Share your funniest patient stories...

Conversation I had with a CHF patient today. She has had CHF for years. I asked the pt. "have you had congestive heart failure teaching"? Pt stated "No I only got my GED". Priceless

I am not saying this story is funny, well not for the patient anyway, but it has always stuck in my mind. Years ago a patient was brought into the ward with his testicals very reddened and sore. It turned out his wife had sprayed him 'down below' with deodorant to make him smell nice before he was admitted. Ouch.

This is a story told to me by one of my OB residents, and yes it did happen. He was called to the ER one night to see if he could help them with this male patient that had come in that night. Well he told them that he did not usually deal with men but they told him that this was an unusual case. They took him into the cubicle and lifted the sheet and there around the testes was a lock and they did not know what to do. THe guy swore that he had fallen asleep and only he and his mom were home at the time and when he woke up there was the lock. The ER doc had to call in a locksmith who got a good chuckle and paid well. Here's another one from long ago which is funny now but was quite sad at the time. A young teenaged girl comes in pregnant and didn't understand how she could have gotten pregnant as she did what her brother had told her to do. She drank a lot of Pepsi and he had told her if she drank a lot of pepsi she would not get pregnant. So much for birth control.

When I was a student nurse, we had a general surgeon who would always write an order to "dress bid and prn".
A fellow student in my class had a patient of this surgeon's one day. She had this patient to get up out of bed
in the am and put his street clothes on before she walked him around the hallway! I thought our instructor was
going to die of embarrassment in front of the staff nurses when everyone found out what she did!!

Many years ago, I got pulled to an OB unit. When I got ready to chart, I opened up this particular chart and low and behold this is what I read from the previous nurse: "Vaginal packing out, Dr. Goodwin in" !!! LMAO !!!!!!!!
The good old days of long hand charting!!

I used to do pre ops for a pediatric surgery unit. One of the questions I asked if the pt. was young enough was "Do you feed your baby table foods?" One day, as I was asking the questions, I got the strangest look from a mom. She answered "No, just regular foods." Seems I had asked her if she fed her child
"table scraps" !!!!

I am not sure if i'd consider this one funny but maybe amusing. A mother of G3P2 was admitted in the ward. The OB doctor came to examine her and only 2 cm and not in pain. Thus the doctor ordered for Prostin and was received 2mg.I returned to her room to get her vital signs and to assess her labor pain which is only little. I instructed her to stay on bed for about an hour.

After about 10-15minutes a scream was heard along the corridor. We rushed on one room thought its where the sound came from (and was also where the housekeeper pointed us). But it isnt. Rather on the next room where I have been 15minutes ago. So we rushed in inside, the bathroom is open and there was the mother right just beside the toilet towering her belly slightly feet apart screaming..

Oh my God! What is that 'thing' hanging between your legs, Mama? Good thing my adrenaline woke my sleepy brain fast and ordered my hand to catch that 'falling thing'. Its a baby!! And as all nurses would do, I encouraged her to go on and that everything is fine.

How could that be too fast?

The mother just stood there starstrucked staring on her angel fell on my ungloved hand crying on his mighty voice. For a moment co-Nurses came to assist followed by the lady doctor. We ushered the mother still me holding the baby to the bed for the cutting of umbilical and both rushed to L&D for evacuation of placenta and for settling the baby.

As i washed my hands on the lavatory I have felt my knees shaked along with my hands. There the effects of adrenaline withdrawal haha. Nevertheless, it all went fine. The scene that had just occured now a laughing scenario for the unit's 'history'. Specially for the reason that the mother thought she has the feeliong of passing stool that time that she gone to the bathroom.. and exerted effort to empty a ''big stool''.

A funny one maybe for my co-workers but a very amazing memory for me that gave me a cloud-9 feeling.

As a student, I was working on a med/surg floor when a very large, very drunk man was brought to the room. He had wet himself and for some passive aggressive reason, the ER doc wanted a UA (can you say drunk and obnoxious, not infected?) The floor nurses all looked at each other and said, "So who's it gonna be?" I told them that as the stupid nursing student, I would be delighted to cath this unconscious gentleman. 4 nurses, one on each corner, were there to assist as we all expected him to wake up swinging. I got all ready and prepped and we pulled back the cover and the room went silent. Everybody looked at each other with a "what now?" expression. The stupid nursing student gamely proceeded to 'firmly grasp' with the 2 fingers that would fit and start the cleaning and insertion process. The insertion didn't insert. I kept trying and we were all thinking that this was really going to burn the next time he had to pee. 4 RN's trying to give suggestions on how to do the cath (I mean, it's a guy-only one hole, right?) Only 1/2" in and it would stop! Finally, I start turning the p3nis over and looking at it more closely and realize that he has a hypospadies (if there's one anomaly, there's probably more than one!) At that point, seeing the size of the orofice, I gave up. We all decided that if the MD really needed a urine, he could cath the patient himself. Go figure, he didn't really need it! Once the guy sobered up and woke up, he went on his merry way, fortunately w/o burning from the somewhat abused false hole.

Embarrassing maybe but she has probably repeated that story and gotten many laughs..

What an idiot....that is funny