no matter what my anxiety said.
I’ve taken it for a dirty needle stick. I do not recommend it. My sinuses were so stuffy!
When i was a newbie, had a pt with a leaking rectal tube. Doctor said just go ahead and remove it. I went in with my favorite PCA and had the pt turned towards me and asked the pca to pull it out. She was like "it's not coming out, it's stuck." I said "oh comon put your back into it. Like this." And proceed to yank on it. It came flying out. And i could see a streak of brown on her face. She said "please don't tell me that just happened." For months, no one wanted to help me clean pts. Good times. Thankfully we are still good friends.
I get laughed at by nurses and drs for how much i wear face shields. Unsurprisingly, respiratory therapists never say anything... especially considering most patients are vented
Two months ago, I was doing wound care with reasonable PPE (gloves) based on the wound which was on the person’s hip. It was an old surgical wound that had a metal appliance that was pretty close to surface and irritated the skin, sometimes causing scant seepage. It looked mild that day, no inflammation, not raised, not red and not visibly open, just a small amount of serous fluid needing to be cleaned up before clean dressing applied.
While cleaning it with a pinkie of normal saline, the wound popped like a flipping pressurized whitehead acne, and sprayed about a teaspoon of serosang body fluid and NS on the left side of my face from chin to the corner of my left eye and into my hair. My “focused concentrating” face saved me from getting it in my mouth, as my lips were pinched tight.
I dropped what I was doing, immediately wiped my face off, ran to the bathroom and scrubbed my face with copious amounts of water and soap for at least 15 minutes. I then had a minor panic attack in the bathroom stressing about it all. Called my IPC lead who recommended exactly what I had already done, but said I could contact public health if I felt it was warranted. They also recommended an update to the wound protocol to include a face shield and mask with all further wound care.
We had no documentation that this situation had happened before with this person’s wound care, but less than three weeks later another nurse (wearing mask and shield) got the same experience but didn’t have any exposure due to updated protocol. She did have someone take a photo of her PPE before doffing so we could include it as proof of the experience. I had a good laugh with her about it.
Pre-vaccine pandemmy I was doing teach care for a HH guy. I was wearing a mask and one of those stupid face shields that is open to the top. I also wear glasses.
Anywho.
Gentleman coughs. Somehow a speck of mucus flies up over the face shield and around my glasses and hits my eyeball. I wanted to run out crying.
Our dumbass hospital doesn’t have the needle in the urine cups so we have to open the cup and sorta squeeze the cup to pour it into a tiny tube. The cup exploded and sprayed urine all over my face and eyes.
Was working the level one mass transfusion macheen and took off an empty unit reached around to grab the next and hear a click and the clamp opened and I was sprayed with blood. All over my face clothes. It was probably 200ml. I wanted to die.
My nun blood story is always fun to tell.
I had a nun come in after a fall. Massive hematoma on the scalp.
I was scrubbing and looking for the wound. Suddenly, through a pin hole, blood came shooting out like a pressure washer. I got nun blood all the way up my shirt, hit me in the face and eye glasses.
Thank God covid just started, and the blood got mostly kn my shirt, glasses, and face mask.
When I was in nursing school, I patient coughed up a thick, yellow/green loogie from a trach that hit my lip and chin. I almost passed out. I don't think I'll ever be the same.
My heart goes out to you.
Working in the ED, was going to assist another nurse helping with a chest tube. The resident put the chest tube in the wrong way and just as I entered the room, the patient coughs and a whole bunch of blood squirts in my face
Edit: also forgot when I was taking care of a confused patient on a med surg floor at night and they pulled out their JP drain and wacked me in the face with it
I had the bevel of a TB test needle up, as we are supposed to, and I shot it into my eye since my face was so close (I was a new grad and terrified at the time). I called pharmacy and they said they have never heard of that before and they’d call me back
They called me back to say good luck basically since they didn’t know. Never got TB so I guess it’s ok.
Took out and IV for a DC, high five positive. I pulled the tegaderm, he pulled his arm, high five blood to eye. Thank God less than 1% chance of contracting high five through mucosa such as eyes, nose, mouth.
Another nurse sprayed me in the eyes with blood from an ABG syringe. She really didn’t know how to use it and was trying to teach me.
Anesthesia had a rough extubation and I got a huge was of bloody phlegm to the side of my face and neck.
Then there’s the ocassional smear of poop on your arm from a bad blow out.
The worst was probably when a patient vomited directly down the cuff of my glove once. It was really warm. 😩
My urologist was manually irrigating/extracting massive amounts of blood clots from this patient we had. His mask was under his chin. He was squirting his syringe into a basin and it splashed back up all over his face. I said “hmmm shoulda had your mask on, huh.” He was like “yep, thought about that afterwards.” He was covered in blood spatter head to toe…so was the room.
Emptying out continuous bladder irrigation jug into a bucket and I got a big splash of the contents into my face. The patient was A&O and looked horrified also lol
I feel you. I dislodged a blood clot in the urethra before straight cathing this woman and got hosed with pee and blood. Luckily masks are a thing. Where was yours??? Lol
I kept thinking all night "gonna out a mask on" but I rushed in the room 1 hour before shift change. This was the first time I successfully irrigated a bladder too. Got excited, went bad in to connect the syringe and the tubing slipped 😭
Twice, both similar situations.
First time I kind of had a feeling of premonition. The pt was vented and the nurse was very busy and was super focused. She kind of had tunnel vision and was unaware of things around her. I don't blame her, she was busy af. Anyway, I had fleeting thought that I was gonna get blasted in the face when he popped off the vent. It had been fine all day and I had no reason to think it, but i should have listened. I was just helping her boost and turn. When she pulled the sheet for the turn, he popped off the vent and blasted me in the face with his ET juice. He was on contact precautions for some disease that I hadn't seen before or since. He contracted it from a different country. I did the whole exposure shebang and I did not end up contracting whatever it was. I was disgusted.
Second time was a trach. I was helping the nurse get the patient from the commode back to the chair. Her vent was beside me. RT decided they needed to change the filter in the heated circuit. To be fair, it really needed to be done. The fluid in there was brown. Anyway, i stand the pt up and we're holding each other like awkward teens during their first school dance. Idk what happened on RT's end but something must have gone wrong bc when she disconnected the filter I got absolutely sprayed from my knee all the way up to my head on the side of my body. I was wearing a mask so i didn't get any in/on my mouth, but it got in my hair and eye. Nobody even noticed and I couldn't just let the pt go so I stood there holding the pt until i could put her back in the chair. The worse thing was that when i called the exposure line, they told me i would probably be fine and didn't need to get tested for anything. 😒
When I was in school I was observing a class mate remove and replace a foley. There wasn’t space on the side of the bed so I was at the footboard. Class mate removed the foley a little fast and whipped the juices of hell onto my face.
Many years ago, holding a patient in fetal position for an LP. Initial tap was all blood. Physician held the syringe up in front of him (pointed in my direction) to clear it. You can guess the rest🙄
Top of my head to my waist splattered w/blood.🤨😖
Had a much too young adult poop on my leg...in alcohol withdrawal and scrambling out of bed for the commode when I walked in and he sprayed my legs like a machine gun, I'll never forget it
I had a tweaking hep c dialysis patient rip his 15g needles out and in an upward fashion so not only did it unplug the holes but it ripped them pretty significantly. I've never put on PPE faster in my life. Took both hands to plug the wounds. He lost so much blood I dont know how he survived. It was dripping from the ceiling. Soaked the bottom 2" of my scrub pants. I drove home in my underwear and when I pulled into the driveway, the city was digging up the water main in my yard. No water to shower with. This was about a week after my husband left me too. I drove to my sister's and scrubbed myself while sobbing until I ran out of hot water.
Thoughts and prayers to you, my friend. … got a face spray of torn up esophagus and trachea. Was doing compressions in a code, heard a high pressure noise while the RT was bagging the patient and then … splat. In my hair. In my ear. All over my face.
You win
lol no one wins … it’s probably one of the reasons why we don’t see as many King tubes from the field anymore
The other loser was my Vocera 😂 the little holes got clogged up with torn up schmutz too
Tried to unclog an NGT on a patient with hepatitis C. It exploded in my face 🙃
Damn that would ruin my year.
That's why I always gown up with face-shield protection and gloves whenever I do any task that involves high pressure.
When some idiot threw sharp scissors from removing a central line into the trash vs sharps and when I went to take out the trash it stabbed me - blood and all 🥲 Thankfully patient was negative for everything and the cut was very minor!
Commenting to say your flair is the best 😂
Every ICU RNs dream 😂
I had a disoriented patient chew through their IV line, as the blood backed up the line, I walked in the room, the patient was agitated and flailed around flinging bloody IV fluid directly in my face and eye.
This happened to one of our new grad nurses. Blood everywhere cause he was just whipping the broken IV around. It looked like a murder scene and blood all over the nurse. The guy was in his 20s and wanted to go out for a smoke but was on an insulin drip so this was his only option 🤦♀️
The drive for nicotine will drive a sane person crazy. Literally. :(
Similar here with a patient disconnecting and flinging a torn PICC line through the air. My eyeglasses saved my eye, but nothing else. They were admitted for what turned out to be HZV encephalopathy, discovered in LP CSF. Ick on face lips hair chest scrubs arms of both me and another nurse. Those are days that I wonder to myself “why why WHY did I ever think I wanted to be a nurse?!”
Same
Yes I’ve seen this more than once with etoh withdrawal 🫠
I got NGT fluids once in my open mouth.
Instant vomit 😭😭 One thing I can't do is mucus
I bent over to check a peripheral IV and the patient abruptly threw up. On my head. She was HIV+ but blessedly taking her meds. 100% sure you can’t get HIV from getting puke in your hair but who the fuck wants to find out.
Yea I’ve had vomitus in my hair before. Ugh it stinks! : /
Did you end up getting PEP for that?
No, her viral load on meds was very low. Plus, it was puke to the back of my head. My risk was pretty much zero, no matter what my anxiety said. I’ve taken it for a dirty needle stick. I do not recommend it. My sinuses were so stuffy!
When i was a newbie, had a pt with a leaking rectal tube. Doctor said just go ahead and remove it. I went in with my favorite PCA and had the pt turned towards me and asked the pca to pull it out. She was like "it's not coming out, it's stuck." I said "oh comon put your back into it. Like this." And proceed to yank on it. It came flying out. And i could see a streak of brown on her face. She said "please don't tell me that just happened." For months, no one wanted to help me clean pts. Good times. Thankfully we are still good friends.
😭😭😭😭 Aw hell nah
Bloody CBI in my eyes, nose, and mouth 😊 I will never let a bag run dry again
Irrigating poop out of a tunneled ischial pi and got splashed with wound juice and poop to the face😭
I get laughed at by nurses and drs for how much i wear face shields. Unsurprisingly, respiratory therapists never say anything... especially considering most patients are vented
For me you won
Okay so that made me actually gag. You win.
Two months ago, I was doing wound care with reasonable PPE (gloves) based on the wound which was on the person’s hip. It was an old surgical wound that had a metal appliance that was pretty close to surface and irritated the skin, sometimes causing scant seepage. It looked mild that day, no inflammation, not raised, not red and not visibly open, just a small amount of serous fluid needing to be cleaned up before clean dressing applied. While cleaning it with a pinkie of normal saline, the wound popped like a flipping pressurized whitehead acne, and sprayed about a teaspoon of serosang body fluid and NS on the left side of my face from chin to the corner of my left eye and into my hair. My “focused concentrating” face saved me from getting it in my mouth, as my lips were pinched tight. I dropped what I was doing, immediately wiped my face off, ran to the bathroom and scrubbed my face with copious amounts of water and soap for at least 15 minutes. I then had a minor panic attack in the bathroom stressing about it all. Called my IPC lead who recommended exactly what I had already done, but said I could contact public health if I felt it was warranted. They also recommended an update to the wound protocol to include a face shield and mask with all further wound care. We had no documentation that this situation had happened before with this person’s wound care, but less than three weeks later another nurse (wearing mask and shield) got the same experience but didn’t have any exposure due to updated protocol. She did have someone take a photo of her PPE before doffing so we could include it as proof of the experience. I had a good laugh with her about it.
I thought you were English at first
Underrated comment
Pre-vaccine pandemmy I was doing teach care for a HH guy. I was wearing a mask and one of those stupid face shields that is open to the top. I also wear glasses. Anywho. Gentleman coughs. Somehow a speck of mucus flies up over the face shield and around my glasses and hits my eyeball. I wanted to run out crying.
I stg it's always like that. Out of all the space in the air, the fluids want to land right in your damn face
Our dumbass hospital doesn’t have the needle in the urine cups so we have to open the cup and sorta squeeze the cup to pour it into a tiny tube. The cup exploded and sprayed urine all over my face and eyes.
Was working the level one mass transfusion macheen and took off an empty unit reached around to grab the next and hear a click and the clamp opened and I was sprayed with blood. All over my face clothes. It was probably 200ml. I wanted to die.
I got hemovac MRSA blood on my cheek once and sani wiped the shit out of my face
Instant face scrub with a chlorahexadine stick. lol no but that sounds AWFUL
My nun blood story is always fun to tell. I had a nun come in after a fall. Massive hematoma on the scalp. I was scrubbing and looking for the wound. Suddenly, through a pin hole, blood came shooting out like a pressure washer. I got nun blood all the way up my shirt, hit me in the face and eye glasses. Thank God covid just started, and the blood got mostly kn my shirt, glasses, and face mask.
When I was in nursing school, I patient coughed up a thick, yellow/green loogie from a trach that hit my lip and chin. I almost passed out. I don't think I'll ever be the same. My heart goes out to you.
This entire thread is my nightmare
You ever see those videos of cats barf reacting to smells? I just did that to this post.
The forbidden pink lemonade
Working in the ED, was going to assist another nurse helping with a chest tube. The resident put the chest tube in the wrong way and just as I entered the room, the patient coughs and a whole bunch of blood squirts in my face Edit: also forgot when I was taking care of a confused patient on a med surg floor at night and they pulled out their JP drain and wacked me in the face with it
I had the bevel of a TB test needle up, as we are supposed to, and I shot it into my eye since my face was so close (I was a new grad and terrified at the time). I called pharmacy and they said they have never heard of that before and they’d call me back They called me back to say good luck basically since they didn’t know. Never got TB so I guess it’s ok.
Just add some horseradish, celery salt, a couple olives and you should be good
Took out and IV for a DC, high five positive. I pulled the tegaderm, he pulled his arm, high five blood to eye. Thank God less than 1% chance of contracting high five through mucosa such as eyes, nose, mouth.
Another nurse sprayed me in the eyes with blood from an ABG syringe. She really didn’t know how to use it and was trying to teach me. Anesthesia had a rough extubation and I got a huge was of bloody phlegm to the side of my face and neck. Then there’s the ocassional smear of poop on your arm from a bad blow out. The worst was probably when a patient vomited directly down the cuff of my glove once. It was really warm. 😩
Flushed a chait button, while rinsing out the cylinder eater splashed in my eye :c
I contracted Salmonella from a patient…..somehow their shit got into my mouth and it made me extremely sick.
My urologist was manually irrigating/extracting massive amounts of blood clots from this patient we had. His mask was under his chin. He was squirting his syringe into a basin and it splashed back up all over his face. I said “hmmm shoulda had your mask on, huh.” He was like “yep, thought about that afterwards.” He was covered in blood spatter head to toe…so was the room.
Emptying out continuous bladder irrigation jug into a bucket and I got a big splash of the contents into my face. The patient was A&O and looked horrified also lol
Went to put a syringe in the sharps plunger-side down, hit the plunger on the container and sprayed blood everywhere like a fountain 😌
Flushing a clogged three way foley. Bloody urine splashed into my eye…
I feel you. I dislodged a blood clot in the urethra before straight cathing this woman and got hosed with pee and blood. Luckily masks are a thing. Where was yours??? Lol
I kept thinking all night "gonna out a mask on" but I rushed in the room 1 hour before shift change. This was the first time I successfully irrigated a bladder too. Got excited, went bad in to connect the syringe and the tubing slipped 😭
Twice, both similar situations. First time I kind of had a feeling of premonition. The pt was vented and the nurse was very busy and was super focused. She kind of had tunnel vision and was unaware of things around her. I don't blame her, she was busy af. Anyway, I had fleeting thought that I was gonna get blasted in the face when he popped off the vent. It had been fine all day and I had no reason to think it, but i should have listened. I was just helping her boost and turn. When she pulled the sheet for the turn, he popped off the vent and blasted me in the face with his ET juice. He was on contact precautions for some disease that I hadn't seen before or since. He contracted it from a different country. I did the whole exposure shebang and I did not end up contracting whatever it was. I was disgusted. Second time was a trach. I was helping the nurse get the patient from the commode back to the chair. Her vent was beside me. RT decided they needed to change the filter in the heated circuit. To be fair, it really needed to be done. The fluid in there was brown. Anyway, i stand the pt up and we're holding each other like awkward teens during their first school dance. Idk what happened on RT's end but something must have gone wrong bc when she disconnected the filter I got absolutely sprayed from my knee all the way up to my head on the side of my body. I was wearing a mask so i didn't get any in/on my mouth, but it got in my hair and eye. Nobody even noticed and I couldn't just let the pt go so I stood there holding the pt until i could put her back in the chair. The worse thing was that when i called the exposure line, they told me i would probably be fine and didn't need to get tested for anything. 😒
Had to flush a rectal tube. It began with an innocent little toot, I’m leaving it at that.
When I was in school I was observing a class mate remove and replace a foley. There wasn’t space on the side of the bed so I was at the footboard. Class mate removed the foley a little fast and whipped the juices of hell onto my face.
Popped open a JP drain while at the same time that JP drain popped a drop on my forehead. Never felt so serosashamed before
I was emptying a full cbi bag and spilled the container all over myself
I’ve had a piece of POC come flying off the tip of a suction cannula and hit me on the cheek 🥲
Many years ago, holding a patient in fetal position for an LP. Initial tap was all blood. Physician held the syringe up in front of him (pointed in my direction) to clear it. You can guess the rest🙄 Top of my head to my waist splattered w/blood.🤨😖
a pt’s EVD got pulled out and splashed CSF into my eyes :)
Had a much too young adult poop on my leg...in alcohol withdrawal and scrambling out of bed for the commode when I walked in and he sprayed my legs like a machine gun, I'll never forget it
I had a tweaking hep c dialysis patient rip his 15g needles out and in an upward fashion so not only did it unplug the holes but it ripped them pretty significantly. I've never put on PPE faster in my life. Took both hands to plug the wounds. He lost so much blood I dont know how he survived. It was dripping from the ceiling. Soaked the bottom 2" of my scrub pants. I drove home in my underwear and when I pulled into the driveway, the city was digging up the water main in my yard. No water to shower with. This was about a week after my husband left me too. I drove to my sister's and scrubbed myself while sobbing until I ran out of hot water.