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.
My first year of nursing I got a horrible tonsilitis on my days off. Teh Z-pack was new and was what was prescribed to me. I was so impressed with Zithromax and how quickly I started to feel better that I told all of my friends at work that I had swollen tonsils with white purulent pockets on them until I took Zovirax, and now they are so much better... I didn't catch my mistake until the next day.
A friend told me this one...and I swear it is true, but happened many years ago.
This happened up in a rural hospital in the mountains...a woman came into a hospital in labor with her 9th child, and she was only 28 years old. They brought all of the children with her and it was just after midnight when they brought her in. They didn't bring anything for the kids so the nurses were scrambling getting them some milk and popcorn to eat because that is all there was at that hour.
After she had her baby, the doctor asked her if, "he could fix it so she wouldn't have anymore children" (they appeared to be extremely poor).
She said, "Well how do you do that?" She was truly and sincerely confused.
My friend said, as a joke, "Well ma'am, you do know how you are having all of these babies, don't you."
The new mother laughed and said, "Well, of course I do....it gets to be that time of year."
Now, they do things a little differently in the rural areas around here...as unethical as it was, they went ahead and tied her tubes.
She really and truly didn't know why she kept having babies.
Specializes in CVICU, Education Dept., FNP Student.
These stories have been the greatest...I have a couple of my own...
When I was a first-semester nursing student, our clinicals were at a local nursing home. My assignment was to assist a lady with her bath and help her get dressed. The lady had a deformity to one arm, but was able to do most of it herself. I was helping her get dressed and was pulling up her underwear, when she told me to "spray the princess". I was slightly confused, so she motioned to her Designer Imposters body spray for me to "spray the princess" with. I had to contain myself until I left the room.
I work in a CVICU and was taking care of a little old lady post-CABG. Most LOL's are extremely sleepy after surgery. The nurse before me had hooked an IV up to her CVP line and given an antibiotic on a pump. So the IV tubing has a luer-lock but also fits into the line. She pressed the IV tubing in there so hard, that I was struggling to get it out. So, I'm pulling on the line and all of a sudden it comes out and my hand smacks her in the face. Of course, she's so sleepy, she barely wakes up to acknowledge it. Thank Goodness!!!
It was my first day at clinicals and the first time I ever ever ever had any direct patient contact.
(Needless to say I was very nervous.)
Okay... I walk into my patients room and introduce myself and ask if he needs anything. The patient states "Yes, please help me stand up to go to the bathroom I have to pee so bad and I can not use this thing (the urinal) in the bed." I go to his bed and help him stand. Then he holds onto my arm and hands me the urinal!
I could have died!! I know that I am supposed to help him out but I ain't ever ever ever done this before!!!!
So, I held the urinal in place and because I was so nervous and did not want to risk getting any pee on me I held the urinal tightly against his "scrotum area".
My patient started to moan and complain of pain he said "WOW, that hurts." I just remember thinking to myself "Gosh, I wonder what is wrong with him, I bet he has some sort of kidney problem."
It was then that he said "MY Gosh woman your cutting my balls off with the edge of this thing!"
I busted out laughing and just about let the poor guy fall into the floor!! After he finished his business I left the room and avoided him the rest of the day.. lol :smackingf
OMG!!! I have just spent the last 3 hrs reading all 34 pages!!! I should be asleep, everybody else in the house is....I don't have anything to add, I will probably think of something later....Thanks everyone for the laughs!!!
A very good friend and I went to get food one evening. On the way back, I hit a pigeon. It was probably high on gas fumes and we didn't realize I had hit it until we heard the thump. Well, that was kind of a bummer but we moved on. I was specialing a kid one to one-with a trach that night, the kid was in a coma, the room dark and I was doing busy work with the bed linens and I hear a couple of bumps on the wall and this really spooky sounding voice saying
mur....der....er..........mur.....der.....er.........mur...........der...........er. She was outside the room-on the floor, with some of the other staff. I had probably killed the pigeon.
Such weird circumstances, we all just started laughing and couldn't stop.
Here's one from a few years ago. My friend is an EMT, and he is a real sweetheart, although not the brightest bulb in the pack. He tries to put his patients at ease, and sometimes tries to appear more intelligent than he is. Anyway, he was bringing a teenage girl into the ER and triage was backed up. She had been involved in a minor MVA and was backboarded and collared for precautionary reasons more than anything else. He felt kinda bad for her having to stare at a blank ceiling while waiting to be triaged, so in an effort to make her laugh, he said,"Too bad we don't have Van Gogh here to paint the ceiling for you." One of the local drunks, who was in his usual state of inebriation, had overheard him and felt the need to correct him. He shouted at my friend, "That wasn't Van Gogh you idiot, that was Michalangelo."
I later commented to my friend that only he could get into an argument with a drunk about art history and lose.
I just thought of another one, again from a friend of mine. I used to date a dentist whose practice primarily consisted of geriatric patients. He loves the old ladies and enjoys kidding around with them. One day he needed to do an x ray on an 85 year old woman. He jokingly asked her,"Are ya pregnant?" Without missing a beat, she said,"No, but I'm late." Had him chuckling all day.
Specializes in Paeds, Gen surg, Coronary Care, ED.
on my first ever prac as a nursing student, i was placed on the medical ward in one of the major hospitals for 6 weeks.
on this medical ward there was an elderly italian lady with dementia who didnt speak english. we , for some reason, called her 'mama' she was ambulant and just wondered around the unit calling "seeeester, seeeeester' we would guide her back to her room. this lady was admitted with something ( i cant remember, somethin infective? cellulitis?) but she also had black, worn down stumps for teeth, which would have caused her pain.
one day that my preceptor and i were looking after her, she decided she would change her calling out to " seeeeester, mordo, mordo!" neither my preceptor or i could speak italian, so we assumed it meant pain. so while handing her paracetamol said "si, mama, mordo tableti'. this went on for a few days
where these cries out increased in frequency and volume, until 'mama's' daughter came to visit . her daughter pulled us aside and stated that she felt that her mother had deteriorated, we comforted her, and let her go back to her mother's side. about an hour in, mama repeated the same phrase " mordo!!!", where her daughter lept up and said "NO MAMA!!!"
After realising that mordo didnt mean "pain" i went over to the daughter and asked what mordo actually means, to which she said "death"....
we had spent the last 3 days telling her that "yes mama, have these death tablets....."
since then i have always made sure i get at least a sheet of translations of basic languages....
my nurse friend was telling me a patient was complaining of knee pain and the x ray tech took him into the room and mistaken him for the wrong patient and did a testicular test on him instead
Specializes in Med/Surg, Geri, Ortho, Telemetry, Psych.
A few years back I had the pleasure of working with my best friend. And if any of you have ever got to work with your best friend, you know how fun it can be. Well it was the end of the shift and she had only one thing left to do and I was done so I went with her. She had to straight cath (or in and out cath) this man who was pretty much in a vegetative state. So there we are standing there, working together, just going through the routine that we had done a million times before. Well after she cleansed his you know what with the betadine wipe, she was waiting for it to dry and while still holding his peter, she says, "here, blow on this would ya?" I think we both peed our pants from the uncontrollable laughter. And before you get all worried that we would say something like that in front of a patient, even if he's in a vegetative state, don't worry cause she whispered it so low that he couldn't have heard it even if he was completely awake and alert. I don't know if I've ever laughed that hard before or since.
nurscee
122 Posts
OMG This is cracking me up!!!!!!!!!!! I'm having the time of my life reading these.:roll :lol_hitti