If it feels like a cold front has hit your unit—cool looks and frosty comments are the norm—then be the one to bring some life into the unit.

Some of the best bad-mood breakers are embarrassing moments. And, boy, do nurses have a ton of crazy stories. It is freeing when you can laugh at those moments that make you want to crawl under the gurney. Other nurses see your human side—that while you are a professional nurse you don’t have it together 100% of the time. Even the best of the best are knocked down by some occupational sidewinders.

One of my favorite stories is of a nurse who had worked so many double shifts that she hadn’t had time to do her laundry. She was changing before her shift, and found out she was out of underwear. She was desperate so she grabbed an old pair…but there was no elastic left in the legs.

She got to the hospital, and, sure enough, she had a patient that coded.  After she called for the code team she had to start CPR.  With the rhythm of her compressions her underwear began slipping inch-by-inch down her legs.  She couldn’t stop the compressions; she couldn’t stop her underwear from hitting the floor.

Soon her underwear puddled to the ground around her ankles. With the code team arriving, she stepped out of her underwear and toe-kicked them under the table. Unbeknownst to her, the underwear landed on the male doctor across the patient’s bed.

The doctor asks, “Whose underwear is on my shoe?”

When she shared this story with us—her fellow nurses—we all had a good laugh. Though in the moment she was petrified, she says it’s one of her funniest nursing memories: the day she lost her underwear at work.

Nurses need to let loose, get talking about body functions and body parts and all kinds of unruly, unpredictable things. These are some of the best times to draw your unit together—and break the ice.