Bizarre Admitting Diagnosises

My favorite is "Sick" - no duh Sherlock!

One of my first patients after I came off orientation as a new RN.

"fractured member"

No bones you say? That's what I said. Guess this guy woke up with his morning maleness and rolled over on it, busted the main blood vessel in it. Ouch.

Clerk having a little word finding difficulty - instead of "ataxia" the admission diagnosis was "walklessness for investigation"

I've been a nurse just under a year, but the unit I work on has provided quite an array of oddball admitting dx... But the ones that really get me riled up aren't always bizarre, they simply fail to offer much insight as to what is ACTUALLY going on with my patient. A few of my favorites:

1) UCA - I quickly found out this meant Unacceptable Cosmetic Appearance, and my patient had been admitted after extensive surgery to remove excess skin. She had a grand total of 6 JP drains and the sum of all her incisions totaled over 60 inches in length!

2) Fever - This patient was a transfer from a rehab center with a ETOH level of nearly 0.40 and he was already scoring in the 20's on the CIWA scale by the time he came to us.... but since his temp ranged from 97's to 104's while he was in the ER, they chose "fever" as the primary reason for his admission.

3) Altered mental status - Young woman with no significant medical history exhibiting extreme variations in mood/behavior upon arrival to the ER. All tox screens were negative. She came up to our unit and a quick assesmment revealed focal neurological deficits, plus she was becoming increasingly withdrawn and lethargic. Within hours, an array of physicians had been consulted and this patient was actually found to be septic! :angryfire

4) Peyronie's disease - Granted, this truly was an accurate diagnosis for my patient. However, I think that s/p penile prosthesis revision would've been MUCH more appropriate as the primary reason for admission! :imbar

I could go on and on...

A patient with fibroids was admitted (per admitting typo) with a "Uterine Thyroid"--wow that gland really slipped!

Wow, too funny! I love the "UCA" and "Uterine Thyroid" dx :chuckle:chuckle:chuckle

just this week: malnourished elderly living alone admitted for "Failure to Think"

one a couple of weeks ago "family can't cope with pateint"

and what exactly are we supposed to do?

We get tons of "Dizziness and Giddiness" It sounds so cute and happy but they are usually demented old guys who are determined to fall out of bed at all costs!

At my first job we always had 1 or 2 "adrenal iinsufficiency" admits on the floor at any one time. We didn't have a psyc department or even a psychiatrist on staff so if a patient came in with major depression with suicidal ideations they got "adrenal insufficiency" No one ever checked thier adrenal function.

I love it when we see Altered Mental Status and the pt has a h/o dementia or Alzheimers. Those docs must have graduated from ivy league schools. And they think that nurses don't have enough training . Or how about the orders for bilat TEDs and SCDs for a pt with bilat ATK amputation?!?