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Working at night at a hospital is scary, but it can also be boring on a slow night. As a nurse, you find ways to keep yourself and your colleagues entertained and awake. During October – or any month really – sometimes this entertainment comes in the form of a prank. In fact, here are five particularly fun pranks for the third shift.
The Purple Hand
When you have a patient receiving phenytoin through an IV line, the purple hand prank is perfect. The prank requires a purple examination glove blown up to resemble a hand. Use a marker or colored pencil to give the glove real-hand details. Then, attach it to the patient’s sleeve. Contact the nurse who started the IV line to ask why the patient’s hand is purple and swollen. Chances are good the nurse’s face will turn white with fear.
The Human Organ Lunch Box
If you look hard enough, there are plenty of places – such as Amazon – where you can purchase a lunch box labeled “human organs” that looks similar to a cooler carrying human organs. If you really want to prank your colleagues, get yourself one of these lunch boxes and stick it in the fridge when no one is looking. Soon enough, you will hear shrieking coming from the breakroom.
The Missing Instrument
One of the biggest fears any medical staff member has is losing an instrument during a surgery. As a nurse, you find yourself counting, counting, and recounting the instruments before and after surgery. This presents a perfect opportunity to hide one of the instruments as a prank. With the patient’s consent, this is a prank you can take far with fake X-rays showing the item still inside of the patient. Just be careful about who you pull this on, as it is terrifying to most nurses.
The Knocking Morgue Freezer Door
A pathologist always comes across as a little creepy. Spending so much time in the morgue presents the perfect opportunity to prank the nurses, however. Find a way to create a knocking noise coming from the inside of the morgue freezer doors. Then, seize an opportunity to tell the colleague(s) you are pranking not to open the door anytime they come knocking. If you have a creative knack for storytelling, you can create a story about the ghosts that you accidentally let out of the morgue freezer the one time you opened the door while they knocked.
With a little creativity and some spooky noises, the morgue is a prime location for spooky pranks. After all, what is creepier in a hospital than the morgue?
The Surgical Lube Prank
Do you remember getting a wet willy in school? Well, surgical lube offers the opportunity for a more professional type of wet willy. All you should do is find an opportunity to put a glob of surgical lube on something your colleague puts on his or her ears. Stethoscope earpieces, for example, are a great place to put a glob of the lube. Some nurses like to put the glob of lube on the phones, as well.
The appeal in the surgical lube prank is the lube is always readily available in a hospital. Furthermore, if you use water-based surgical lube, the joke is completely harmless. The sticky ear is sure to freak your colleague out, though!
When pulling pranks on colleagues, make sure you notify the head nurse to the pranking. If the prank involves a patient, getting the patient’s consent and considering the patient’s health and if he or she can handle the prank is important.
For more laughs, check out our article, “10 practical jokes for practical nurses.”
