Oh yeah! Don't say the Q word or all hell will break loose.

How about....Never say how well a shift/day has been before you clock out! It will always hit the fan and yu will end up having to stay late!......Or how about going in to start an IV and looking at the patient's vein access and say anything to the effect of, "You have great veins. This won't take long." You'll miss the vein every time!

How about... bad things happens in threes. Fires, mega codes, gunshot wounds, death of a patient.

One hospital I worked at every time we ordered pizza we had a code. Needless to say we quit having pizza. The Q word for sure! Some silly person say how great the shift is going, you all of a sudden have people jumping from beds. Ya, and everything happens when the oncoming shift is in report.

From ABC news 20/20. I don't care what they say, I believe in the full moon and crazy patients!
Lots of people believe that when the moon is full, weird things happen.

Nurses told us their hospital becomes "like a zoo," and police officers told us there are "more lunatics out on the street" during a full moon.

Mitchell Lewis, an astrologer, said, "I warn everybody to be careful around the three days of the full moon."

People pay him for advice like that.

So many people believe the moon changes us, yet Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine points out that some 36 studies have been conducted on whether there's a full-moon effect. They found nothing.

"No more emergency room visits. No more babies born. No more psychiatric admissions, nothing," Shermer said.

This is embarrassing to me, because in 1984, I reported that a study of murders in Dade County found that more murders were committed during full moons than at any other time.

"Researchers went back, re-analyzed the data, and discovered that there's nothing unusual going on. It's pure chance," Shermer said.

Why do so many of us think weird stuff happens when the moon is full? Because our memory is faulty. We look for patterns, and if we find one, it stays in our brain.

Shermer explained it this way: "We don't remember the unusual things that happen on all the other times, because we're not looking for them. These things go on all the time. And there's no full moon. … We remember the hits, we forget the misses."

dawn: that is a good one. I have seen that happen more than once and still have not learned.

"Never mention the name of a difficult patient that has been discharged. For example, you look at your co-worker and say "Gee, I wonder how Mrs. B is doing since she went home last week." Next thing you know the ER is calling with an admission, guess who.... Mrs. B just got readmitted and you're finding out up close and personal how she has been doing."

Having been a nurse for 20 some years I have seen the effects of the full moon and it seems to start happening about 3 days before. Dementia patients and those with psychiatric diagnosis have increased "behaviors". The Q word and the "I'm bored statement backfires frequently....you definitely won't be bored for long. Of course I never tell the next shift "have a good night". That statement usually gets me a "oh no, you just jinxed me!" I worked in a crisis unit one night and made the statement that "I wish something would happen so I could learn the paperwork firsthand". Big mistake...We had five intakes ....in less than 4 hours...you could say I learned the paperwork. LOL

more babies are born on the full moon or when the barameter falls to the lowest point before a storm.

These were in Nurses Calender 2008 - Always start a new baby breast feeding on the right side ? If a patient is failing, tie a knot in their top sheet so they will make it through your shift (I wish I had known about this one) / When a patient dies, crack a window or if there's no window, open a door so their soul can leave their body (I had not heard of any of these)

The people who did the research on whether or not there is a full moon effect on nursing units obviously did the study by numbers, like admissions, or births, etc, like a beauracrat would. Those doing the study definitely did not follow a nurse around a unit to count how many more interventions they had to do because of weird patient activity. They just didn't know what to study--because IT"S REAL!

I really do believe bad things come in threes
It happened to me not once but twice in threes

Two hours to go on a 12 hour shift and the charge nurse says"You're getting an ER admit". I smile, and cheerfully say "OK". Then I turn down the bed, put the admit kit in the room, write my techs' name and my name & date + WELCOME TO 5 CENTRAL on the whte board, print name labels and get paperwork ready, and post the patients' name at the door....end of shift rolls around and (surprize!) pt is still in ER/ or XR, CT/ or went to ICU instead. It's my MOJO and it WORKS! When I'm grumpy ("Oh, no, not now"), or am too busy to get all this done, they show up too soon, or at the worst time. Also saying a frequent flyers' name ALWAYS brings them back.