Your Favorite one liner used with patients

Nurses Humor

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I am a student and I use humor to get me through clinicals. Once I told a patient "This is my first time giving an injection on a real live person." At the time it was very funny! The look on his face and my instructors was priceless!! I was curious what other things people have said or say to patients to break the ice.

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Specializes in NICU, Infection Control.

When a doc goes over to examine a particularly crabby baby who happpens to be asleep @ that moment, I'll say, "you wake 'em, you take 'em".

Specializes in Corrections, neurology, dialysis.

I've developed a few since the start of this thread.BTW I tried the "we're trying to keep the beer cold" line. They were not amused.For postop patients, if I ask if they passed gas and they say "yes", I say "I'm sorry I couldn't be here for the big event."I had another postop patient who said he hadn't passed gas yet.

A little later he was complaining that he couldn't feel anything in his leg under the postop splint. I went and got my instructor. The charge nurse happened to be nearby too. So the charge nurse, my instructor, the regular nurse, another student and I went into the room to see what was going on with the patient's leg. When he saw all these people filing into the room to check him out he said "Wow, I sure am getting a lot of attention." I said "We thought you farted."

I work in dialysis and dialysis patients get sick of being in the clinic and are usually in a big hurry to leave. It gets so bad that they sometimes they rush us to take care of them when we're trying to take care of someone else. If the grumbling gets too bad I'll joke with them and say "what's wrong? Aren't you enjoying your dialysis today? You liked it last time you were here?" or "Why are you still here? I thought you were leaving." As I'm taping them up and getting them ready to leave I'll say "Okay, I don't care what happens. Don't come back until Wednesday."

Specializes in Med Surg, Ortho, Tele, ICU, Hospice.

aw maaaaaaaan, I didn't know there was already a thread on this!

well. Two nights ago I shaved a guy up for a cardiac cath - he was a little apprehensive, but we hadn't encountered that before as he was ambulatory and all.. so he pretty much took care of himself.

Anyway, I told him that we were still waiting on a set of fishnet stockings from central supply:idea:

Specializes in NICU, Infection Control.

I once had parents pull 2 gliders up to the incubator as close as possible; eventually, time came for me to get in there, assess, change, and start the feeding. I explained what I was going to do; they moved just a littlem tiny bit, I squeezed in there to open the incubator. I looked over my shoulder and said, "Well, enjoy the view!" (my big keister!!)

I was with my preceptor who had one of her frequent flyers about the same time every Friday night. She came into his room and said, "Hey, since you like to come and see us so much we have someone here who is interested in attempting her first IV and YOU are the lucky winner." His eyes nearly popped outta his head. He then kinda got all squirrely and she went towards his arm, cleaned the area, and proceeded to say to me (with the syringe the wrong way) " If you do it like this it won't work (then quickly flipping the syringe and jabbing the poor shocked man) but like that (Jab) it works out perfect." He is sweating profusely. She then says to me, "Ok, it's your turn." out of her pocket she pulls, no kidding, 10 syringes. Looks at her frequent flyer and says, "The newbies NEVER get it on their first or fifth try."

I thought I was gonna lose it at least 10 times. She then winks and taps him on the leg and says, "We will let her try on the dummy in the closet ok?" and we left.

THe poor guy NEVER said a word..

LOL

Specializes in NICU, Infection Control.

Now, THAT was not nice. Not saying he didn't deserve it, just not nice.

Specializes in Med Surg, Ortho, Tele, ICU, Hospice.
Now, THAT was not nice. Not saying he didn't deserve it, just not nice.

only if one claims 'nice' and 'hilarious' to be two entirely disparate states :bugeyes:

We had a frequent flyer of our own, c/o SOB every darn time her hubby came in for something, who had somehow gotten it into her head that her q4h meds were q3h.. and insisted she'd read the doctor's note herself.

Well after an hour of answering her call bell every seven minutes or so, she gets fed up and manages to reach the nursing supervisor via the switchboard.. Supe calls the charge nurse and tells her to handle it. Well the RN and the pt are going back and forth about the order, charge walks in and goes "gee, you sound like you've improved a lot, yelling like that. I think the house doc is making his rounds, maybe he can discharge you tonight!"

Yes we're all caring people but sometimes you've gotta be righteous for the sake of order and sometimes your own sanity :lol2:

Specializes in Community, OB, Nursery.
When a doc goes over to examine a particularly crabby baby who happpens to be asleep @ that moment, I'll say, "you wake 'em, you take 'em".

I've said the same thing to many a bored resident or med student coming into the nursery because "I just wanna hold a baby." And invariably they go to the methadone kid I just got settled...

Specializes in NICU.
When a doc goes over to examine a particularly crabby baby who happpens to be asleep @ that moment, I'll say, "you wake 'em, you take 'em".

Ooooohhhh, I wish I had had this today. I have a kid who's one of those neuro screamers, you know? When he decides it's time to howl, it is ON. When he really gets worked up, he screams so hard he vomits everywhere. And he also has a chest tube and a PEJ, as he has a TEF, along with a VP shunt. He's also sort of a messy (and often smelly) kid, so I make a point of doing his bath at around 0500, so he's clean and pretty for day shift. After his bath I usually get a couple of good hours to finish everything else up, as his bath tends to conk him out. And eeeeevery morning at 0630, surgery comes on rounds, and eeeeeevery morning they unswaddle my masterful baby-burrito to check his dressings, and he starts screaming, and they WALK AWAY. :trout: Do they even stick his paci back in his mouth? Duh, no.

Specializes in Education and oncology.

This is a great thread- I work on a BMT unit where we give a lot of blood products. When the cells have infused, I explain that "I'm putting you on the rinse cycle." I've used it so much we'll have pts call out that they're ready to rinse before spinning out for their discharge.

Specializes in CCRN, ICU, ER, MS, WCC, PICC RN.

Some of my favorites:

"C'mon you've been through worse than this," when they don't want to get up to the bedside commode.

"I'm really good at this, amazingly good," when starting IVs.

"There are nurses at this hospital that are much more agressive about you having a BM than I am. So let's see what we can do before she gets here."

I like those. Humor goes a long way in this profession...

Specializes in CCRN, ICU, ER, MS, WCC, PICC RN.

I always tell patients, "You think why you're here is bad? Well, what they forgot to tell you upon admission is that the worst part of all this is the tape removal. There's just no good way to remove tape." And then I tear off all their hair.

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