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I was shocked when, in assessing a patient at the beginning of the shift, his urinal was filled about an inch with nasty dark brown, thick urine with dark brown specks. I asked him how long his urine had been that way. The man looked at me like I was an idiot, rearranged the huge chaw of tobacco he had in his mouth, calmly picked up the urinal, spit in it and smiled a charming, brown-toothed smile.
Oh my god, that reminds me of when I was a new EMT (back in the far mists of antiquity). I was doing a shift in the ER, and one of our pts was a diabetic with bilateral BKAs. I walked past his bed, and saw him holding an emesis basin filled with clear yellowish liquid with brown flakes - *Coffee Grounds Emesis*... Little did I know, in my panicked state, that he had a big wad of dip in...
newly back in the hospital environment after 8 years in public health, I tried to be very conscientious doing all the nursing tasks correctly. At 4AM vital signs on a distunguished elderly lady who had her IV discontinued on the condition she push fluids, I of course asked if she had been drinking. I was met with an outraged and dignified response of "Of course not!" I learned to specify water, juice, etc rather than leave it open to the pt interpretation!
ClariceS
141 Posts
We recently had a patient who was found at the sink pouring water into a urinal already partially filled with urine. When he was asked what he was doing he stated, "Well, I dropped this bottle and since you nurses are so concerned with the level of fluid, I was just refilling it to the amount that was in there before I dropped it."