Share Your Funniest Patient Stories...

paraloco · Apr 20, 2005

Franemtnurse said:

And I'll bet it made a funny memory for her too.:chuckle

My mother was a home health nurse, told me funny story. I hope I'm not leaving anything out. She was caring for an elderly man, post-cva. He had a poor memory also. The first day she was in his home and he asked for his smoking materials, my mother informed him " Mr. ----, you haven't smoked in years." I rolled when she imitated the puzzled look on his face when he replied, "I haven't?" But yes, he did, and the nurse my mother relieved didn't tell her that.

smarkley · Apr 21, 2005

There was one night when I worked on an ortho unit that I was in a pt room. I heard a commotion out in the hallway, looked out and saw a pt standing in the middle of the hall, screaming at the top of his lungs. Other nurses were trying to calm him down and figure out where he came from (he had wandered from another unit). "GIVE ME DR. HALDOL!! I NEED DR. HALDOL!" He screamed this over and over until security could come and help the nurses calm him down. I still laugh about that now.

TDub, MSN, EdD · Apr 21, 2005

I was a young nurse on a pulmonary critical care unit and I had a lady who would exhibit severe sundowning. I got wise to things and compensated by bringing her 10 pm meds at 5:30. I know it isn't protocol, but at least she ingested her meds.

One day I wasn't quick enough. I came in and tried to give her Carafate. She glared at me and hissed "Go to hell!" I was somewhat taken aback as you can imagine, so I tried being bright and cheerful, stepping closer to the bed. Bad idea. She reached out quick as a snake and grabbed me by the throat. Her fingers slid back, coming to rest right over my carotids. When I passed out, my body weight pulled me out of her clutches. I came to and said, "Whoa! I'm 26 years old and you just kicked my ***."

She gave me the evil eye and grunted "Good!" and rolled over to sleep.

The next day she had no memory of it and said, "Oh, my dear, what happened to your neck?" very sweet and concerned.

The worst part was I left for a 2 week trip to Germany that weekend. I had to go through customs and checkpoints trying to explain why I didn't match my passport photo.

lgbudha · Apr 21, 2005

I have a similar story about a patient we tried to restrain once. we had a very large man on our unit one night. he was confused an agitated and doctor ordered a posey vest for him, the problem was that at the time we didn't have a wheelchair big enough for him to sit in. we decided that we would have him sit in a big recliner chair and posey him to that. we tied him down really good and left the room. later that night (about 2 am), we were sitting in the nurses station when he heard a serious of large "thuds" coming down the hall. we peeked our heads into the hallway and there was our man coming down the hall with the recliner still strapped to his back. we ran to him and tried to get him back to his room but he just kept going down the hall. we ended up calling a "code 13" and all male staff came to help us restrain him.

ruby vee said:

remember geriatric chairs? we used to posey our wanderers into a geri chair for the day. only ours didn't have brakes, and one old guy named juan used to be able to push himself around the unit with his tippy toes. backward. we'd put him out by the nurse's station on busy days, and everyone would sort of keep an eye on him -- even the house staff who all knew him well.
one particularly busy day, there were two codes going on at once and everyone was involved with one or the other of them. juan scooted himself off the unit in his geri chair, and was found at the doorway to the firestairs trying to get the door open. the nursing supervisor brought him back. the next time, a patient's family member went to get the unit secretary, who pulled an na out of a code to bring juan back. the third time, a harvard medical student encountered the nice old man posey'd into a geri chair trying to open the door to the stairs. I'm sure he thought he was being helpful when he opened the door for the juan and held it for him.

the next day when I came back to work, juan was poseyd in a geri chair wearing a cast over his entire torso and both shoulders. the toes still worked fine, though. I was determined not to have a repeat accident on my shift, so the na and I poseyed juan into the chair, and tied the chair to the sink in his room. the first sign that that may not have been a wise choice was when there was a loud crash followed by the sounds of gushing water and a flood pouring out of juan's room. by the time I got there, juan was propelling himself backward out of his room, dragging the sink. the housekeepers were not amused. nor were the plumbers!

after that, we tied the chair to the handrail in the halls -- you know -- the ones patients are supposed to hang on to as they ambulate in the halls. another poor decision. the rail wasn't attached to anything but dry wall . . . and following another loud crash (and some excited shouting) we found juan propelling himself down the hall dragging the railing and a large chunk of dry wall. the carpenters were not amused. nor was the couple in the room on the other side of the dry wall . . . they were engaging in some long-postponed marital relations when juan's removing a chunk of drywall exposed them to the entire unit!

sadly, juan's trip down the stairs backward ultimately caused his demise. he got a pressure sore under his cast, became septic, went into septic shock and arrested. we couldn't saw him out of the cast fast enough to start CPR in a timely fashion . . .

ISeeURN · Apr 22, 2005

Many stories came to mind, but this one stands out... I had just passed the NCLEX over here in the States, after having studied and worked as a RN in Germany for quite a few years already. Germans are not into abbreviations, as Americans seem to be, so I was rather unfamiliar with them.

During one of my first nights on my first unit I worked at in the US, we got report from dayshift, and one patient was described as a "PIA". I had heard of "TIA's", figured it was something similar, and asked my preceptor later on that night to explain the unfamiliar abbreviation to me. She did, laughingly, as " Pain in the A..". Ooops.

Several weeks later I was asked by the night Charge Nurse to log on to our unit Computer, and check on which patients were in the ER, and if anything looked like potential surgical ICU "material". ( This was pre-HIPPA). Imagine my stunned face, when one after another of the patients listed had a "SOB" next to their name. One of the sweetest nurses I had the pleasure to work with on this unit must have seen my slightly shocked face, and asked what was wrong, when I stated something to the effect, that it seemed to me that someone with a serious case of PMS (note my use of an abbreviation) must be putting in admitting info at the ER. Asked why I would think such a thing, I pointed out, that 80% of these patients were labeled "SOB's". Now if that was not rude... The Nurse looked at me, and all of a sudden burst into laughter, almost unable to blurt out " SOB stands for Shortness of Breath".For the time i stayed working at that unit I did not hear the end of it, especially when one of the admitting Dx's was "SOB" :)

Sue7573 · Apr 23, 2005

I was told when I first started working at my nusing home that if Mr. and Mrs. *Jones door was shut, not to bother them. (wink wink). I hoped and prayed that I would never have to worry about that. So one evening I come into work and their door was shut. (I was only 16 and thought once you got old..... ) Boy I didn't even walk past that room for fear of hearing anything... after about 2 hours I made the comment that they may need to be checked on. The nurse said nah sometimes their door is shut for a whole shift. After supper and still no one had checked on them I kept hearing a muffled help... help me...... someone help me... I asked if anyone else had heard this and we went on a hunt. As we got closer to Mr. and Mrs. Jones room we knew it was coming from that room. Of course we would see what was wrong but no one wanted to be the first in the room. So I was literallly pushed in to see that they had pushed there beds together. Mrs. Jones was sound asleep and Mr. Jones was wedged between the two beds. We couldn't pull him up by the arms and legs and he was not quite on the floor yet. So I crawled under the bed and placed a pillow under his head and then we pulled the beds apart to let him fall the rest of the way to the floor. We checked him out and made sure he was ok and as we were on our way out the door he said "I didn't get finished would you shut the door please" we just looked at each other........

Sue

LPN EMT MOM · Apr 28, 2005

trvlnRN said:

We all have lots of stories to tell. I thought it would be fun if we shared a few of our funniest patient stories with each other.
I keep remembering to a particular incident a few years back. It wasn't even my patient. I was heading down the hallway on the CCU unit in which I worked. I was minding my own business, heading down the hallway and I just happened to glance into a patient room... I couldn't believe what I saw... An older gentleman, who clearly was having some post-op dementia after open heart surgery.... he was sitting up in the middle of his bed and with knees bent and feet braced at the bedrail for extra support.... With both hands...HE WAS PULLING on all of his CHEST TUBES with ALL OF HIS MIGHT! Needless to say, I sprang into action along with all the surrounding nursing staff. It took security along with all of us to restrain this man so he wouldn't hurt himself. Though it wasn't funny at the time....I can't get this picture out of my mind and find it amusing to remember.

What's your story? :chuckle

as a lpn one of my elder patients asked me if I was a "real " nurse I said yes with a smile...he then said his daughter was one of those lets play nurses before she became a real one and he was so happy that I'd just gone on and started out real... so it always strikes me funny to hear RN I think real nurse LPN let's play or low paid nurse emt 's some still consider ambulance drivers ... and if I'm called a b I t c h I just think babe in total control of herself and smile and say thnk you...

TDub, MSN, EdD · Apr 29, 2005

You said yes, you were an LPN and then he insulted you? He's got brass ones for sure.

LPN EMT MOM · Apr 30, 2005

TDub said:

You said yes, you were an LPN and then he insulted you? He's got brass ones for sure.

older people don't know or distinquish lpn from RN he thought that an lpn wasn't a real nurse... I run into RN 's that think LPN's aren't real nurses in the workplace all the time... and yet I have to show them how to do something I have spent years training my bosses... I have a boss now who is a 4 yr RN and administator to a private duty group... she told me that as long as I don't get within 3 feet the fact the patient was MRSA positive wasn't anything to worry about....never mind it was an open trach patient and single cath suctioning...nothing in line at all... I take more offense at her assuming I could suction and still stay further away than my arm reach... let alone bedpan bath dress or do manual percussion... those people offend me... or the RN who kept telling me that my patinet with a heart rate of 214 and bp of 86/54 was just fine he'll perk up once you get some fluids in him... yea he was dead 4 hours after I started his IV of NS for dehydration... she wouldn't know v tach even when I kept going back and saying this worries me...

FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I · Apr 30, 2005

LPN EMT MOM said:

older people don't know or distinquish lpn from RN he thought that an lpn wasn't a real nurse... I run into RN 's that think LPN's aren't real nurses in the workplace all the time... and yet I have to show them how to do something I have spent years training my bosses... I have a boss now who is a 4 yr RN and administator to a private duty group... she told me that as long as I don't get within 3 feet the fact the patient was MRSA positive wasn't anything to worry about....never mind it was an open trach patient and single cath suctioning...nothing in line at all... I take more offense at her assuming I could suction and still stay further away than my arm reach... let alone bedpan bath dress or do manual percussion... those people offend me... or the RN who kept telling me that my patinet with a heart rate of 214 and bp of 86/54 was just fine he'll perk up once you get some fluids in him... yea he was dead 4 hours after I started his IV of NS for dehydration... she wouldn't know v tach even when I kept going back and saying this worries me...

Or the ER nurse who told me, "Oh it's probably just swelling from his roadrash." After I reported my assessment findings of a young boy who came in with a fractured nose, wriist, and possible fractured hip. I know the difference between a deformity and just plain edema. Duh! I was an EMT for 18 years.

anonymurse · May 1, 2005

An instructor story: A pt had cleaned her breakfast plate and my instructor asked how she liked it. She said "It was good, all except for that Kentucky jelly."

Inspired_2b · May 6, 2005

:chuckle ....

I was coming down the hall, when I heard a family member of one of our pts calling for a nurse. Mr. X, in the next bed who was put in the geri-chair with a restraint applied was attempting to get out. We found him with one of his legs dangling out from side of the chair, and him pushing off the little table (the restraint) with all his might. He said he needed to go to the bathroom "badly"....we quickly undid the restraint and stood him up. Man, was he in a rush! We had hardly had time to unlock the brakes of the chair ...so as to give him room to move...when he grabbed his nearby walker and started moving fast towards the bathroom. He banged the walker against the bed, the chair and the wall before he found a leeway...meanwhile, one of us is fumbling with the brakes on the chair while the other one is holding up the straps of his hospital pants (which are falling off his thinning waste). We make it to the bathroom in a rush and with some difficulty. When he enters, he looks around suspiciously, touches the sink, and looks at his reflection in the mirror. I'm standing behind him, making sure he doesn't fall. Well, Mr. X... didn't you want to use the bathroom? I ask. He looks down at the toilet seat and says, "well, I suppose since I am in here, I might as well sit down!" OMG - I couldn't hold myself ...I had to step out as I was suddenly hit with a wave of hysterics. :rotfl: