6 Halloween don’ts for nurses

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It’s that time of year again! Pumpkins and enormous bags of questionable candies are showing up on store shelves (well, okay, they’ve been there since July 5th, actually), the weather’s turning cooler and you’ve gotten your first invitation to a Halloween party!

Don’t make Halloween into Hallo-what? Avoid these common All Hallows’ Eve mistakes some nurses make:

1. No Sexy Nurse costumes. It’s about time that tradition died anyhow—no nurse anywhere has ever worn a miniskirt. Instead of sexy, go for scary: Work three 12-hour shifts in a row, then go straight to your Halloween party.

2. Please, please, please—do not wear, or allow anyone around you to wear, a costume name tag that says “Dr. Feelgood.” That particular name tag has been associated with terminal cases of eye rolling and quiet gagging.

3. If you have to go out wearing a work-related costume, go as a corpse. Body bags are cheap, warm, not too revealing and you don’t have to move much. Nobody will notice or care if you take a nap in the middle of the festivities.

4. Do not steal equipment or supplies from work as party gear. Nobody wants to do shots from an enema bag, no matter how hilarious it might seem at the time.

5. Jell-O eyeballs are out of fashion. So are jiggly gelatin brains. Make a couple of nice gelatin kidneys or a spleen instead. Sure, they’re not the most recognizable organs, but they’re certainly the easiest to make realistic (beet juice and ketchup).

6. And finally, no matter how committed you are to the idea of improving public health, do not hand out apples, toothbrushes or coupons for wheatgrass smoothies instead of candy to trick-or-treaters. If you do, you’ll find yourself committed to removing toilet paper and shoe polish from all of your belongings.