What are some of the most outrageous things a DOCTOR has said to you or asked of you?

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Mattigan, RN

175 Posts

Several years ago I was working NICU. We were overstaffed(those were the days) and I floated into the delivery room to do the newborn care (I know zip about L&D but hand me the baby and I'm in heaven). There was this OB/GYN doc who was very boisterous and grouchy and took pleasure from scaring and irritating nurses. If he could make a nurse cry- he was in heaven- you know the type. Anyway the woman delivering was full of stool and every push brought more out. He was pizzed because he thought a nurse should have taken care if that before she got on the delivery table (I seem to remember she just showed up 10-15 minutes before but anyway...) This doc had me and my other NICU nurse friend down on our knees with buckets picking up turds. He was cussing and kicking them across the room. We'd start to pick one up and it'd go flying.... It was hysterical. I can't believe we did that. We were laughing so hard we were almost laying in the floor admist all those turds.The pedi doc at the delivery came in late and still shakes his head ... he said of all the nurses he ever met, we were the last two he ever thought would actually do something like that -particulary because a doc told us to. It was a weird day.

nerdse, MSN

29 Posts

How long have you got????? I have been a nurse since 1977....I have got a million stories.

I guess the best one would be a foreign born physician with a heavy accent who alsb couldn't write clearly. I rather pride myself on being able to understand a variety of foreign accents (although I did have some trouble when I moved from the north to the south and encountered "Bayou" patois), but when I called to clarify the order I could still not understand him. I apologized (English is, after all, not easy to learn!) and asked him to please come and rewrite the order. He had a major tantrum in the nurses' station while I was answering a call bell and the next thing I knew, I hear a male voice saying, in very plain English, that he wanted to know who the stupid, fat, ugly, American b____ was who couldn't understand him. Funny, he got that bit out plainly enough. I happened to be in the hall - which was full of visitors - when he said that. I folded my hands in front of me and said, with as innocent and angelic a smile as I could muster, "I'm sorry, I didn't understand you. Would you mind repeating that?" Everyone broke up in the hall. He was so red in the face I half expected him to have a stroke right there. No such luck....

Funny how we always learn the insults and cussing in a different language before we learn the polite stuff.:confused:

lisamcrn

79 Posts

My most recent memorable of the lot. I had a young man who was severly mentally injured. He was surviving on his gtube and trach. He had been having a gi bleed and after being sent to the hospital from LTC. He returned and continued to have stool with gi bleed for a few days, the dr. refused to treat him further outside of LTC. Well, an 2 lpns and myself were discussing something outside his room one day and heard retching from his room. We ran in and he had slumped his head over, was violently vomiting out his mouth and this was landing all over him, his bed, into his trach and the floor, then he started with loose runny stool....emesis and stool both blood stinged and with the sent of that. The poor guy kept up for almost five minutes. I was attempting to keep his head up while another tried to suction his trach so he would suffocate, and the 3rd left to get more supplies. It took us 15 minutes to clean the resident up and we took turns stepping out into the hall getting a dose of 'fresh' air. The sound and smell of bloody emesis running into a trach alternating between projectile vomiting and bloody stool.....didn't eat that day and kept retching for hours.

Lisa

lisamcrn

79 Posts

I just realized I posted this under the wrong heading....oh well, time for bed.

We have a doctor who almost flat out refuses to make a patient DNR unless the family insists. No one knows whether it is so he can get more money for some hopeless cases, or if he just hates to admit defeat. This battle has raged on and on for years with this doctor, and, many of us who care for his patients are on the front lines of the war for DNR and some sort of dignity for these patients that we are keeping alive in body only, knowing that the soul has departed.

Because I am rather outspoken about things, I have bumped heads with this doctor many times over the years about this subject, practically begging this man to make patients a DNR when it is obvious to everyone except him that it is cruel to keep their body alive.

One afternoon, this doctor walked into the ICU and greeted me as the "Angel of Death". I pulled him into our break room and told him that if he ever said anything to me like that again, that I would take him to court for slander. He didn't apologize, but he sure did watch his step---and mouth---around me for several weeks after that.

Repat

335 Posts

MishlB - I lived in the UK for many years, and I was often told that US degrees were equivalent to their 'school leaver certificates' (what they get when they leave school at 16). I also had a nurse tell me that she worked at a hospital in FL, but she hated it because she had to 'make too many decisions' because the doctors weren't on site, they had to telephone them for orders! My neighbors were both doctors, and they told me that British hospitals didn't like American nurses because they asked too many questions - didn't do what they were told. Go figure.....

Enabled

138 Posts

We had a doctor tell a patient the reason she had a TAHBSO was that she wasn't getting enough at home. She was readmitted post op for pneumonae and he told her the reason was that she was in was thay she laid around like a whale. This was said infront of a nurse who was shocked. The said doc took a pocket knife out of his pocket and removed the sutures. He was definitely written up and EVERYONE was called. She was told she could switch docs which she hadn't known and did. The A S came back and said Gee someone else can clean up that mess. Her abdoment was a mess and she was beginning to have drainage that stank from the wound. She was rushed back into surgery and he had punctured her bowel. She went to ICU for weeks. He is still practicing. He has been reported repeatedly for things he says to the staff on the OB floor. Sensual connotations galore. I guess even if you're the sickest puppy and you make money you stay. I was hoping it would reach the newspaper. She is definitely suing and that the staff supports her. The nurse who was present didn't know what to say after it happened. I don't think I would have either. From then on any time he called the unit he was put on hold to "get the nurse" and two nurses listened to the conversation and wrote him up if necessary. His orders were never clear and he refused to clarify them. I gave them to you are you stupid or female.

Long Term Care Columnist / Guide

VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN

22 Articles; 9,987 Posts

Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

So far, the most outrageous experiences I've ever had with an MD actually happened years ago, as a patient. I was on a state welfare health plan back then and they selected doctors for you. When I made my first appointment with this joker, I had carpal tunnel, and when I finished describing my symptoms he took one look at me and said "Well, you need to lose weight." A few months later, I went in with a bad case of asthmatic bronchitis, and he said "It doesn't look like you're doing anything about your weight." Then, some time after this I had to go in for the annual GYN exam, and before I was even out of the stirrups than Dr. Wonderful started in on me with, "You know, I can give you some diet sheets to follow..." The man blamed absolutely everything I ever had go wrong with me on the fact that I was overweight, and he didn't treat me for any of it. Not even the bronchitis, which promptly went into pneumonia. Luckily for me, he moved on to another organization sometime later and I never had to go to him again, but his cursory breast exam missed a fairly large tumor that could have been disastrous had it been malignant. I still get mad whenever I have to deal with doctors who stereotype patients because of their body size, social class or whatever, because I know what it feels like to be that patient.

:uhoh3:

It's gonna be hard to beat this story: While I was going through a traumatic divorce, I developed IBD. After taking meds to treat IBD, I mentioned (to the Dr.) that the medications caused "dryness...everywhere". The following Sunday afternoon, he called me at home to say that he was at his office and that if I "needed some KY jelly, I could came to his office and he would give me some samples". This idiot really thought I would go to his office on a Sunday or any day) for f-----g KY Jelly.

YEssssss, I DID switch doctors!

As I said, the divorce was very traumatic. I could barely function from day to day and I developed IBD due to the stress. I was totally distraught. So, I ended up going to a shrink. Now get this one: while I was sitting there sobbing, the shrink got a phone call from a friend and told his friend, "Well, I got a cute little nurse here who I can set you up with."

Because of my state of mind at the time, it took me a few weeks before I realized that the KY doctor had referred me to the idiot shrink. (Cheryl.....Dr. Freud is on line one.....)

Considering my luck with doctors, I'm lucky Dr. Kevorkian was locked up before I moved back to Michigan!!!

kurtz

8 Posts

Oh boy we work with some odd one's don't we?

I have two stories, one as a patient and one as a midwife;

1. (Patient) I was very young and had done a scuba diving course and had to go for the medical to get my ticket. I was in a group of 15 people that all had to go to the GP (General Practitioner) to establish that we were healthy enough to go scuba diving. So I duly made my appointment with this guy that was recommended from the diving school. Of I went a bright, happy young thing. It was a thorough exam, lung function tests and all that sort of stuff. He asked me to step behind the screen and remove my clothes to my knickers. I did and when he came back into the room he came over to me and felt all around my rib cage, and said "Wow you're a big girl aren't you?" and sniggered. I was a "big girl" in that I was very thin but had large breasts! When I got back to the school we were talking about our visit and I told my story. The rest of the people on the course didn't laugh. Turns out I was the only one that had been asked to get undressed!

2. (Midwife) I was working in a busy maternity hospital with an incredibly busy antenatal unit. The examination rooms were in a line between the staff area and the patient waiting area with a door to each area. I was walking along the staff area to the charge nurse's office (I wasn't actually working in the unit that day) when one of the exam room doors flew open and a speculum flew out the door brushed my pony tail and out the window behind me! The dirty speculum was closely followed by a screaming, obviously furious ob/gynae. Needless to say after being almost decapitated by this speculum my fury matched his and more. I was looking at him and over his shoulder I can see this poor woman laying there in the "exam position". He stormed over to me yelling and screaming about how his room wasn't stocked properly. I thought at the time that because this woman was laying there the better part of valour was retreat at this juncture and began to walk away. He grabbed hold of my upper arm and forceably turned me to face him whilst screeching "Don't you walk away from ME!!!!" I turned and walked toward him so that we were literally nose to nose and I said in a low but very very angry voice "If you ever, ever touch me again I will have you for assault" He said "You just try it" I replied with a rye smile "No You try it....." He got this recalcitrant look on his face and said, while walking back to the exam room "Just stock my room properly next time" Needless to say I put in a complaint about this guy. funniest thing of all was that I had to put in my complaint several times because it kept getting "lost". Eventually I found out that this toad of a man was in charge of complaints against medical staff. He was the most complained about medical person in the hospital!!!

Thanks for listening

Kurtz

monkijr

89 Posts

Originally posted by kurtz

Oh boy we work with some odd one's don't we?

I Turns out I was the only one that had been asked to get undressed!

That reminds me of advise I was given once, you know when it is time to get another dentist?

when he asks you to remove you clothes for a dental cleaning.

:eek: :imbar :eek:

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