Strangest Visitor events

Nurses General Nursing

Published

How about those family members or friends who

come to visit? Any interesting experiences

with that?

Specializes in med/surg, geri, ortho, telemetry, psych.
while working in a LTC we had a cva pt who was non verbal and not mobile. her daughter came in on 3 different occasions and came screaming into the hall you didn't wash my mom's p---y! I smelled it and you didn't wash it. She would then grab a large stack of washclothes and wash Mom's "stuff" then she would use q-tips to clean all of the cracks and crevices. then she threw all of the uses cleaning stuff into the hall screaming about her mom's stinky P---y. We were finally able to get court order for her not to visit but you wouln't believe how hard that was.

:barf01:

Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.

there was the prostitute who used to climb in the window of the "men's ward" of our stepdown unit and go around the room servicing the patients for a nominal fee.

there was the patient who was in prison with a life sentence visiting his father, also a lifer. in that state, it was illegal to withdraw care on a prisoner with a life sentence because that would be shortening his sentence. so the son came in with a home-made machete down his pants to assist him in shortening dad's life sentence. i was trying to push maalox down dad's ng tube when all of a sudden one of sonny's prison guards tackled me. i lay on the floor with this huge, overweight prison guard on top of me, watching while dad's guard and sonny's second guard took him down, cuffed him and relieved him of the machete. i never saw that one coming!

there was the visitor who was angry about the nursing care his loved one was recieving and became verbally abusive to the nursing staff. my friend bob was the supervisor that night, and got called to come up and deal with the visitor. the talk didn't go well -- bob went running down the hall yelling "take cover!" and followed his own advice by diving behind the nurse's station just as the visitor fired his 9mm semi-automatic hand gun. the round went through the desk, driving splinters into bob's butt! he did get an award for being shot in the ass at work.

Ruby, you have the best stories!

Where do you work 'cause I want a job there! Sounds very exciting.

Specializes in acute care.

My reaction to this thread: WOW!

Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
ruby, you have the best stories!

where do you work 'cause i want a job there! sounds very exciting.

awww, shucks!

these stories are culled from 30 years of nursing in several states on both coasts and the midwest. i don't want to say where any of them happened . . .

Had a visitor come into the room of another client while we were sponging that person only to ask about how their relative's day had been. The relative was alert and going home the next day and could have answered the question themself.

I've had to code visitors (saddest case being a mom who'd lost her teenage son to leukemia); had a female patient who shot her hubby as he walked through the door carrying a big bouquet of flowers (she had the gun under her pillow); another patient was shot by her husband when he came to visit (that made national news); another husband came to our floor in the middle of the night to blow his wife away (he spooked and ran, they caught him in the parking lot with two guns on him).

And I worked at a "nice" hospital :lol2:

Is the husband shot the wife in Ohio? I may have been at the hospital doing clinicals when that all happened. They really missed the boat on that one.

Specializes in Corrections, neurology, dialysis.

I had one today. A family member of a patient barked at me to "turn down the thermostat" as soon as I walked in the room. I paused a moment for meaning and said "Oh, didn't it work when you tried to turn it down?"

Down the hall was a very elderly woman whose daughter has fallen TWICE this week while visiting her. Meanwhile her grandchildren were visiting with their children. There were no less than 5 kids in the room and a baby that cried endlessly. How is the poor woman supposed to get any rest with all that chaos? And who in their right mind would bring a baby to the hospital, what with MRSA and VRE? Not to mention how all the crying and rowdiness disturbs the other patients. Gads!

Across the hall was an elderly man whose daughter was with him and she did all his care and asked for nothing. She bathed him, changed his linens, helped him to the bathroom, and was very polite. I wish I had a thousand like her. She was a peach.

Specializes in Public Health, DEI.
Down the hall was a very elderly woman whose daughter has fallen TWICE this week while visiting her. Meanwhile her grandchildren were visiting with their children. There were no less than 5 kids in the room and a baby that cried endlessly. How is the poor woman supposed to get any rest with all that chaos? And who in their right mind would bring a baby to the hospital, what with MRSA and VRE? Not to mention how all the crying and rowdiness disturbs the other patients. Gads!quote]

You answered your own question... the key words being "right mind".

Is the husband shot the wife in Ohio? I may have been at the hospital doing clinicals when that all happened. They really missed the boat on that one.
No, it wasn't in Ohio. I missed that one...
Specializes in Public Health, DEI.

Something happened in an ER here too, a number of years ago. Can't remember any of the details to google it.

Specializes in ICU, telemetry, LTAC.

At my first job we had a patient... one of the frequent flyers with 2+ pages of home meds, COPD, DM, CHF, no veins, and enough yeast to take over and start its own society. She was always accompanied by a twin sister who was in just slightly better health and more motivated, and "took care" of her. Hm. So you had one rotund gal on the bed, hanging off it mostly, one rotund gal on the recliner/bed thing, and little to no room to move in there.

These two taught me to carry mints in my pocket.

Between the two of them they had a laundry list of crap they either wanted, or wanted done for them. None of which included bathing, and I didn't have time so I was grateful. They would constantly be on the call light about how the O2 wasn't working, please crank it up, (no thank you and please leave it alone) or "I can't breathe" but declined to use the cpap and refused to turn over or reposition, etc.

One night their sister showed up as was her routine when they were in the hospital, and she bathed them head to toe, soaked and meticulously cleaned their feet, etc. and had the room, and by extension the hall, smelling MUCH better. The next night she demanded another sofa bed in the room for herself. I flat out refused on the grounds that it would be a fire hazard. So around 2 am when I checked on the patient, what do I see. Twin on the recliner bed, snoring. Patient in the bed, on the same side she's been on since admission, snorting. Older sister on top of the patient, in the bed, sound asleep.

I thought "well no wonder she can't breathe!" before my brain shorted out and I had to leave the room to pinch myself. The next time I checked on them the sister had gone somewhere else.

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