Funny Things Patients Say

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Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.

So the other night I was called to assess an unresponsive patient on our locked psych unit. I arrived to find him to look perfectly fine and have perfect vital signs. We checked and he wasn't hypoglycemic (the most common cause of unresponsiveness calls). He didn't react in any way to a hard sternal rub. I was wracking my brain trying to think what could be causing his unresponsiveness.

I should add that this patient is well known to the rapid response team. He knows each of us by name and face and we have dealt with him many times, but this was the first time he had been found unresponsive.

I was standing at his bedside and had just paged the on call physician from my RRT cell phone when a code blue was paged overhead.

On hearing the overhead code announcement my unresponsive patient popped his eyes open and said:

"PMFB, it sounds like you have something more important to do."

I took off for the code thinking "You SOB" and I didn't mean shortness of breath.

[video=youtube_share;57Keg_a9eaM]

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Specializes in Neuro ICU and Med Surg.

Didn't you just want to smack him for wasting your time playing possum LOL? Being rapid response myself I have heard some doozies out of patients and staff LOL.

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Specializes in Psych, Addictions, SOL (Student of Life).

I had a dementia patient last night who came to the station asking for the deck steward! Seems there was a problem with the bed in her state room and she also wanted to know what time the shuffleboard tourney would be starting - gotta luv it.

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Periodically in the ER a drunk says to me: "Call me a cab!" So I do.

It never gets old.

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Yep, I would have been annoyed! I had an ICU patient who after she regained consciousness and I was trying to orient her, I asked her if she knew where she was. Her response was "I think I'm in some kind of test lab". I thought about what she said and had to agree with her. Not realizing what had happened, laying on one's back, suddenly awakening and seeing all the machines, tubes, etc, it does look like a human test lab.

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A few weeks ago I had a patient who had diminished eyesight and was also hard of hearing. We put signs up in each of the patients rooms as reminders to us, patients, family, etc. One says "Condition Help Call ####", the number we use to call a code. I'm hanging out in there with the patient, preparing some medications, and she yells, "What does that sign say? Canadian help?" and I yell back "No, it says condition help, for an emergency", and she says "Oh, that's too bad. We have so many people out of work here in this country already!"

:cheeky:As in, she thought there was a number to call just to hire Canadians.

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In my endoscopy unit days, there were always a few here and there who would announce upon arrival that they were there for their craniotomy....or craniectomy. Seems there really ARE those whose heads in their butts.... :confused:

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Specializes in Palliative, Onc, Med-Surg, Home Hospice.

We had a bed jumper and his bed alarm was on. I was manning the phones, so stayed at the nurses station when this pts bed alarm went off. I told him (over the call system) to stay in the bed. He responded "Well, I"m trying, I just don't know how!" When I told him that help was on the way, he said "Well, I really hope so, I'm lonely in here" He was a pip!

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Specializes in retired LTC.

LTC/NH pt told me 'it was raining IN his pt wife's private room". Yeah, right, we all thought. He came out again, concerned for flooding.

We went in to check.

It WAS raining in the room!!! Somehow he managed to hook the bedside curtains into a sprinkler head that triggered the room's sprinkler system.

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Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.

Old guy, frequent flyer, COPD, right across from nurse's station, had a habit of coming out of his room wearing only his O2 nasal cannula. When chided for this activity, he didn't know what the big fuss was about; God had made man in His image and therefore he was just "being godly". He thought, somehow. that he could turn people toward God with this activity. Hmmmm.

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Specializes in Utilization Management.
I had a dementia patient last night who came to the station asking for the deck steward! Seems there was a problem with the bed in her state room and she also wanted to know what time the shuffleboard tourney would be starting - gotta luv it.

When I was a floor nurse on my rehab unit, I had more than one patient ask me why they were assigned to "the ugly part of the ship" when they were "expecting a pleasure cruise". It always seemed to be patients of a certain surgeon, too.

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Specializes in PDN; Burn; Phone triage.

Spanglish speaking drunk patient who could not grasp how to use the IS. Suck like a straw. A straw! He finally has this Oprah moment and goes "Oh like a breathalyzer!"

Facepalm.

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