What is your worst visitor story?

Munch · Jan 6, 2018

I've worked at both a rural (critical access hospital) and what can only be described as an inner city teaching hospital (but not in a big city) The teaching hospital had a crack house across the street from the parking garage. It amazed me what lengths patients would go to to get drugs. I mentioned the woman who shot up in her permacath. She died. (Renal failure related to drug use) We had to have several people have their central lines DC'd because of drug use, and these were patients on IV abx and other vesicants.
It can be an experience, can't it. I was lucky that the teaching hospital I worked at had armed security and the only hired retired military and former cops. And because they paid more than any police department in the area, we had good security!

It really is quite an experience. Its incredible though the desperation that comes with being an addict...the desperation really is limitless. What a sorry life to sit there and try to pick the lock on a PCA box I feel sorry for a lot of them. There is literally a housing project across the street from my hospital. People in the waiting rooms are constantly taking off to go across the street to go score. Luckily hospital policy doesn't allow for the patients to leave to go smoke. We offer a nicotine patch and if they leave to smoke is goes down as they eloped. I couldn't even imagine if we let patients go smoke the amount of them that would run across the street for a drug run.

It keeping up with the thread and visitors I had a visitor bring a patient a coffee that had crushed Vicodin in it. How do I know? They were arguing over how many he crushed and put in there! I can't even tell you how many visitors were strung out themselves. The pin-prick puples and nodding off in the visitors chairs..very subtle.

Another favorite is when a patient who had a VERY bad crack addiction had her dealer come up to her. Apparently her connection isn't very reliable because he sold her soap! I heard her screaming about it over the phone to whoever she was talking to. Then she of course asked the person she was talking to, to come bring her a stem and some crack. I told her the police would be called if she kept it up. Some people are shameless..they dont even try to be discreet. I had another patients visitor try and bring my patient some heroin. She had her hair tied in a bun and the heroin in the bun but the bags were bright yellow and you can see them sticking out. The yellow was also a stark contrast against her dark brown hair. I told her to leave or the police would be called.

The sad and pitiful fact is these incidents are so commonplace if the police came and arrested all these people Rikers island would be full. So we mostly kick them out and threaten to call the police if they don't want to leave or if they are overt in their smuggling actions. We usually put the patient they were coming to see on a one to one.

Munch · Jan 6, 2018

I dislike family members who are also nurses from different hospital that bombard you with a million questions.
Especially when you got report 30 mins ago and questions were not pertinent to that patient's care.
After a working 1-2 years I strongly believe they are just showing off their nursing knowledge to their own family.

Someone just wrote on article on here about his experience as a new nurse with a patient who's wife was a nurse. Ive had to bite my tongue quite a bit because of patients with family members that are medical professionals. Or what about when the patients themselves are the actual medical professionals.

serenitylove14 · Jan 6, 2018

An older couple, wife was stepdown patient in the ICU.

Patients husband had alot of holes in his jeans, one was right down the middle right below his butthole.

He asked where the bathroom was and I let him know.

As he walks away... juicy drops of doo doo drops from his pants on the floor, trailing him...

We got him new pants but HE REFUSED to put them on!!

It was hilarious and nasty at the same time!

KatieMI, BSN, MSN, RN · Jan 6, 2018

An older couple, wife was stepdown patient in the ICU.
Patients husband had alot of holes in his jeans, one was right down the middle right below his butthole.
He asked where the bathroom was and I let him know.
As he walks away... juicy drops of doo doo drops from his pants on the floor, trailing him...
We got him new pants but HE REFUSED to put them on!!
It was hilarious and nasty at the same time!

In LTACH we commonly got patients after they spent 2 to 3 weeks in ICU - meaning, we also got their personal belongings. Those clothes, unbelievably dirty to begin with, were sitting in those plastic bags for the same time. They smelled awfully and sometimes were plain rotten at the time we had them.

One time, a CENA took pity of a patient who had to go to SNF in several days with literally nothing clean to cover his butt with except hospital gown. She took his clothes home, laundered them and even did some mending. The patient went completely crazy. He yelled for hours about spots of hot sauce he got one better day, about smell of his late kitty's pee and "very comfortable" feels in his skin, all of that now lost forever.

The irony was that the patient was treated for calciphylaxis and Stevens -Johnson syndrome and not long before that got out of condition when everything that was about to touch his body must be sterile.

Elfriede · Jan 6, 2018

Â´bout 30 family-visitors in a closed and small COPD-patientsroom....

winniewoman9060ret · Jan 6, 2018

Had patient take fentanyl patch of of sharps and chew it. She also peed on toilet paper, ran the paper over her brand new knee incision. She had replacement done because of a recall. Needless to say, knee got infected. So she had a sitter. She stayed in until 2nd knee was completed. She took her methadone crushed it put it in cap of inhaler. That got switched to elixir.

kakamegamama · Jan 7, 2018

1) As my father-in-law was admitted to the ER for what turned out to be his last hospital visit, his eldest complained about it being just like his dad to do something stupid (like fall and fracture his pelvis and go into respiratory distress) , necessitating gathering all family together if they wanted to be with him one last time, while he was watching his daughter play softball.

2) That same day, as I went into the ER waiting room to update my father-in-law's sisters, one said:"Just like "Bob" to go and die before I tell him everthing I need to."

Needless to say, those family members caused extra pain and heartache to my husband and his younger brother, who were still traumatized by the death of their mother just 2 years before. Some people......

Munch · Jan 7, 2018

An older couple, wife was stepdown patient in the ICU.
Patients husband had alot of holes in his jeans, one was right down the middle right below his butthole.
He asked where the bathroom was and I let him know.
As he walks away... juicy drops of doo doo drops from his pants on the floor, trailing him...
We got him new pants but HE REFUSED to put them on!!
It was hilarious and nasty at the same time!

Ewwwwwwww. I've had a couple of those too. Surveillance video in the elevator picked up a visitor shaking his pant leg and out came a ripe one. Another visitor left one on the patients bathroom floor. Why not the toilet that was right there I don't know. He had the nerve to tell me I had to clean it. No way. I'm not your servent and I'm not your nurse when you become my patient ill clean your bodily fluids up no problem. Ill get you stuff to clean it with but your doing the dirty work, visitors aren't even supposed to use patients bathrooms either. I think he did it to try and mess with me. He had been giving me a hard time all day and he seemed quite able-bodied and all with it..no overt reasons to dump on the floor. Why else leave it literally in front of the toilet?

One time I was the actual visitor and visiting someone in the Emergency room while he was waiting for a bed upstairs. He was in the restroom trying to give a urine sample when this girl who was a patient in the ED..she seemed a little bit developmentally delayed..she was yelling everything instead of talking at a reasonable tone so she has to go to the bathroom but both ED bathrooms were occupied. She just keeps yelling "I have to take an IT" with a capital SH when Gene(I still remember the poor guys name) her nurse told her to take a seat on the stretcher. She had been annoying him all day apparently and I could tell she was the type of person that had absolutely no superego and said whatever came to mind. All of a sudden she yells "I just IT myself(with a capital SH of course)" poor Gene was just standing there asking and my guess hoping if he was on candid camera.

Swrn1 · Jan 8, 2018

Giving my pt who was FRESH from ICU (moved to stepdown) and hadn't had a shower, just bath wipe bed baths for several days a ******* on the side of the bed, hooked to a tele monitor and the poor PCT walked in.

Had visitors come in and fairly sure they gave drugs to the pt, he was on Tele but after they left he ended up in ICU, unresponsive and the visitors left vomit and a bra in the bathroom.

Or my personal favorite was the daughter who got angry when we changed her fathers antibiotics once we got the results from his culture, because that meant we had the wrong one the first time. (She wasnt understanding the concept AT ALL!) SCREAMING at the top of her lungs in the hallway in her pink leapord print adult onesie "WE GON' OWN THIS *****!!" and demanding her father be transferred to another facility...at 11 pm. The poor patient was so embarrassed.

Munch · Jan 8, 2018

Giving my pt who was FRESH from ICU (moved to stepdown) and hadn't had a shower, just bath wipe bed baths for several days a ******* on the side of the bed, hooked to a tele monitor and the poor PCT walked in.
Had visitors come in and fairly sure they gave drugs to the pt, he was on Tele but after they left he ended up in ICU, unresponsive and the visitors left vomit and a bra in the bathroom.
Or my personal favorite was the daughter who got angry when we changed her fathers antibiotics once we got the results from his culture, because that meant we had the wrong one the first time. (She wasnt understanding the concept AT ALL!) SCREAMING at the top of her lungs in the hallway in her pink leapord print adult onesie "WE GON' OWN THIS *****!!" and demanding her father be transferred to another facility...at 11 pm. The poor patient was so embarrassed.

Love the people who threaten to sue the hospital. Pretty sure if you are asking the ER for a pregnancy test and the doc for a RX of Tylenol so you don't have to pay for it at the pharmacy that you won't be able to afford an attorney that would even be interested in your case.

Penelope_Pitstop, BSN, RN · Jan 8, 2018

Working in a small inner city hospital...

A fellow came into the lobby and informed the desk clerk that he was here to see Mr. Snorf.

Desk clerk informed the fellow that it was 3 AM and visitors weren't allowed at this time and that the patient was probably sleeping.

Fellow said, "That's fine if he's sleeping. I don't want to visit him. I want to go in there and...look at him."

Ambersmom, BSN, RN · Jan 8, 2018

hmmm... I have several, the patient with the new mi having sex in his bed. Sex in the bathroom, bringing in drugs, the visitor who insisted he get a medical exam for his dirty rotten foot, (resident almist did it), the visitor who decided the 20lbs of traction on the patients leg "looked too heavy" and placed it on the bed alongside the broken leg. The wife who told her non weight bearing husband that it was ok to bear weight and walk to the bathroom.

The women who got angry at her little kid for some imagined infraction and brought the kid in the bathroom to scream at and spank. had to have security and 911 response on that, and then the head injured patient whose visitor told them we were holding illegally and to pull fire alarm so she could leave, that ended up with full 911 response.