Never seen anything quite like it (the things visitors do...)

Nurses General Nursing

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Specializes in Geriatrics, Transplant, Education.

Recently at work a son of one of my patients has really taken the cake. He arrived to visit mom while I was finishing my assessment & medicating her for pain, and waited outside the room while I was doing so. I came out to tell him that she was all set & he could go in and visit. Son proceeds to go on about how he had diarrhea all morning (at this point I just ignored those comments, given that I don't care abt his bathroom habits considering he's not my patient.) I went on about making my rounds.

20 minutes later, I was down the hall in another patient's room doing my assessment & meeting the patient (as I had never cared for him before.) Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone inside the doorway, hesitating. I went to turn around and started to say "come in" as I thought it may have been a family member of this pt, and I was just finishing vital signs, so it was nothing too personal.

Once I turned around, I realized it was that son! I told him politely, but firmly- "I'm with another patient right now. You are going to need to wait outside please." He scurried out, looking absolutely shocked that I couldn't attend to his questions at that very second. Imagine the nerve of me assessing my patients!

I talked to the other nurse that was out at the desk when he had gone looking for me...she told me what his concern was about his mother---it was something I had already discussed with him MULTIPLE times, and told him that her MD was aware and the situation being looked in to. (Being purposefully vague, but the subject of his concern is not as high priority on her problem list as other medical issues are.)

Seriously--If he had walked into the room to say "Excuse me nurse my mother can't breathe/is dying.." that would certainly have been one thing...but this guy just has no boundaries! I promptly made social work aware because I have a feeling this won't be the first issue we have with this son.

What jaw-dropping things have you all seen family members do?

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I once had a daughter walk in while we were coding another patient to tell me her Mother's pillows were too hard,could we find softer ones?????

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Specializes in Public Health, TB.

During a code the patient's wife stood on a chair with her arms in the to call the angels to help her husband. He was successfully resuscitated, so her efforts were effective ;)

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I once had a daughter walk in while we were coding another patient to tell me her Mother's pillows were too hard,could we find softer ones?????

All I can say is that she is unbelievably clueless and self absorbed. That won't sit well with me if I ever see it.

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Was coding an 8 year old in the ED when another patient's dad wanted the popsicle we promised his son "now."

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Specializes in Med/Surg.
Was coding an 8 year old in the ED when another patient's dad wanted the popsicle we promised his son "now."

Holy Crap!!!

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Specializes in Med/Surg, ICU, educator.

Coding a patient, patient from another nurses group came in and demanded coffee for his family now, he didn't care what kind of BS going on in here. In fact he even pushed the MD who was at the head of the bed. Had to get security to walk this moron out. Even worse, administration apologized to this fool, THEN told us we should have found a more sensitive way to resolve this. This admin idiot no longer there, thank goodness.

Also had a patient die a while back, family blocked the door and refused to let staff in to take him to the morgue. They had called a faith healer to bring him back from the dead. It was sad, and they blamed our non-believing attitudes for keeping his life from coming back. It was really sad.

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Specializes in SRNA.

The worst I've seen was a (coworker's) patient's wife, who seemed like she was some lettuce short of a sandwich, tried to use the hopper in the ICU bathroom to have a BM. In those ICU rooms, there are not toilets, but large square things that flushed. They were about 20"x20". It had looked like she fell in and kinda half pooped in there and half on the floor and when she was done came out wrapped in a patient blanket to inform the nurse that she was having trouble using our oversized toilets in the bathroom...

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Specializes in Mental and Behavioral Health.

We have this resident's wife who has us on a strict schedule for everything she wants done for her husband. What time she wants him up, what time she wants him down, and up again. He doesn't want to go to bed and get up when she says. She calls and hassles us about if he went to church or not. He doesn't want to go. He would rather watch baseball. I'm not going to make him go. He's a grown man! 80! Hello! He has Alzheimer's, but he can still let us know what he wants. This wife calls us, and calls us, and makes us crazy.

She's always calling me to accuse my staff of doing all kinds of ridiculous stuff.

I was short staffed one day, had a fall. Had a woman on the floor, bleeding. While I'm dealing with that, and five other things, this wife is calling us wanting to know if we got he husband up at 2 PM like she told us to.

Someday, I might tell her how selfish, attention-seeking, and neurotic I think she is.

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Specializes in Surg/ortho.

A pt's family members had all brought food in for themselves and the pt...not so unusual right?! Well the grandson had been rolling all over the floor playing (semi private room btw) for the first part of the shift :eek: Which grosses me out enough, but....once the food was brought the boy proceeds to spread out his hamburger wrapper on the floor and eat from it :barf02: French fries, ketchup and all. I had first started working there so I was too shy to say anything about it, now I would suggest otherwise lol

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Specializes in CCU,ICU,ER retired.

I think one of the most absurd thing that ever happened to me was not a family member but my own unit manager. We had a catastrophic event and a f-5 tornado had touched down close to our hospital. I normally worked in ICU/CCU but was sent to ER because I was also trauma trained. I was doing CPR on a man that had a 2 x 4 stuck in his head. Each bed had 1 nurse 1 doc and 1 resp tech. My unit manager a MSN btw stopped at the door while she was pushing a wheel chair full of suture kits to the cafeteria for the walking wounded. And she wanted me to stop and come help her! I could NOT believe it. The VP of nursing was behind her and quickly stopped her and told her to find someone else. The doc with me actually said "And she is your BOSS?" It wasn't long after that she transferred to another dept, one that doesn't deal with patients. I don't know if it was forced or voluntary

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Specializes in oncology, med/surg (all kinds).

in order to improve customer satisfaction, it seems that the priority should be given to the people who can talk/complain/fill out negative surveys, not the ones who can't (really-is the coding patient going to complain, regardless of the outcome?). really folks--we need to get our priorities straight.

oh sorry. i was having a nightmare that i was administration.

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