What was the MOST ridiculous thing a patient came to the ER for?

Specialties Emergency Nursing Q/A

And did you have to treat them?

I am just curious. Your stories always seem to either crack me up or shake my head in amazement.

Thanks for sharing ?

Amen to that... It would be cheaper to for hospitals to hire a couple of PA's and triage all these stupid things to them. Make them wait a few hours, have the PA instruct them on how to deal with the problem themselves and send them packing. The ER is not a restaurant. Insofar as those who use the squad, send the obviously nonemergent cases through to the PA, after several hours.....

If there were mandatory copays UP FRONT for everyone, even those on welfare insurance (medicaid, etc) then this problem would lessen. I personally think medicaid recipients should have to pay copays just like I do. My insurance costs us over $14,000 a year and we have copays from $25-$200 depending on the service on top of that $14,000.

We have a new urgent care center in our town. I love going there as they do not take medicaid so they're not extremely busy and you can see a doctor in a very reasonable time.

BUT: ERs have to treat all, regardless of ability to pay. Urgicenters don't. Sounds to me like a job for a social worker in conjunction w/ ER staff, maybe a PA. But there will always be abusers like this. And they are very good at making big scenes so that everyone around can hear and see and think "Oh, those heartless hospital people..." and not recognise the abuse for what it is.

Savvy

Specializes in Emergency.

No, the ER does NOT have to treat everybody. We are only required to provide a medical screening exam and if an emergency exists, stabilizing treatment. So if more doctors refused to treat non-emergent problems, rashes, colds, and some of the more ridiculous things that people come to the ER for, and refer them back to their PMD / clinic, we wouldn't have so many ERs going broke and having to close.

Specializes in ED-CEN/PACU/Flight.
No, the ER does NOT have to treat everybody. We are only required to provide a medical screening exam and if an emergency exists, stabilizing treatment. So if more doctors refused to treat non-emergent problems, rashes, colds, and some of the more ridiculous things that people come to the ER for, and refer them back to their PMD / clinic, we wouldn't have so many ERs going broke and having to close.

:yelclap:

Well said!

Specializes in 6 years of ER fun, med/surg, blah, blah.

We used to have a drunk patient who would be brought in almost daily by EMS & treated our ED like a flop house. He would sleep it off, eat & then demand to leave. Not a nice person to be around....

One day after several days in a row of this behavior, the Doc in charge of him told us to remove his stretcher, not feed him & after cussing us out, left within 30 minutes. We didn't see him again for a long time. Nice work Doc.

Specializes in Emergency.

We need more docs like that!!

Specializes in ED-CEN/PACU/Flight.
We used to have a drunk patient who would be brought in almost daily by EMS & treated our ED like a flop house. He would sleep it off, eat & then demand to leave. Not a nice person to be around....

One day after several days in a row of this behavior, the Doc in charge of him told us to remove his stretcher, not feed him & after cussing us out, left within 30 minutes. We didn't see him again for a long time. Nice work Doc.

That's when I would have wandered up to my off-duty cop and told him that a drunk left AMA, so he would've been hunted down and arrested for public intoxication!

Specializes in geri, med/surg, neuro critical care.
Well in our country preservatives=condoms.....

so THAT'S why lubrication is called jelly...:p

I don't know why anyone would want to go to an ER unless they had to. Obviously a lot of people do since this thread is full of them.

I have had to go to the 3 times in my adult life(infected finger that had to be lanced, working in deli with fake fingernails hit fake nail against pusher on slicer and ripped off over half my real nail and a good chunk of skin with it(that was a rather painful and bloody encouter that cured me of ever wearing fake nails again) and the third was mastitis at 3 wks pp) each time while it was worth it in the end I didn't like it too much and never wanted to go back unless I really had to.

I ended up with mastits again at 8 wks pp and waited to get an appointment with my doc, who upon seeing me and my now badly infected breasts(yes both were at that point, less than 12 hours later, infected) yelled at me that I should of gone to the ER. I didn't want to because I didn't like my last experience of spending 5 hours alone(they wouldn't let my 3 wk old back with me(and I know it was for a very valid reason, even if I don't see the logic in keeping him in the waiting room with everyone vs me and the person I could hear next to me(r/o DVT) with my curtains drawn) and my husband couldn't very well be in the waiting room with him so he could be exposed to EVERYONE(who all wanted to look at, touch, breathe on and coo at the baby) who came through the door so he took our son home and I got to call him to come get me once I was released) freezing in a breastmilk soaked hospital gown, badly engorged(woke up sick and didn't have time to fully pump and wasn't offered one in the ER, and I had a fever of 103.8 30 mins after I took Tylenol, my son was still asleep so couldn't offer him any, not that it would have mattered as he still couldn't latch properly and wouldn't have helped me any anyways, and we flew to the ER) and leaking everywhere. It also trashed my milk supply for weeks afterwards. I also didn't see the point in spending another $100 on an ER visit when a $15 co-pay at the dr's office would get me faster treatment once I arrived as I had an appointment, I could pump ahead of time so I wouldn't be full and be home well before I would need to pump again, I wouldn't be forced to be seperated from my son and it wouldn't take hours to get my script for antibiotics(which was all I really needed anyways) so I could go on my way and I didn't want to bother the ER staff for a simple breast infection. I will say it only took 5 hrs with my ER visit prior because I was not showing any obvious mastitis signs, like red breasts, that appeared after I got home from the ER and sat down to finally pump. So I had to get a full workup, blood cultures, pelvic exam(with stitches still in, I wouldn't recommend that for my worst enemy, the poor doctor looked horrified when she saw I was still sporting stiches and I was horrified, at my reaction when she tried to insert a regular sized speculum and I almost kicked her from the pain of her trying to insert it, she quickly grabbed a ped one which still hurt but wasn't as bad), chest x-ray, etc(basically they were checking for anything and everything that could make a woman who delivered a baby 3 wks prior run a very high temp that wasn't being controlled with Tylenol), mastitis was kind of a "nothing else is wrong, lets assume it's mastitis and treat it as such", per my OB. They did their jobs and did them well trying to figure out what was wrong with me, and considering it was a very rainy Friday and they were overfull with patients who had real emergencies like MVAs, strokes, MIs, embolisms, etc I felt bad taking up a bed for 5 hours with something stupid and not an emergency, a breast infection. My OB had told me that I should have been offered a breast pump but as I said they were really busy, with real emergencies, and my painfully overfull leaking boobs were most certainly not an emergency. If I had had any sense I would have brought my own breastpump, but we were kind of in a rush to get me to the ER(I wasn't even wearing a bra, that's how fast we left I didn't have time to put one on) when we left and the last thing on my mind was to bring my breastpump. I did however at 8 wks pp earned the distiction of having the worst case of mastitis that my doctor and her nurses(who all wanted a peek and all of them, including my female doc flinched when they saw it, one breast was almost completely red and the other was also starting to get multiple red streaks,and it had not looked that way when I had pumped not even 1/2 hr earlier, only one breast had a red streak that didn't even cover half my breast) had ever seen.

I would never dream of abusing the ER, when my gallbladder went south(I was 25 at the time my gallbladder should have still had at the very least a good 15 years left in it) and all I could do was lay on the couch, moan and occasionally run to the bathroom to puke my guts out and dry heave and retch for 3 days straight I refused to go to the ER because #1- barfing and feeling like crap isn't an emergency #2- I knew I would end up spending a good 12 hours waiting to be seen in a normal er, after being triaged, in the waiting room since barfing is not a real emergency and #3- I didn't have insurance and I knew my only choice would be the county hospital and I knew I'd spend at least a day(if not longer) in the waiting room waiting for them to see me and I really didn't feel up to spending any amount of time in the emergency room, I felt too sick to go to the hospital. I knew I wouldn't be able to pay for an ER bill, and even though everyone told me to just go anyway and not worry about the bill, it would eventually be written off and that they had to see me I felt like if I did that I'd be cheating the system for something that I didn't see as an emergency so I knew my only choice would be Parkland(county hospitals are usually a lot more forgiving when you tell them there is no way on earth, even with the only 2 adults in the household working(my job didn't offer insurance and my husband couldn't afford to put me on his), that you can pay them) and I wasn't wasting their time with something stupid like the fact that I had done nothing but puke, retch and dry heave for the past 3 days and in the time it took me to pay them back(I'm not one to refuse to try and work something out to pay off a bill, if it's my bill I'm going to pay it, even if it takes a while to actually pay it off) the money they had spent to treat me could take away from the treatment of someone with a REAL emergency.

Just my very very long 2 cents on this. Abuse of the ER should be a crime, and it's people like that who make people with issues that should be treated in the ER(mastitis being one of them as I found out with my second bout of it, my doctor told me I was very lucky I didn't end up with an abscess) to wait to see their own doctors and end up sicker because they are afraid of bothering the ER staff with something that they think isn't really an emergency, as in they aren't in eminent danger of dying. I hope this makes sense, I'm a little one the tried side.

Taryn

Specializes in ER, critical care.

By ambulance, patient treated for assault and intoxication. Told to take Tylenol when discharged.

Next morning, by ambulance....... c/o out of tylenol.

And you all know you can't make this stuff up.

Why do you keep feeding these people? My thought is, if you have money for alcohol or drugs - you have money for food.

I tried not feeding these people except when they come have been here many hours and it is meal times but I am usually circumveted by a fellow nurse or a doctor. One nurse not only feeds them but she gives them a cab voucher and lets them walk out without making sure they take a cab(we all know the person is going to sell the cab voucher for booze). They call it job security, remember they all have medicaid and the hospital gets paid for every trip. With just the 2 I mentioned they averaged 100 visits a month.

Specializes in ortho/neuro/general surgery.
I felt bad taking up a bed for 5 hours with something stupid and not an emergency, a breast infection.

I could be wrong, but...I think a temp of 103.8 at 3 wks pp IS an emergency. So is vomiting and abdominal pain for 3 days. Those are both good reasons for going, IMO.

Specializes in ER, ICU, L&D, OR.
We have 5-6 patients that come to the ED by ambulance every single day anywhere from 0nce to 6 times in a day always "overserved" One of them averaged 5 times a day for 7 days straight when she comes in she is hitting and sreaming at the staff demanding food when we don't give her food immediately she flopps on the floor if we give her food she finishes it then says she needs a cigarette then goes out for a cigarette and elopes only to return for the next meal. Usually she comes in with c/o of abdominal pain (hx of pancreatitis)or difficulty breathing (she has COPD) we give her nebulizers and work her up only to have her take off before the results are back. We tried getting her section 35'd and she made such a ruckess in the court the judge threw her out saying don't come back! The other one comes back almost comatose desaturating to 80 when not on a rebreather.She just sobers up enough to stand, then off she goes to get drunk again. Another also comes for the lunch meal then screams and yells after eating that he wants to leave. He is so obnocious the staff lets him go if he can stand.

PAGING Dr Kevorkian where are you

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