What was the MOST ridiculous thing a patient came to the ER for?

Specialties Emergency Nursing Q/A

And did you have to treat them?

I am just curious. Your stories always seem to either crack me up or shake my head in amazement.

Thanks for sharing ?

My favorite has to be the LOL who called 911 for 'belly pain' because the City of Chicago would pay for the ambulance "So I don't have to pay for no taxi, neither". She's always constipated!

She loved her tap water enemas, too - looked for the newest nurse every time because the ones who have seen her will get a Fleet's instead. :uhoh21:

JUSTYSMOM said:
and do you have to treat them?

I am just curious. Your stories always seem to either crack me up or shake my head in amazement.

Thanks for sharing ?

Gee, it's hard to limit it to ONE thing!

The person who came in wanting to have his blackheads removed.

The woman who came in wanting to have her earlobe sewn back together after she caught her earing with her hairbrush and ripped it out - 10 years before!

The 2 city guys who came in during hunting season, one w/ buckshot in the rear, who insisted that the deer were shooting back.

And I've been out of the ER for 10 years. There are times I miss it, a lot.

Savvy

Pt brought in tonite BY AMBULANCEfor head lice!

This will really get your goat -the women's shelter sent the woman in by ambulance, and dropped off more people in our waiting room (mother and 2 children) infected with head lice! There has to be a way to stop this nonsense of abusing the system. Needless to say, they probably waited 2-21/2 hours to be seen. Given dc instructions on how to use quell, and sent back!

JUSTYSMOM said:
and do you have to treat them?

I am just curious. Your stories always seem to either crack me up or shake my head in amazement.

Thanks for sharing ?

A man came into ER with severe pain in the lower rectum. a vibrator had slipped way.....beyond the sphincter and had lodged in the lower intestines. He was buzzing as it was turned on. Yes, they had to take care of him, in fact they were arguing as to who would get to take care of him. It was sad but also funny.

Specializes in 6 years of ER fun, med/surg, blah, blah.

"I stepped on a tack", is one reply I remember, when asking an older man, what brought him here at 2 am. Jumped right on that one. He ended up getting a tetorifice shot & a bandaid. I don't remember if he went to x-ray to r/o a FB.

Also, getting several chest pains in a row is irritating. I think they are come in clusters. Just kidding....:rolleyes:

A mother bringing in an 15yo boy who had been playing on the escalator in the local shopping mall. He claimed to have gotten the bottom of his pant leg material stuck in the escalator, bent down and ripped it out with a hard pull. Nothing happened, no injury, no problem. She wanted a 'medical record' so that she could sue the shopping centre. When questioned the little *%$* admitted that he and his friends had been thrown out of the shopping centre by security officers many times for playing on he escalator.

Another time we had a mother bring in 3 little snotty nose brats to be "checked for snake bite". Nothing had happened, nobody had seen a snake. No symptoms. She had read a report in the local paper that it was snake season in the area.

Specializes in ER, ICU, L&D, OR.

I like the pt who came into ER via EMS hyperventilating after doing shots, and sucked some down the wrong way.

Ear wax

an elderly man arrived in a medical center I was working in and wanted his ears cleaned

Some of my all time personal favourite "Dumb presentations to the emergency room" are;

-Being drunk,

-Being drunk and requesting detox until social security check arrives (read "keep me sober for a couple of days until I can get good and drunk again")

-Seeking narcotics

-Welding flash burns (ie not wearing a welding mask while welding)

-THAT guy from "Jackass" (with the toy car up his butt)

Generally I found that on any given night there would be plenty of malingering drunks, also, when both parties from a drunken altercation arrived at the same emergency room for treatment, that was fun, however as I worked the graveyard shift on Friday/ Saturday nights, what do you expect?

Had another great one this past weekend. Tell me if you ever got this one: middle age female presents to ER with c/o generalized rash (looked like eczema) for 2 weeks (yep - 2 weeks) asked why she didn't see her PMD, she states she "didn't have time". VSS, no acute distress - as she watches me mark her chart "non-urgent" she asked if we were busy. I replied, "Well, it is the weekend and this is a trauma center - we have several high acuity patients so you may have to wait for awhile." (I figure honesty is the best policy - why mislead her?) Well, I'll be darned. As an after thought, she suddenly remembers that she is also having chest pain. Ofcourse that bought her the LAST mon bed and a cardiac work up (which was negative) but hey - she got seen quicker ... never mind that the work up took even more of her time and she complained the whole time. I guess the "chest pain" BS call has unfortunately became public knowledge as a means of getting seen quicker. Geez ...

This is completely true, a couple of weeks ago it was around 0200 on a Sunday morning. It was actually not too busy. Man arrives with his wife with him, she is sitting in the waiting room and he comes in to triage and says he wants "to have my wife checked out to see of she has been sleeping around" (he didn't use the word sleeping). Stated they were "doing it" when he put his head "down there" and thought he could smell a condom. Wants the doctor to check her out to see if she has been unfaithful. All the while the wife is just sitting in the waiting room, patiently. I told him that my physician was not going to examine her for this complaint and that maybe they needed to seek some counseling for this concern, opened the door and said "have a nice day". I have received numerous laughs over this one.

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