Good triage stories

I personally am tired of the people that come in to get their earwax syringed out. They get a triage level 5 in my book and I don't care if they never see the inside of the ER. LWBS is too good for them.

As the person who signs people in for Triage I've heard quite a few funny stories of how people became injured but the best complaint was the young man that told me that he had "severe pain in his wing muscle". I thought I didn't hear him correctly when he told me that but no, he told me again when I asked him to repeat it and pointed to his shoulder blade. I laughed so hard...out of his hearing range of course!

AAAARRRRUUUGGGHHHH and AAAAAAAAAKKKKKKKKKKK!


sharpeimom

Just a couple of days ago, I was asking a a patient about his allergies. He replied, "I am allergic to the wind." I kept a straight face and asked what kind of reaction he has. His response, "it gives me the chills".

I had a man sign in a few months ago with the dreaded "private" written in the chief complaint section.

I figured it was the usual penile discharge or rectal complaint that this CC usually elicits. However, much to my surprise, the man told me that his penis was shrinking. He had been measuring it almost daily for the last three months and had 'lost' several millimeters, according to him. He pulled out a little notepad where he had recorded the length each day.

It was all I could do to perform the rest of the triage, cause God knows I wanted to ask him so many things. Like what was the temperature in the room each day when he measured?

I just skimmed over the rest of the history, deferred the actual exam, and turned him over to our midlevel NP for evaluation!!

I had a young guy come into to triage the other day with his pretty little girlfriend left outside and I asked him what was going on. So he sits there with the standard hand in a C-cup over his lower mouth and chin and staring at the floor, saying "well, um." At this point, we all know that his penis dripping when it shouldn't be. So finally he spits it out and starts telling me about all of his alternative diagnosis he found on the internet. He's like "well it might be UTI", and I'm thinking, "Or it's gonorrhea." Then he starts telling me about how he read that maybe there was a problem with his blood passing into his semen and that was causing it. Or, of course, his gonorrhea was causing it.

I am a new grad in a residency program doing my ER rotation. They had me in triage last week. This guy comes in saying that his "ankle vein" was hurting. I asked what caused him to come to that conclusion and he said because he'd be walking all day.

Another comes in and says that his "old lady" kicked him out, he just got out of jail, it was raining, and he feels like he has pneumonia, completed with fake cough and all. Of course, there was no temp and vital signs were stable.

A woman comes in saying she uses baby wipes to "wipe herself" and someone replaced them with Clorex wipes, now her a-hole is burning and she can't get it to stop.

I don't know how y'all ER nurses do triage and keep a straight face. After each one of those stories, I had to go outside the door and laugh until my stomach hurt!

And it wasn't a joke either, was it?