Eeeeevil nurse stories

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Specializes in NICU.

Does this happen to anyone else?

"Oh, you're a nurse? Let me tell you, in great and passionate, not to mention highly improbable detail, all about the horrible nurses I had when I was in the hospital!"

Cheezits, people! I really, really don't need to be assailed with stories about things that happened forty years before I was born, a thousand miles away. What do you want me to say? I'm sorry? Yes, you're right, nurses are really terrible people who like to tell children every night for a month that if they don't move one muscle all night they can go home the next day, but then you moved because you were JUST A CHILD so you couldn't go home and isn't that just the worst thing you ever heard? Oops, you caught us! They DO teach psychological torture techniques in nursing school! Sorry, auntie!

I'm tempted to start doing this back to people. Figure out what they do and come up with some horrendous story about someone in the same profession. "Well, this one time a dog groomer pulled out all my dog's toenails! And then offered them as a sacrifice to the Devil!"

NB: Please note that I am NOT talking about patient/family stories. For those I put on my best therapeutic communication face and am appropriately sympathetic. I'm talking about my own family members, acquaintances, and the odd random stranger.

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Specializes in CVICU, Burns, Trauma, BMT, Infection control.

LOL,that's kind of like how people would react when i told them I was a Burn Nurse,their smile would fade and fall off their face and they would visibly recoil. Some nurses would say(with the above face) "I could never do that..."

I got to where I'd occasionally mumble "well,I lOVE inflicting pain......." with the accompanying sadistic grin. Sheesh.:clown:

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Specializes in Advanced Practice, surgery.

Bellekat, I got the same reaction, if they were really obnoxious I used to tell them the best bit about burns nursing was popping the blisters to pull the dead skin off and picking scabs.

:D:D

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oh, that part about the dog groomer offering your dogs toe nails as a sacrifice was great!!! :chuckle

[color=#483d8b]i used to have people ask me, "oh....you're a maid? really?" complete with disgusted looks upon their faces! i had many responses for them, such as, " yeah! it's actually a great job! and if the people really tick you off, you just use their toothbrush to clean the toilet!!!"

[color=#483d8b]i'm sure you guys could come up with so many creative responses for people who ask you about being a nurse in that way and then tell you about their evil nurse experiences!

[color=#483d8b]i think there are good and bad people in all professions, and stereotyping "all nurses" as evil, or "all maids" as low lifes, would be just as bad as stereotyping "all people with the name jane" as being theives or something.

[color=#483d8b]don't you wish everyone knew how to think before they speak?

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LOL,that's kind of like how people would react when i told them I was a Burn Nurse,their smile would fade and fall off their face and they would visibly recoil. Some nurses would say(with the above face) "I could never do that..."

I got to where I'd occasionally mumble "well,I lOVE inflicting pain......." with the accompanying sadistic grin. Sheesh.:clown:

I sorta sympathise. I once had a M/S nurse say to me "I could never be a peds nurse. I love kids too much" Oh, well luckily for you, there are nurses like me who hate kids and enjoy making them cry and scream in terror. (Ever try starting an IV on a vein barely bigger than the 24g needle when you can hardly even see the hand through your own tears??) So, I realize I could never be a burn nurse but am never sure how to say it without it being a slight towards the burn nurse. I just leave it as "Really? I have such respect for you. I worked with some great burn nurses when I was in peds trauma."

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Specializes in ER/Trauma.
"Well, this one time a dog groomer pulled out all my dog's toenails! And then offered them as a sacrifice to the Devil!"
:chuckle:chuckle:chuckle:chuckle

Thanks! I needed that! :chuckle

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oh, that part about the dog groomer offering your dogs toe nails as a sacrifice was great!!! :chuckle

[color=#483d8b]i used to have people ask me, "oh....you're a maid? really?" complete with disgusted looks upon their faces! i had many responses for them, such as, " yeah! it's actually a great job! and if the people really tick you off, you just use their toothbrush to clean the toilet!!!"

[color=#483d8b]i'm sure you guys could come up with so many creative responses for people who ask you about being a nurse in that way and then tell you about their evil nurse experiences!

[color=#483d8b]i think there are good and bad people in all professions, and stereotyping "all nurses" as evil, or "all maids" as low lifes, would be just as bad as stereotyping "all people with the name jane" as being theives or something.

[color=#483d8b]don't you wish everyone knew how to think before they speak?

i once worked in a clinic where most of the nurses were single moms. not that there's anything wrong with that in itself, except that the majority of them had ex-husbands in prison (you rarely see men like this with non-dysfunctional women), or they were sending their child support to guys in prison, or they had moved a paroled child molester into their house ("and my 11-year-old daughter thinks he's the greatest!") and it took another job or two where most of the nurses didn't do things like that to revise my opinion of them back to baseline.

:nurse:

i once knew a woman who was planning to go to medical school and wanted to specialize in pediatric oncology. i said, "well, i guess somebody has to do that....." and she said, "it's the happiest place in the hospital!"

:confused:

i discovered that she ended up specializing in infectious disease.

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Specializes in oncology, trauma, home health.
I once worked in a clinic where most of the nurses were single moms. Not that there's anything wrong with that in itself, except that the majority of them had ex-husbands in prison (you rarely see men like this with non-dysfunctional women), or they were sending their child support to guys in prison, or they had moved a paroled child molester into their house ("and my 11-year-old daughter thinks he's the greatest!") and it took another job or two where most of the nurses didn't do things like that to revise my opinion of them back to baseline.

:nurse:

I once knew a woman who was planning to go to medical school and wanted to specialize in pediatric oncology. I said, "well, I guess somebody has to do that....." and she said, "It's the happiest place in the hospital!"

:confused:

I discovered that she ended up specializing in infectious disease.

I always hate to read threads when people get too upset about what someone wrote..But i have to say that was a great generalization to say that women with ex-husbands in jails are dysfunctional. Even with a doctorate and speaking 7 languages there are men who insist on inflicting their rage on their wives and end up putting the wives in the icu for 7 days. To say that that wife is dysfunctional is just wrong. I know you didn't mean it but still, that hurt a bit.

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Specializes in student; help!.

I have to say that I have a few eeeeevil nurse stories of my own, but I'm still planning on going into nursing as a career. So there is hope. Some people like to dwell on the bad things that happen to them, some people don't. It doesn't matter if they were hurt by a nurse or a bus driver, they'll hold all others in the profession to that standard.

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Specializes in NICU.

And can I just say, AGAIN, that I'm not talking about stories patients tell me. I've personally given out the number to Patient Relations to a father who was upset at the care his wife received on the PP unit. That's not the issue here.

Musing: how on earth is hearing about how awful all nurses are supposed to make me a better nurse? I was so much more encouraged to keep on keepin' on by the kind letter the grandfather of a deceased patient sent to the DON about me than I've ever been by the horror stories some people insist on hitting me with. Positive reinforcement, people!

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I always hate to read threads when people get too upset about what someone wrote..But i have to say that was a great generalization to say that women with ex-husbands in jails are dysfunctional. Even with a doctorate and speaking 7 languages there are men who insist on inflicting their rage on their wives and end up putting the wives in the icu for 7 days. To say that that wife is dysfunctional is just wrong. I know you didn't mean it but still, that hurt a bit.

I gather the woman was you? :( Sorry if I offended you, and I gather that if this is the case, you did not know he was this way before he did this.

Those women did. How? Those men beat up their best friends, sisters, etc. but oh, no, he wouldn't be that way with me. The clinic director, a 38-year-old divorced woman with a master's degree and three kids (all from different dads; her ex-husband fathered the first), was nicknamed "Cartman's Mom" because she seemed all sweetness, etc. but we all knew she financed her cocaine habit by having sex with any man who was willing. In her case, they were some real scuzzbuckets. There were rumors that she shared her "bounty" with her 14-year-old daughter, who she would pull out of school if she didn't have a babysitter for her toddler. When she finally got child support for her middle son, she used the money for a trip to Cancun and bragged about it. I liked the people who worked in the pharmacy and was disappointed when they decided not to hire me permanently (I was filling in for a pharmacist who had a seriously ill child) but know now that they did me a favor.

A thread on another website was titled "Advice for living" and someone said "Jail is not a dating service." Really? You don't say!

Are the stories I have heard (mostly from earlier decades, but not always) of L&D nurses telling women to shut up and stop whining really true? If they are, :angryfire to them.

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Does this happen to anyone else?

"Oh, you're a nurse? Let me tell you, in great and passionate, not to mention highly improbable detail, all about the horrible nurses I had when I was in the hospital!"

I'm tempted to start doing this back to people. Figure out what they do and come up with some horrendous story about someone in the same profession. "Well, this one time a dog groomer pulled out all my dog's toenails! And then offered them as a sacrifice to the Devil!"

NB: Please note that I am NOT talking about patient/family stories. For those I put on my best therapeutic communication face and am appropriately sympathetic. I'm talking about my own family members, acquaintances, and the odd random stranger.

I hear ya. I don't complain to every customer service rep, dentist, teacher, etc. the problems I've had with others in similiar positions but for nurses it seems to be very different. I don't get it either.

And another fave is when someone finds out you are a nurse and hits you with every possible ailment they, their children, parents, distant relatives, etc . have had and are having and want to know what it is. Well, let me look into my crystal ball and tell you. :D

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