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 Med/Surg, Geri, Ortho, Telemetry, Psych.
I just thought of another one of my favorites. This was many years ago when i was a newbie. I was pulled to the adult psych unit and scared to death. I quickly learned that when I was doing rounds, it was easiest to write down next to the patients name what he was wearing. After a couple hours of this, just when I started to feel a little comfortable, one of the patients must have caught on to my scheme. The next time I did rounds they all had changed their clothes. By that time I thought they were going to have to admit me cause I almost lost my mind.
I had an extremely obese patient who kept complaining of leg pain when she walked. The pulmonologist assigned to her case told her: "ma'am, nothing your size in nature walks on 2 legs, I suggest you lose some wait and the problem will correct itself."
trvlnRN said:
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.
I keep remembering to 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 bedrail 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 best friend in nursing school came to work at the same place I did. This is her story. She had 2 babies and got up every morning by 6. She worked PM's so was always tired.
One day on the medical floor she was really busy. She had 5 patients, gave blood, ran around and thankfully had a man in a coma with NG feeds, IV, Foley and all she had to do was turn him.
At 11PM she heard a crash. The man in a 'coma' was awake, on the floor and covered in urine, feces, blood and missing his foley, NG and IV's. My friend started to cry, put her head on the doorjam and said "this is the WORST day of my life!" The man on the floor then looked at her and said slowly, "ME TOO". I never get tired of that story.
OMG, I can't stop laughing about this one. I can just see it all in my head. The best part is-I don't think either of them were lying when they said they had had the worst days in their lives! I'm crying I'm laughing so hard. That poor guy...
I was a relatively "green" RN on a busy Med-Surg floor back in the day when we cut people in two in order to remove gall bladders! I checked in on my latest GB who was alert and oriented and chatty and while she was chatting she rubbed her eye with her finger and honest to gosh if the eye didn't come out and sit on her cheek still attached by fibers! I tried to maintain my composure and asked her calmly: "How is your vision?" as I am covering her eyeball with a 4x4 soaked in NS. She said: "Not so good, how's yours?". I told her I would be right back that I had something I needed to talk to her Dr. about and for her to remain very still. I called her Dr. and reported this to him and after a moment he said: "EEEEWWWW, how gross!" He told me to cover it with a NS soaked pad and get a stat consult from an opthalmologist. I walked back into the patients room and she had replaced her eyeball in the socket saying it does that from time to time!!!
One other one. When I worked Home Health/Hospice, I would visit a couple in their eighties who were retired farmers. Salt of the earth people but the man who was built like a bull was dying of cancer. Still every morning, no matter how badly he felt or how much pain he had, he got up and put on his bib overalls. One morning I arrived to check on him because the wife had called and said he hadn't gotten out of bed. So I asked her if she had checked on him and she said NO! HE is just lazy is all!! She was so angry! So I went to their bedroom and he was lying there and he said, oh I am so glad you are here. I asked him what was going on. He said with a straight face: Well, I am dying but I must not be doing it right cuz the missus is sure angry with me! I laughed through my tears and explained to him that he was doing it perfectly and then went and talked with the missus and let her get her grief out. What gems they were!
I have been so blessed by so many wonderful patients and stories! They far outweigh the ones I could do nothing about!:balloons:
I was a relatively new nurse working general surgery when we had an Italian man on our floor who spoke very little English. (This is eastern NC so we don't see many first-generation Italians around here...). Anyway, he & his wife were traveling home from visiting family & he gets sick, goes to the hosp (we are just off I-95) and they dxed him with a small bowel obstruction. These folks are understandably frustrated at the bilateral inability to communicate. So after a few days he's getting better but still needs help to the BR, so the CNA gets him to the toilet, steps out to let the wife assist, and asks them to let her know when he's done so she can help him back to bed. Quite a few minutes go by and she gets worried about him so she peeps her head around the corner of the room and asks, "Are you finished?" The wife yells (which we had known her to be able to do) back, "No, we are ITALIANS!"
Sweet LOL from the nursing home in our unit for urosepsis. Disoriented out the wazoo upon admit but came on around after some IVF & abx. Anyway, this happened after she was a little better & oriented x3. The urologist is in her room talking c her. Now, this is a very nice, very handsome doc who happens to look about 18yo. (I wanted to call him Doogie just to see what he'd say.) As he was talking c her she interrupts him and says, "Are you my doctor?" He answers, "Yes ma'am, I am." She thinks about it for a minute and says, "Son, does your mother know you're up here pretending to be a doctor?!?"
He turned red, grinned, and said, "Yes ma'am, actually she does."
After he walks out, she turns to me and says, "Honey, he's cute. If you're not married, you need to set your cap toward him!"
This Is A Good E.r. Story. One Night A Very Drunk Man Was Brought In By Ambulance. He Had Fallen Offof A Barstool And Cut His Head And Chin. He Then Proceeded To Get Arrested So He Had To Be Medically Cleared And Sewn Up In Order To Go To Jail.he Was Covered In Vomit And Feces So We Started To Undress Him A' La' E.r. Style. When We Pulled His Trousers Off A Pork Chop Fell Out Of His Underwear. We Thought The Cop With Him Was Going To Split From Laughing So Hard.
This one hails from my mother. I am a young nurse but she is a career PhD nurse. When she first graduated from nursing school, she was much like I am now....all to eagar to apply what we were taught in school. Well, she was working at a VA in the psych ward. There was a patient, on her first day, that required manual restraint because he was attacking staff and other patients.
So, overdrive kicked in with my mom: "Always get their shoes off...it makes the potential for injury less significant." In all the chaos, my mom was attempting to take the patient's shoes off. The MD kept saying, "STOP, STOP...don't do that". My mom realized that maybe MDs didn't know what she was taught and said "I know what I am doing....it lessens the chance of injury." Now there is an CNA and the MD trying to restain this particular individual and my mom is still on shoe patrol.
Finally, the MD states, "I mean STOP IT, THOSE ARE MY SHOES YOU ARE TRYING TO TAKE OFF..." The patient never had any shoes on....
I think my mother probably turned a shade of red none of us have ever seen. Fortunately, she jus retired after 40 years at the VA....
during my college days i was assigned to scrub in the OR.. i was so excited because the case was an Ex lap and it was my first tme to witness somebody's gut cut open..the patient was prepped and the whole staff was ready to begin..as soon as the surgeon went in for the cut, there was a sudden splash of brown substance shooting out of the patient..the room was filled with the most horrible stench, and the surgeons were cursing over the patient and the staff..the whole staff was covered with the patient's poop, good thing i was wearing glasses..:chuckle turns out the ward nurse forgot to put the patient in NPO for the whole day before the surgery..i really wanted to laugh so hard and puke at the same time, but to my surprise i saw my instructor and classmates waving at me, telling me to keep my cool as if nothing happened..i ended up scrubbing out and spending the whole day in the wash room..hehe
Working a Psych Emergency Unit, police brought us any and all types. One wet, cold, blowing night, rural sheriff brought in a young man who had been homeless for over a year. He had been living under a bridge, which works OK in Southern Calif most of the time. However, the cop found him soaked, shivering, and miserable, decided "he must be suicidal, out in weather like this", and brought him to us. That fellow was caked with dirt, took a comb to break up the crust on his scalp, had nothing left of his undies except the waist band and a few shreds of material in the front. Toe nails so long they were growing under his toes. Cleaned him up, trimmed hair and beard, got him in warm PJs and gave him a sack lunch. As it was a typical institutional lunch, the condiments were little tubes in the bottom of the sack. He fished them out, carefully spread the mayo, picked up the mustard, looked me square in the face, totally serious, asked, "Have you no Grey Poupon?" Totally cracked both of us up.
Ive been a CNA for over 20 years, while working a night shift LTC, doing paperwork at the nurses station, the hall is L shaped, I could see both corridors clearly, the nurses desk was positioned in the corner, BERT and ERNIE are roomates and also the latenight wanderers in this facility, Both are sweet, pleasantly confused gentleman. BERT had been admittted a few weeks prior,diagnosed with brain tumor, ERNIE a long time resident has quite a great sense of humor!! These two Gents just became the best of buddies starting day one!! So Ernie is coming up the left hall in his W/C and BERT coming up the right hall, they meet each other in front of the nurses desk, Im not paying much attention to them, Just a casual HI GUYS. I hear Bert say, Your not lookin so good these days Ernie, you doin ok? Ernie got a bit offended at this statement, stood up and said, Bert, you better take off them ROSE COLORED glasses your looking through, I look up from my charting to see Ernie performing HE-MAN muscle poses, and states that he is a 35 year old studly man and can lay his wife like a carpet!!! BERT got disgusted with him,asked the nurse for pain med and went to bed, on the way down the hall I hear Bert say, Ernie you couldn't get it up even if the Doc gave you 3 Viagra, ya stupid old fart, your not 35, your 88 years old.
jill48, ASN, RN
612 Posts
I just thought of another one of my favorites. This was many years ago when i was a newbie. I was pulled to the adult psych unit and scared to death. I quickly learned that when I was doing rounds, it was easiest to write down next to the patients name what he was wearing. After a couple hours of this, just when I started to feel a little comfortable, one of the patients must have caught on to my scheme. The next time I did rounds they all had changed their clothes. By that time I thought they were going to have to admit me cause I almost lost my mind.