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.
Here's mine...
I keep remembering 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 bed rail 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.
Specializes in LTC, CPR instructor, First aid instructor..
Forcemaster said:
This was not so much funny at the time as scary as hell...
I work on a Trauma ward in the UK where we mostly deal with patients who need orthopaedics and/or plastics input.
Well we only take admissions from the ED, and one night a couple of months ago I got a call from the Site Nurse Practitioner (the senior nurse who runs the hospital after hours), telling me she had an admission for me...
Well this admission was a really pleasent young lady who had GDFD (this is an unofficial diagnosis of 'got drunk and fell down' :chuckle ), getting a quite impressive fracture along the anterior border of her fibula. Well they put a plaster backslab on her down in the ED and she was to be NBM for Th first thing in the morning. The thing is, about an hour after coming onto the ward we heard this almighty crash and a scream of pain... It seems she had decided to get up... Now when my colleage and I had left her, she was alert and orientated, and she knew she was to ring the nurse call bell if she needed anything and that she was not to even think about walking till after surgery... Well it appears she sleep walks... :stone
She had gotten out of bed, hobbled on a still wet plaster into the next room and slipped on the floor... I rush into the room to see her broken leg twisted at an inhuman angle and blood running all over the floor... She had completed the fracture of her fibula, and also broken her tibia to the extent she had an open fracture and had lacerated an artery. So while I desperatley try to staunch the bleeding and my colleague calls the on-call ortho and anaestetic docs, the elderly gentleman (who had a fractured neck of femur) in that room had been so traumatised by the incident, arrested...
Thankfully all involved in the incident made a recovery, though the elderly gentleman has still yet to leave the hospital, having had angioplasty and a triple CABG, he now has an HAI...
Anyway... bearing in mind I was due to finish my shift at 08:00, I think I finally left work at 11:00 after having filled in all the paperwork I fell behind on while saving life and limb... Not my favourite shift :stone
OMG have just absolutely creased up laughing, so did my hubby when I read it to him. Must tell them at work...it Will Appeal to the sense of humour in our NICU!! Thanks for the laugh! :rotfl:
mangb said:
I have 2 the first one was I had this little lady who had one of her legs missing aka and she had a prostatic we had just got done with her shower and had her dressed and in her chair with her leg on when we were going down the hall her leg got stuck behind the chair making it look like her leg was bent all the way back under the chair this maint man see's this and starts screaming about her leg breaking. her being the funny person that she was started screaming as well saying oh my God you tore my leg off
This incident happened years ago. One Easter Sunday morning on the male medical ward that I worked on, a charitable community group came in to visit the patients bringing with them the joys of easter. We had just finished the routine of morning baths. The group came in and distributed painted easter eggs to the patients. One man who seemed a little disoriented held his easter egg in his hand and squeezed it hard. Imagine the anguish we felt when we had to clean up raw egg all over a patient who no so long ago had had a complete bed bath.
Around 16 years ago, I had the most awesome Professor who could have been a stand up comic. We were having a lab at a teaching hospital and were in the teaching section of the autopsy lab, where clients have donated their bodies to clinical science.
At the instructor started with his class that day, there were 8 of us around the body. He began to speak of the different aspects of colon cancer. Having ou full attention, he proceeded to this client who happened to be a male client to a lower body exam. Without missing a beat to the surprise to the students, this teacher began sing the old Christian hymn "Love lifted me", as this was tatooed on the client's private parts. After all these years, that remains on my mind.
While working for a Home Health agency, I had this lovely lady named "Irene."
She had advanced alzheimers's disease, but was still very mobile. She lived in a very rural area with her son and daughter in law.
Don't you always hate getting "that 4:59pm call from a desperate family on a friday afternoon" stating "I need you to come out quickly and check on Mama."
It seems that the problem that had occurred was that Irene had a set of dentures and her daughter in law had a set of dentures. Irene had put in her own dentures and also her daughter in law's dentures and refused to let the family take out the extra set.
When I arrived Irene was standing in the door with the biggest smile I have ever seen. Having two sets of dentures in she had bitten her lip...minor injuries....major laugh..
That's really something! Years ago when I worked in a nursing home, we'd posey residents into geri chairs too. One place where I worked, on day shift, I was told, one man would frequently tip his chair over. I'm thankful that he never got badly hurt. Going down the fire starirs as your patient did sounds horrible! I can't understand why someone would hold the door and let someone in a geri chair start to go down the stairs! What were they thinking!
I grew up in a little town in Iowa where there were many prejudiced people and no one of any color other than white. My sister and I don't know how we made it out without being bigots but we did. Until my nursing clinicals I had never been near an African American. My patient was an elderly black male and I couldn't understand why there were all these little black specks on his sheets. My friend at clinicals about died laughing when I asked her what they were. "There his dead skin cells, his skin is black you know. God it still embarrasses me.
I had a friend who was a student and he worked on the geriatric ward. He used to take great pleasure in "helping" the patients eat their sweets etc. until one day........... one of the patients had what appeared to be chocolate clusters on his bedside table. When the friend picked it up to have one he found to his disgust that it was not chocolate but feaces. yuck....................
The moral of the story everything brown is not chocolate LOL
I grew up in a little town in Iowa where there were many prejudiced people and no one of any color other than white. My sister and I don't know how we made it out without being bigots but we did. Until my nursing clinicals I had never been near an African American. My patient was an elderly black male and I couldn't understand why there were all these little black specks on his sheets. My friend at clinicals about died laughing when I asked her what they were. "There his dead skin cells, his skin is black you know. God it still embarrasses me.
FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I
3,619 Posts
A very sad outcome of the domino effect.