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.
I work as a CNA on a rehab floor. We had gotten a new admit and I was assigned 1:1 with her. Her diagnosis was TBI- she was ambulatory, a little confused, and restless. She wanted to go for a walk down the hall so I steered her away from the elevators and we headed towards the PT gym. The hall was empty except for one patient walking towards us who was on crutches. The TBI patient says to me with a little gleam in her eye "How much will you give me if I trip her?" referring to the patient on crutches. :chuckle NOT what I expected to hear from her. I tried real hard not to laugh, told her that probably wasn't a good idea, and moved between her and the patient on crutches....just in case.
I work as a CNA on a rehab floor. We had gotten a new admit and I was assigned 1:1 with her. Her diagnosis was TBI- she was ambulatory, a little confused, and restless. She wanted to go for a walk down the hall so I steered her away from the elevators and we headed towards the PT gym. The hall was empty except for one patient walking towards us who was on crutches. The TBI patient says to me with a little gleam in her eye "How much will you give me if I trip her?" referring to the patient on crutches. :chuckle NOT what I expected to hear from her. I tried real hard not to laugh, told her that probably wasn't a good idea, and moved between her and the patient on crutches....just in case.
that is so freakin' hilarious! I would have died laughing!
I work in a nursing home and most everyone has dementia. There are about 3 residents that don't. One time I asked a lady who was sitting in her wheelchair what she was up to. She replied "I am thinking about the best way to get out of here" I thought she meant getting out of the facility, but I went ahead and asked her "Well, what are you going to do?" She got teary eyed and replied, "Well, I don't think that life boat is going to save all of us, but you need to save all of these people because the ship we are on right now is going down!" She stopped and then replied, "Save yourself. I'll wait for you in the water!" It was so sad that she actually thought it was happening, but funny when I thought about it later that night.
We have another lady that is deaf and pretty much blinde. She sits in her wheelchair in front of the nurses station and reaches out to touch whatever is in front of her. The other day, it was sort of a slow day and we had this lady sitting next to the lady that I mentioned in the first paragraph. The blind lady reached out and touched her face and was feeling of her to make sure she knew what was in front of her. The funny part is that this ladys hand just kept going further and further south on the other lady! She found the ladys boobs and began to prod them and say "WOW!. This must be a lady." Before she got any further than the belly I had to rush over there and speak in her good ear "You are touching that lady in the crotch and thats not very nice. She is about to get upset with you. So, you need to stop, please M'am." SHe quickly sat back in her wheelchair and said "OO MY. IM SORRY." My charge nurse was literally in the floor rolling. :rotfl:
As a new grad starting my first job in the surgery department, I was so eager to do a good job that I encountered a LOL in the hallway after taking a pt from surgery back to his room. This LOL was in a w/c shuffling her feet and holding onto the handrails inching her way down the hallway. She was right in front of the nurses station and everyone was busy. I thought, well, I'M not to busy to help a LOL. I knelt down and looked her in the eye and said..."Ma'm, can I help you?" Yes, she said. I innocently asked her, "Where would you like to go?" I WANT TO GO HOME!! All the personnel at the nurses station got a good laugh out of that one.
I currently work LTC (going to HH in a few days!) anyway, this elderly lady has dementia really bed, she moved from AL to the hospital for a new hip, and then came to us until a bed at the Alhezmers unit was available. Everyday she would tell me she was healed and ready to go home. My excuse to her was that her DR was in Africa at the moment and would be there for at least 6 months. (Dr was only there for 10 days.) Well, the Dr made a house call to our facility, and res was telling me she was ready to go home. I politely stated to her that Dr was away. (Dr right behind res!) Dr asked res if she could talk to her for a few minutes about the cable bill. I was laughing so hard I had to leave the area so res would not think I was laughing at her. Dr talked about the "cable bill" (and hip and other c/o's) and wrote a few new orders. After Dr left, here came res telling me to get on a plane to Africa to go get the Dr so she could go home!
Specializes in ER, NICU, NSY and some other stuff.
Recently I was at one of my hospice patients homes. He had become constipated to the point of having an impaction. I was in the process of removing the impaction, a procedure that was causing him discomfort on several different levels. I was trying to be as gentle as I could and bless his heart he was being a trooper. All of a sudden he started scrambling around reaching across the bed. Well, the only 2 things lying on the bed was a remote control and a long wooden back scratcher. He did not grab the remote. I went flying backwards just sure he was gonna whop me one. I asked him if he had been going to hit me, he swore till the day he died that he wasn't. I know his little wife got a huge laugh out of it.
I was working on an orthopedic floor for a long time. I thought I had heard every wierd request on the call bell. but, one day the nurse's were at desk having a discussion when the call bell went off. the nurse's aid answered it and accidently hit the intercom button, when the patient on the other side started yelling "my finger is stuck in my butt". we all thought we heard wrong but she yelled it again. of course, when we went to check on her she indeed had her hand under her backside, aparently she was scratching her behind and her hand fell asleep. we repositioned her and everything was OK, the circulation came back to her hand and the floor had a good laugh too......
I had a sweet 88 yo woman in ER with a 3rd degree heart block. I had to tell her we were admitting her for a pacemaker insertion. She was terribly upset! She said, "But I HAVE TO see my husband! I go to the nursing hoime every single day to visit." Thinking her husband was probably 90, I asked how old he was thnking I would justify her stay with "he'll understand". She winked at me and proudly said, "He is 73. I just LOVE those young stud-muffins!" I had to laugh...wasn't expecting that AT ALL.
I was a corpsman in the Navy working in the ED one weekend night when a 15-16 y.old dependent came in to be seen. I was in the room when the MD put his stethoscope on her bare chest and intently moving the stethoscope around when the pt. said, "Aren't you supposed to have those things (ear pieces) in your ears?"
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.
That reminds me of my favorite way to get pysch patients to take their meds when they're refused previously... "Mr X, time to take your vitamin H! (or vitamin V, or vitamin A) where H is haldol, v is valium and a is ativan, depending on which the doctor ordered. Works fairly most of the time!
Did anyone watch Untold Stories in The ER last noc on TLC at 9 PM? What a hoot one of the stories was. I loved it.
There was a doc there who was :uhoh21: afraid of bugs. A patient came in to be treated for a bug in his ear. He was the only ER doc on call, and so he first tried to look at it with his eyes. Nothing. Then he picked up the otoscope, which magnifies anything in the ear by at least 100 times. When he looked in the patient's ear with that, he saw his worst nightmare! There was a cockroach in there, and it was still alive.
He quickly ran out of the room, rested his hands on the sides of the sink, and held his head down. A nurse approached him and asked him if he was alright, and told him if he needed any help, she would be glad to remove the bug.
He told her he was alright, and was just taking a bit of a break, :heartbeat and said he was going to remove it. So back into the room he went where he immediately picked up a pair of tweezers, thinking they were the most logical instrument for the job. So he reached into the patient's ear, and low and behold, he actually pulled out a very wiggly cockroach that wiggled its way free and onto the floor where it ran up the doc's pant-leg.
The doc went balistic. He ran through the ER, slapping at his shirt, front and back, finally removing it. By the time he got into the locker room, he was down to his shorts. While walking by the locker room with its door open, a curious nurse glanced at him and grinned. He quickly blurted out, " Do NOT say anything about this!" She nodded her head in agreement, and did tell him he would have more privacy if he closed the door first.
After he put another set of scrubs on, he re-entered the patient's room where he was surrounded by his family, and embarassedly apologized for freaking out like that. He told them he was always afraid of bugs. As he was talking, the patient said, "It's running up your pant-leg! (Aparently it was still on him and he didn't know it.) He danced around franticlly, moving his legs up and down as fast as he could, and finally the cockroach fell out, and he stomped on it with his shoe covers. Then he proudly announced his victorious killing of the dreaded bug.The entire ER and the patient and his family broke out in laughter. I joined them.
That definitely was the funniest ER story I have ever heard. I hope some of you had the opportunity to view it. It was a memory maker for sure.
When I was working as an LPN I was giving a Go-Lyetly prep to en elderly confused man ( for those unfamiliar with the delight of Go-Lytely, it is a bowel prep for endoscopy, it comes in gallon jug and resembles water, the taste is terrible). Anyway it was about half way through my shift when he comes to the door of his room and asked me to come in. I went in assuming he needed a re-fill. He quietly sat down on the edge of his bed looked me straight in the eye and said, "Dear I believe that your water has given me dysentery". Throughout the rest of the night I continued to assure him that I had not given him dysentery, but I guess in his mind I had. Once I lef the room I couldn't help but laugh, even though I did feel bad for him.
This happened about 23 years ago when we had to take all of our BP's with a manual cuff , and all our temps with a mercury thermometer and when cataract patients stayed for several days. I was taking the BP of my patient, a little old man about 80 yrs old. He had one eye patched and the other eye looked like a vulture's eye, all red and bugged out with minimal eyelashes. While I was taking his BP he was saying something, I couldn't hear him because I had the stethoscope in my ears. I took the stethoscope out of my ears and said "What?" All of a sudden he grabbed his member which was fully erect and then shook it at me and asked me in a demanding question "you want some of this?" Of course I was shocked and then I wanted to start laughing but I didn't want to make him feel bad. So I calmly said "Look Mr. Magoghan you're not in here for that." Of which he replied "oh" and that was it. I have to give him some credit because viagra had not been invented yet!Of course the name was changed to protect the innocent!
Another time I was helping another LVN change his patient. The patient had been there for a while and he was a nice old man but was confused. Well we got done changing him and then something was on TV and all three of us were watching it so there was a moment of silence in the room then all of a sudden this patient looks right at me and says "Remember when me and you's was f---ing" I immediately responded with " I never had sex with you,besides you have a catheter too!" Later on in the shift the other nurse who happened to be a male nurse told me that that patient told him that he thought that me and that male nurse were having sex. That patient must have thought I was someone else and in his confusional state he probably thought I was a hooker he once knew or something like that!
I had another old man who had a prior CVA with left sided weakness. Anyways he also wore a cheap toupee and it was always on his head crooked so it looked comical. His speech was also sl slurred. I'm in his room and he says to me with that toupee on crooked "I want to have sex with you." I informed him that was not in my job description and that he would have to do it himself. I also didn't want to make him feel bad so I held in my laughter until I got out of that room and then I cracked up!
I took care of a patient that was over 650 lbs. He was huge and had difficulties with just about all his ADLs. He was in for CHF. He had massive edema and was on a special bed because he would literally break the normal beds. The first time I took care of him he was able to scoot himself up in the bed but then he asks me "I need you to do one more thing for me." I said "OK" He says " OK now put some gloves on" "OK", I replied then he says "I need you to lift my scrotum from underneath me". I said "OK". But I didn't realize until his testicles were revealed after I pulled them out before my eyes appeared 2 cantaloupe-sized gigantic ones! I had never seen anything like that in my life but being a good nurse I just did what I had to do without making a face or gasping. Well he eventually went home and I did take care of him alot and he was a really nice man. He sent me a card in the mail with $35.00 thanking me for taking care of him. I thought that was very nice of him and very thoughtfull. Well my husband's comment as I was showing him the card and the money was "It must have been for all the scrotal adjustments you gave him." I guess that might be part of it!! That's nursing!
There was a cockroach in there, and it was still alive.
picked up a pair of tweezers, thinking they were the most logical instrument for the job. So he reached into the patient's ear, and low and behold, he actually pulled out a very wiggly cockroach that wiggled its way free and onto the floor where it ran up the doc's pant-leg.
OUBobcat94
42 Posts
I work as a CNA on a rehab floor. We had gotten a new admit and I was assigned 1:1 with her. Her diagnosis was TBI- she was ambulatory, a little confused, and restless. She wanted to go for a walk down the hall so I steered her away from the elevators and we headed towards the PT gym. The hall was empty except for one patient walking towards us who was on crutches. The TBI patient says to me with a little gleam in her eye "How much will you give me if I trip her?" referring to the patient on crutches. :chuckle NOT what I expected to hear from her. I tried real hard not to laugh, told her that probably wasn't a good idea, and moved between her and the patient on crutches....just in case.