How do you brighten your patients day?

I work in PICU and a very generous donor has provided us with hundreds of books to give our patients as gifts.

Every time I give a book away, I tell the patient that they were selected to receive the book because they were elected "Outstanding Patient of the Day" by the PICU nurses.

I'll take the flowers & balloons left at the nurse's station by discharged patients and re-gift them to patients who need some cheering up. They're usually so surprised!

I turn the light above their bed on.

Hahahahaha!!!! I needed that lol today!

- I buy sodas. Give them their Diet Coke, cigarettes and 'dip- dip'...and they're happy.
- I buy certain residents food during my lunch breaks. Healthy things like Subway, McDonald's Snack Wraps, etc...
I'd buy for everyone but then they'd all have 'expectations'. It's bad enough that they 'shake me down' for soda money every time I come to work.

I think I would have way too much time preparing something like that! Lol I love it!

just by being my cheery, natural/"pharmaceutically" enhanced" self!

Just a patient, but I had a nurse who knew I was feeling down, I woke up and found on my tray table a "Get Well" card, every nurse on the unit signed it, each wrote something nice or funny in the card, and it did cheer me up!! My nurse told me I figured since you like nurses so much that you would get a kick out of it. I thought it was nice of them to take time to write in the card. It was something small but meant so much to me.

Dilaudid iv push

I'm so glad many of these responses are sarcastic. While the OP example was cute, sometimes (like today) I just want to do my job. No more, no less. Just let me be a robot, do a little teaching, and make sure nobody dies.

Sarcasm brightens my day more than cutesy pictures. I know some patients feel that way, too.