What is the worst thing a patient has ever said to you?

Working in med/surg for the past five years, I can think of quite a few memorable moments but there is one incident that really sticks with me: it was almost the end of my shift (I work nights 7p-7a) and one of my patients asked me to get her a cup of coffee. On my way to the pantry, an alarm sounded- one of my other patients was crashing! We coded her and she ended up being rushed to ICU (she made it!) When I got back to my floor, I remembered my other patient's coffee request and brought it in to her:

patient "what's this"
me "it's the coffee you asked for"
patient "I wanted it 45 minutes ago, I don't want it now."
me "I'm sorry, we had an emergency and I wasn't able to come back right away."
patient "you mean in this entire hospital NOBODY has the time to get an expletive cup of coffee for me when I want one!?"
me (starting to get a little annoyed) "Did you hear the alarm sound earlier? One of my other patients was dying. I'm sorry you had to wait, but that takes priority over a cup of coffee."
patient "if they had to look at your ugly lazy mug all night then they would be better off dead! I needed my coffee THEN you expletive. How dare you make me go without my caffeine, expletive. People like you shouldn't be nurses."

At this point I just turned and walked out of her room because I didn't trust myself not to say something I shouldn't

patient "Yeah, that's it. Go away. Just waddle your fat butt out of my room when I'm talking to you!"

As I was walking away, miss rude patient proceeded to throw the full cup coffee at me, getting it all over the back of my scrub top. Sheesh. Talk about a sense of entitlement. I was a bad nurse because I didn't get her coffee on time. The worst part was, she was an alert and oriented x3 40-ish year old with no psych history.

can't decide on " didn't I see on the plantation?" or " why are there so much unwed mothers in your community?" you know I had a good comeback!!!

If anyone ever tells me to go to you-know-where, I just look them dead in the eye and say, "I'm already there!".

And no, I don't care what they think. I work for a living, and I don't get paid enough to take abuse.

Had a patient who said she would like to kick me and knock me down just to see my rolls of fat shake like jello when I was thrashing around on the floor. (And I was a lot thinner then.)

Completely A+Ox3 96 year old female pt - "hey why dont you get naked and get into bed with me?"
me (male nurse) -


in all honesty, the worst most awkward thing ever and im 100% convinced she was dead serious

I work in a large, inner city teaching hospital. I get called "Fat White B-word-that-means-female-dog" a lot. One time, when my husband was working in cath lab and I was in CCU, he brought me a patient that called him a "fairy ******" and me a "Nazi lesbo". I suspect that guy had issues. I took care of a child molester one time who called me a "******* pervert." That one was really special.

The one that feels the WORST to me right now, though, is when I was called a "soulless, heartless witch" by the parents of a patient who have kept him alive in the ICU for nearly a year while we slice off one appendage after another due to gangrene, his skin has sloughed off due to a drug reaction, and he mouths the same thing over and over all day and all night: "Let me die. I want to die." These parents have insisted that we not medicate him for pain during visiting hours because "then he's not awake to interact with us when we visit." So these stellar parents call me soulless and heartless because, when I had to change the dressing that covers his posterior from shoulder blades to stumps (bilateral AKAs), I medicated him for pain. Because he was incontinent during visiting hours, I medicated him during visiting hours. And then I cried while I changed the damned dressing. But he was too knocked out from the meds to interact with his parents, hence the name calling.