Most shocking thing you've seen a physician do?

Nurses Relations

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Skin graft unit, military hospital. The director made rounds daily with nurse, students, etc. No gloves. Pulled off dressings, and bare handed would poke the grafts, and say "This one looks green- reschedule", "This one's puffy- it's going to fall off", and etc. Room after room, no gloves, no kidding. Nobody ever said a word to him. The graft failure rate was like 90%? This was before nursing school, and even then, I knew a thing or two about infection control. Denver, CO, BTW.

Specializes in Neuro ICU and Med Surg.

That is just gross. I have never seen anything like that. Why didn't anyone say anything to him. YUCK!

I kept trying to tell the intensivest to stop a thoracentesis when the HR was 195-200 A-Fib with RVR and he said it was fine and kept going. Thankfully the pt maintained his vs.

We had a couple of residents putting in a EVD at bedside (a drain that can measure ICP in the brain). One was standing by sterile and the other resident stabbed him with the needle that had been in the patient.

We had a pt with a femroal line placed and the guide wire was left in. It was not discovered until the next day's CXR. The pt had to go to IR to get the guidewire removed. You could see it on the xray all the way up by his neck.

bilateral bedside chest tube insertion.....zero pain meds, no lidocaine, nada, zilch, nothing. The pts screams could be heard throughout the hospital.....

General surgeon, patient with open abdominal wound. Surgeon wants to look around in there but he can't find the sterile instruments in the utility room and doesn't ask anybody...so he goes in the sink in the dirty utility room and finds some in an emesis basin with dried stuff on them and is stopped at the last minute at the bedside by the nurse who saw him do it.

Same guy, scrubbing for surgery. Nurse at the next sink notices he has a big honking infected wound on his hand, informs him he ain't cutting nobody today. He throws a fit, OR supervisor calls my officemate the infection control nurse, who says hell no, he ain't cutting nobody today. He protests, says he will operate one-handed with that hand behind his back (nope). Lost privileges some time later. The docs were apparently unaware of this stuff-- my doc was going to ask him to assist for my surgery and was mystified when I absolutely forbade him to do it, until I explained.

Last one, I promise. Another general surgeon does esophagectomy on patient with esophageal cancer, pretty much hooks up his stomach just south of his tonsils. Soon he has massive chest infection, empyema, fecal material coming out of his chest tubes. She mismanaged him until he got so septic she asked the ICU docs to take over. By then there was nothing to be done for him, multiple arrests, no longer responsive, a wreck in the bed; finally she was there when he arrested again and they had her, as attending surgeon, run the code without any suggestions from the experts. He was dead in minutes, a mercy.

Specializes in Emergency, Telemetry, Transplant.

A patient was bleeding at the insertion site of his new (placed that day) subclavian dialysis cath. Bright red blood coming out at a fairly good rate. The pt's nephrologist (who was a total *******) happened to be on the floor. He was called into the room. He looked at it. Said "it's bleeding quite a bit. Call vascular [surgery] and they can deal with it." With that he left the room, walked to the elevator and was gone. Needless to say, the assigned RN charted the heck out of that one. (pt ended up being fine)

A nurse was running to a code down the hall. On the way she passed the pt's cardiologist (who had not yet seen the pt). While running by she said "Dr. C, your patient in room 11 is arresting." Doctor doesn't even say "boo." He just keeps walking, right off the unit. (code team dealt with the code, I don't know the final outcome)

Specializes in Oncology, Med-Surg.

Surgeons are the absuolute worst! Where do they learn their infection control from? I have too many stories about them. I used to work in a university hospital where the residents tried to do every procedure under the sun in the patient's room so they could rack up their procedure experience. Can't tell you how many paracenteses end up as perfed bowels. Even simple I & D's, they'd guaranteed hit a spurting artery. Luckily, the hospital put an end to all this madness and got an interventional radiology dept. Of course, they got smart and want to bill for all these procedures too! Also in Denver, Co, SuzieVN!

Surgeons are the absuolute worst! Where do they learn their infection control from? I have too many stories about them. I used to work in a university hospital where the residents tried to do every procedure under the sun in the patient's room so they could rack up their procedure experience. Can't tell you how many paracenteses end up as perfed bowels. Even simple I & D's, they'd guaranteed hit a spurting artery. Luckily, the hospital put an end to all this madness and got an interventional radiology dept. Of course, they got smart and want to bill for all these procedures too! Also in Denver, Co, SuzieVN!

Do you think they do it deliberately, to have more procedures? Hard to think such a thing, but...

Specializes in M/S, Tele, Sub (stepdown), Hospice.

I've seen a doc do vasectomies in the office every week never washing his hands before/after...in fact I never saw him wash his hands period....disgusting!!!!! I didn't work for him but he used our office space some days...thank God he finally retired!!!

Saw a doc pop off a necrotic toe and toss it in the REGULAR garbage then ask the nurse (ME) to bandage the foot.Patient had no idea what the doctor had done. I was like oh no he didn't! But he did. The toe just sat there in the trash staring at me.

Specializes in Med-Surg, Emergency, CEN.

I soooo want to post a big one here too but doubt that it go unnoticed by work. It's along those unsanitary lines of burn unit post above.

These are like reading a good novel! Sad that they are over! So suspenseful! :eek:

Specializes in ICU, LTACH, Internal Medicine.

90+something y/o, double amputee, legally blind, on dialysis for the last 5 years, pleasantly demented and sent 20 years ago to LTC by her loving family was found to have new heart murmur. Turned out, it was critical aortic stenosis plus CAD with LVEF below 20%. The loving family of 20+ inner sity inhabitants (not a single high school grad or full-time worker between them all) asked if "grandma coulda' be just fix'ed", on what the chief of cardiothoracic surgery of a large teaching hospital enthusiastically responded "yes, sure we can CURE her!"

He somehow managed to take her alive from the table. Minimal access valve repair (new procedure at that time in the place) turned into open heart with triple bypass and full repair. When there was a call from OR that she's ready to arrive in ICU, the two very experienced NPs practically dissolved into the thin air. Residents remained - they had no choice, having their lives and careers hanged onto opinion of the said Big Boss Doctor. Thereafter, the NPs carefully avoided the issue claiming that the case was well above their competence.

Long and sad story short, it took the lady a bit over a month to depart this world. Residents "had a lot of learning opportunities" (the way they put it) in doing whatever procedures they could think of with her - there were even talks about extracorporal oxigenation. Meanwhile, the family was permanently camping in waiting lounge, day and night, sleeping, eating and going into labor there, seriously believing that every moment brings their beloved granny closer to full recovery and many years of life right ahead of her. At last, the lady was pronounced brain dead and family was called for saying goodbye and pulling plugs. But, unfortunately for the lady, that happened at 6 AM. Right after that, morning labs arrived and there was that potassium of 6+something. The said Big Boss who happened to doing business rounds right then, was suddenly met by chief of nephrology of the same institution, with latter doctor fuming and boiling hot that the patient with critically high potassium was not put for stat nephro consult. As the result, the family was told that there is the truly last miraculous chance and asked to wait and pray hard while the body of their beloved granny was emergently dialysed yet another time. Only after her potassium was documented as being 5+low-something the lady was mercifully allowed to expire.

I still wonder how much Medicaid had to pay for that macabre show.

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