We've all heard weird, wild and even ludicrous things slip out of a doctor's mouth! Provide your quote for this National Nurses Week contest and you'll be entered to win a $250 amazon.com gift card!
Winner will be announced May 16, 2017
UPDATE May 19, 2017:
The winner of the 2017 National Nurses Week Doctors Say The Darnedest Things giveaway is user Racer15 who said:
I had a pt brought by EMS for altered mental status. ER doc is talking to the pt asking her what meds she takes. Starts listing them off and then says "and something to help with my memory, umm, it's called, umm..". Doc looks at her and says "well it's obviously not working", turns around and walks out
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Another situation was I had a pediatric patient, with a mother who was having incredible anxiety over her child being admitted. She was about 8 or 9, and in with a mild asthma flare up. Nothing at all to indicate it was in anyway life threatening. The patient was not on oxygen, not requiring many puffers etc. However the mother was convinced her child was going to die (tonight). I tried to be very supportive and reassuring. Pointing out all the positive signs of progress and acknowledging it must've been very scary when her child was having difficulty breathing but we deal with a lot of asthmatic children and it can be fairly easily managed, etc etc. I told her I could arrange for the asthma education centre to work with her and she was starting to calm down a bit.
Then the pediatrician comes in, and she states "Doctor, I'm so worried. Is she going to die tonight??" and he says -wait for it- "Well I don't know, I'm not God", then leaves. :facepalm:
So I then had to deal with her becoming all upset again ("Well the doctor says he doesn't know!! So he must think it's a real possibility! Oh my god I knew it, I knew there was a high chance" etc) God love the poor woman, I finally got her to relax by emphasizing that the doctor clearly meant anyone can die at anytime and he can't predict the future, not that there was anything to indicate it.
I had a little talk with him afterwards about why answering an upset parent with a line like that may not be the best approach
Another one, one my very first clinical rotation, which was in a long term care facility I was doing my "research" for my patient, reading through the chart and doctor notes. The patient had dementia and apparently quite frequent mood swings/changes in mood. The doctor wrote "Patient is emotionally incontinent" LOL
I don't remember many specific charting things like this, but that one has stuck with me all these years hahah (occured in early 2008)
It was night shift and I had already called and woke a grumpy physician several times to talk about his patient. The patient ended up going down-hill fast, coded and died. When I called to notify the physician, he answered his phone with "God dammit, he better be dead!".
The infectious disease doctor was rounding on a 87 year old patient who had been started by one of the fellows on antibiotics for possible gonorrhea. The ID doc writes in his progress note: "at this time I will discontinue antibiotics as it is unlikely the patient has gonorrhea. If indeed it does turn out to be gonorrhea, I will still continue to hold antibiotics, and instead prescribe a round of applause."
I was sitting @ the computer doing my chart, and this one doctor who I have interacted with a few times comes up out of the blue! and says "Talk to the Hand"! I'm like Uhhhh??? It was funny because the doctor in particular is always so Straight Forward and never really smiles.
Someone accidentally gave an enema with the cap still on and we had to inform the doctor. He fell out of his chair laughing and said "you bust a cap in his ass"
LOL So where did the cap end up? Did the pt BM? Did you have to repeat the enema? Was the pt informed?
After a week of neverending petty baseless complaints against every nurse in the unit from a patient's daughter, the surgeon stomped into the room and said, "Starting at this very moment right here right now, you will stop this foolishness. You will not mess with my nurses again. If you do, you'd better have your mom's bags packed first!" And for emphasis he hugged me on the way out!
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LOL 
NurseStorm, BSN, RN
153 Posts
Another situation was I had a pediatric patient, with a mother who was having incredible anxiety over her child being admitted. She was about 8 or 9, and in with a mild asthma flare up. Nothing at all to indicate it was in anyway life threatening. The patient was not on oxygen, not requiring many puffers etc. However the mother was convinced her child was going to die (tonight). I tried to be very supportive and reassuring. Pointing out all the positive signs of progress and acknowledging it must've been very scary when her child was having difficulty breathing but we deal with a lot of asthmatic children and it can be fairly easily managed, etc etc. I told her I could arrange for the asthma education centre to work with her and she was starting to calm down a bit.
Then the pediatrician comes in, and she states "Doctor, I'm so worried. Is she going to die tonight??" and he says -wait for it- "Well I don't know, I'm not God", then leaves.
:facepalm:
So I then had to deal with her becoming all upset again ("Well the doctor says he doesn't know!! So he must think it's a real possibility! Oh my god I knew it, I knew there was a high chance" etc) God love the poor woman, I finally got her to relax by emphasizing that the doctor clearly meant anyone can die at anytime and he can't predict the future, not that there was anything to indicate it.
I had a little talk with him afterwards about why answering an upset parent with a line like that may not be the best approach
