I am writing a "paper" on the dumbest reasons/stories that people show up/come to ER. Would appreciate ANY input ANY of the ER staff out there has for me.........................IF you'd like a copy of the FINAL draft, please let me know and I'll forward it.
Thanks much!
PS. My winning entry so far is a Mom who brought 1 month old infant in at 2:30 AM because "it wouldn't look her in the eye. It doesn't recognize me!"
Had a guy call our OB triage (essentially an OB ER), he said his GF was 44 weeks pregnant and he was worried that she hadn't delivered yet and she was refusing to come be checked out. Police were sent to their home to get the patient and she was brought in.
Palpating this very large woman's abdomen the triage nurse (not me that night) came out and told me that she couldn't feel a fetus nor could she get a heartbeat. So the OB came in to check via ultrasound. As he scanned the abdomen he kept circling around and saying..."and there's your bladder", "and there's your bladder again", ,scan and scan some more> "hmmm, uh ma'am? Have you ever had any surgery before?" She said "no" he then asked her "like, has anyone removed your uterus?" As the boyfriend's lightbulb started to go off he started breathing heavier and looking very angry (this guy looked like an NFL linebacker) my friend said she started to back away from the bed in case he went off!
It turned out that this woman had been telling her BF that she was pregnant so he wouldn't leave her and that she had had a vag hyst years before!! Good grief, how did she think she was ever going to get away with that!
A lady came in with c/o that the hospital pharmacy gave her white percocet tablets instead of the blue ones she was used to getting. She thought they were tylenol.
I work on a medical floor in a Level 1 hospital. One evening, one of the trauma surgeons was seeing a patient on our floor when his pager went off. A man and his wife were in the ER, he'd gotten a vibrator stuck in his rectum while they were playing. The Doc took off saying he guessed he'd check if they wanted it removed or just new batteries put in.
When the guy was later transferred to our floor for a 24 hour obs - he and his wife disappeared down the back elevator before he could even be assessed. Imagine that!
Hmmm, well not ER but was called 911 to a LOL with an eyelash in her eye.
Not my most stellar hour but........
I was working Triage in a busy ER and we were hammered, ambulance divert in hour 3 and the like, when I had a pair of women come in obviously upset. Now were both in the high heeled shoes with stretch pants (can't say for sure but I remember leopard print) and really reinforcing a stereotype. Anyway, when I finally got Candy and Dasey calmed down enough to talk, they proceeded to tell me they were attacked by a pack of Chihuahua. Thinking of the stabbing in the back, I lost all trace of professionalism, burst out laughing, and had to have a coworker complete the triage.
Had a nice LOL present for flatus. Again in Triage, she told me her PCP wouldn't do anything about it so she came to the ER.
Another busy night in the ER, coworker comes back from Triage shaking her head (never a good sign). When I asked her what was up, she handed me the chart and walked off. The Triage note read 'Pt states "They started me on a new medication for The Voices and they have stopped. I'm not ready for that.'"
I've never worked in an ER. I've worked in a community health center where we got LOTS of walk-ins, some complaints very similar to what's posted here:
- lots of roaches/bugs in ears
- "I was working and fell and busted my eye on a metal pipe"
AKA "I got drunk, got into a fight, and got my butt kicked."
- CC: "I'm impotent. I think I need Viagra."
"What makes you think that?"
"I can't get an erection." (Turns out the guy was having sex like 4 times a day or something. Give it a chance to recuperate!)
- The female patient who INSISTED that we check her prostate, because "there's something wrong with it." No matter how much we explained that women don't have prostates just like men don't have a uterus, she kept insisting.
- "I have a headache." AKA "I slept with a hooker, I think I have an STD, and I don't want to tell you that." (That one is kinda sad, actually.)
Specializes in ER/Nuero/PHN/LTC/Skilled/Alzheimer's.
LOL with a bruise to her leg for 3 days. She had hit it on a night table. What did her family think was going to happen? They even had her brought in by EMS.
Little boy brought in at 230 am for throwing up once-A WEEK AGO!
EMS brought in a guy claiming to have a seizure after cops tried to arrest him for leaving the scene of an accident. He would lay on the bed and whenever staff went by he would wiggle his right arm and start screaming "I'm having a seizure!". The doc went in, told him he was XXX and sent him on to jail.
My pet peeve are people who come in for a myriad of complaints like, "Umm, I feel sick and my back hurts and I had a fever a couple of days ago. I think I might puke and my blood pressure was weird looking when I checked it at the pharmacy. Plus I have anxiety and I'm out of my pills." Whenever they start in on these symptoms that are all over the board then I know 9 xs out of ten they are drug seeking.
Yesterday I had a lady come in to triage for "being stressed out". Hello fuzzy, who isn't?
Well, lupin stole some of my thunder, there... but here's what I've got.
Waaaaaaay back in the day when I was a volunteer at the ER front desk, a 45 year old woman walked in with a complaint of bruises on her shins. I asked how she received the bruises, and she said she had been walking around in the dark and ran into her glass coffee table. The class did not break, she had no lacs, but thought she "ought to get it checked out, just in case."
A few minutes after she came in, a frantic father ran in screaming for us to get a wheelchair and get out to the car for his daughter who had an obvious tib/fib fracture. (I stilll can't believe he drove her to the hospital himself...there was blood everywhere.) So, anyhow, we get the daughter in, triage her, and wheel her right back into a treatment room.
The woman with the bruises on her shins came up to the desk to complain that she had "gotten there first" and that "everyone should be made to wait their turn."
I triaged a guy one night, no psych dx or anything, dressed nice, got ambulance ride. When I asked him why he came in he held his hand down (veins appear) then he holds them up (veins dissappear) absolutely nothing else to complain of. VSS. We had a particularly brutal Doctor on that night, it was great.
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Pneumothorax, BSN, RN
1,180 Posts
are you ready for this?, this is all from my b/f whos a paramedic/ff-
1."hair pain"
2. "im hearing ghosts"
3. 'i have a sore throat from eating too much fried chicken"
4. "ive been having rough sex for 6 days straight
5."i havent pooped in a week" "why is that ma'am?" "ive been smoking crack
6. toothache.
7 runny nose
8 "i have a roach in my ear" [ and this girl did in fact have a roach in her ear:uhoh3:]
i have so many more---but i cant remember them right now.
i hope this helps