[dinkymouse]

I had a patient hit the call light and when I got there he said, "I just wanted to see how long it took you to get here.

[Stella-Ohio]

I love these.

We have the kind of call lights that you can communicate with the patient through.

The craziest ones are when you ask the patient what they need help with and are met by silence. You must go down and check on the patient (who's hearing is fine) but they don't feel obligated to answer you because they did not intentionally ring the bell, as if ignoring you on the sytem will make you vanish. And of course, these are usually the furthest from the nurses station.

[HeartsOpenWide]

Originally Posted by cheerfuldoer

I once had a patient who called me to the room to wipe his butt because he did not wipe his own butt at home....his wife did. (I'm not kidding about this)

That same patient would call me to his room to pull the bedside table closer to him, and pour him a cup of cold water. He didn't have to do this for himself at home. His wife did it, or their "help" did it.

Was he too sick to wipe his own butt and get his own water? No. He was a walky-talky dressed in a silk robe and jammies who could do everything for himself if he wanted to. He didn't want to.

sounds like he and his wife need to be smacked!

[casi]

I work in assisted living

"My butt itches." okay she was pretty much immobile, so that legit
"I didn't hear you lock my door on your way out."
Resident will hear their neighbors call button beeping and hit theres "Who are you helpping?"


Thank goodness the Alzheimers unit doesn't utilize call buttons for all the residents. Though some of them do have our phone extention so they can call us just in case. We've had several instances of this happening. So one of my pleasantly confused residents has a post-it note by his phone that says "Call 171 for help." 10:30pm I get a call. "I have a note here that says I'm suppose to call you."

[jett01]

One night shift had a patient roll out of bed onto the floor. There were three of us in there talking about the best way to get him back to bed. All the lights were on in the room. I step back from the fallen patient for a moment and the roomate tries to hand me his water pitcher and says, "Hey buddy could you get me some water?" When I responded that we had a guy down on the floor he looks over and says, "Oh, I didn't see him."

[jett01]

Had another fella who had an order for a rectal tube prn with some parameters. He called me in and said he needed it. As I got some things together he rolled over like a little kid with a big grin on his face and said, "boy when they put this in down in the ER that baby cracked like a shotgun!"

[Sue7573]

Originally Posted by barbiedee

OK, I'll start by saying that at the LTC facility where I work, some of the incontinent pads are pink. That said, we have one resident who rang the call bell to be changed, because she is 'allergic to pink'!!!!!!

I had a res. once insist that the entire pink pad be covered with a sheet because the moths have already eaten an entire side off the pink.

[jonnygirl27]

Our call lights ring to our portable phones--so we get the joy of talking to the patients without actually BEING there...
From the same (pleasently) confused woman:
--(in complete panic) Help! There's a watermelon in my bed!
--I smell buring rubber.

[rdnkmom]

Originally Posted by fluffwad

Had a woman who was 101. She rung her bell but then just looked at us. Eventually she said "Am I dead yet?".

I would have looked at her as seriously as I could without cracking a smile and said "Yes ma'am, I'm sorry, you passed about an hour ago, the funeral home will be here any second to pick you up".

Well, maybe not, it might actually give her a heart attack knowing my luck.

[rdnkmom]

I was called to a room in assisted living because we had a 101 yr old man that was terrified because "his plumbing was gone!". Come to find out he must have been cold, and his "johnson" shrank back.

This must really be an elderly issue with the men, because I don't know how many times I have heard nurses talking about this.