I'd be very interested in hearing y'all's experiences with patients who come in spouting all manner of malarkey that makes about as much sense as a milk bucket under a bull.
Case in point, a certain UTI patient who was responding well to antibiotic therapy telling me, "I just thought you'd want to know, one of my 'nursing friends' told me this was probably viral'.
"Um, no, probably not, considering we are seeing improvement with antibiotics. Viruses don't tend to respond to antibiotics and viral UTIs are incredibly rare in an immunocompetent patient."
"Well, he said it was probably viral and that's why it kept coming back and that ***(partner) needs to be treated too so they don't catch it." (Mind, we aren't talking about STI, just a very far gone UTI that was 3 weeks running before treatment was sought). This argument went on with her continuing to tout this 'nursing friend' and his infinite wisdom for about 20 minutes. Finally, after refuting multiple asinine claims, I had had enough.
"Hon, if your 'nursing friend' told you that a UTI in a healthy patient was viral AND transmissible, he needs to contact his nursing school and ask about a refund."
This was followed by telling me that the antibiotics 'gave her a panic attack' and that they had tried to call 'for days and days' without getting an answer. And was capped off by the partner telling me, "You scared us to death telling us that antibiotic might be expensive, it was only $13!"
Okkkkkk, I'm sorry I tried to prepare you and you got a pleasant surprise?
AddictionNP, MSN, RN, NP
131 Posts
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