What do you hate seeing the MOST in the ER!?

Specialties Emergency

Published

What is the thing that you hate seeing in the Emergency Room? Is it kids, traumas, lost causes, frequent flyers or........... What gives you heebeejeebies, Creeps, Chills, gags. Tears, bad taste in your mouth and Pulls your heart strings.

Specializes in Cath lab, acute, community.

Theres a lot of talk on this thread about kids. I work in a paeds hospital, and boys aged 9-12 scare me! I have absolutely no idea what it is, but they just intimidate me! It doesn't interfere with my job, but it's just there. :D Funny!

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Frequent flyers with abdominal pain and drunks. The belly pain guys take forever with all the tests possible and the drunks can take away all your attention from your other patients, specially when they sober up a little and try to get out of bed constantly

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Specializes in Medsurg/ICU, Mental Health, Home Health.
I totally get what you're saying, and I agree with you about the over-dramatizers.

But I'm one of the lucky ones who is physiologically doomed to be a "power-retcher". I have an esophageal disease that results in my lower esophageal sphincter not opening, which means that the stomach has to REALLY push to power on through the LES and up the esophagus. In the past 25+ years, I've never had a bout of vomiting that didn't result in burst blood vessels in my face and eyes. So if I'm ever in your ER and I'm gasping for breath and have tears streaming down my face, please take pity!

Oh yeah, and bring me a garbage can -- I'll projectile right up and over the edge of a wash basin, and don't even think about a standard emesis basin. When I say I need a bigger bucket, I really mean it!!! At home I use a 16-quart stockpot, and sometimes I hit the end of that so hard that it splatters back on my face. If I were a super-hero, my super-power would be POWER-PUKING! Hey, at least I could use my super-hero cape to wipe the vomitus off my face! LOL

We now return you to your regular programming.... ;)

Wow, and this entire time I thought I was the only one! The first time I threw up from drinking I burst a huge blood vessel in my eye that stuck around for weeks. I always get petichiae on my face and chest. Oh, and I can projectile like a mad woman...I once threw up out a car window and hit the pavement without hitting the car...THAT is skill! ;)

As for the topic at hand, I'm with Altra - new, surprise CA diagnoses. I'm not an ER nurse but those patients come to us on the medical floor and it's just so...awful. We see a lot of "pneumonia" that failed oral abx and turned out to be lung CA, or bad stomach bugs that were pancreatic CA, or new onset "migraine" that turns out to be a brain tumor. A lot of times these are pretty advanced cases, too. And the nicest people!

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Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.
Wow, and this entire time I thought I was the only one! The first time I threw up from drinking I burst a huge blood vessel in my eye that stuck around for weeks. I always get petichiae on my face and chest. Oh, and I can projectile like a mad woman...I once threw up out a car window and hit the pavement without hitting the car...THAT is skill! ;)

You must be my sister from another mother! :D

If you ever start having problems with dysphagia, shoot me an email and I can give you some pointers on things to look for.

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I have a new one:

Walking in to a patient's room to find them face down on the floor in full cardiopulmonary arrest.

It's been a long night, lol.

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Specializes in Medsurg/ICU, Mental Health, Home Health.
You must be my sister from another mother! :D

If you ever start having problems with dysphagia, shoot me an email and I can give you some pointers on things to look for.

Thank you! I will take you up on that if need be. (Hopefully it won't!)

We could be sistas from anotha mista. We are both redheads...hmm...;)

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