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.
When I was an aide many moons ago, I had a fellow aide ask me to help her with a b/p. She said she had trouble hearing it. So we walked in the room and the and the res was pasty gray with blue lips. I told the other aide to go get the nurse NOW!! Well unfortunately the res passed away brfore the aide and nurse got back the the room. The aide looked at the res then at me, then at the nurse and said "She was alive when I left the room!" The nurse and I just stood there with our mouths open for a few sec then burst out laughing. The poor aide blushed pure red when she realized what she had just implicated..
One night a fellow nurse and I were sitting and the desk and we were talking about ourselfs... I told her that while growing up my dad was a proud card carrying Momma's Boy. Everything was Walter's, the oreo cookies, the pepsi, so on and so forth, she was so bad she actually told my mom that she could not park in the driveway (my parent's were divorced at this time) because Walt would be hame soon and would have to park at the curb and walk throught the snow, like I said spoiled. Anyways, you know that when you tell a child no about something, the minute your back is turned they take what they were told no about. When I was 4 or 5, I came home from the neighbors and there sitting on the car was a can of pepsi and no one around, so I ran over a took a great big gulp and it was gasoline.....I swear to god, the other nurses eyes got huge and she said......And you lived!!!!!
I almost peed my pants I was laughing so hard....I told her "Nope, I'm a dead nurse working!!!
a few weeks ago in clinicals i had a pleasantly confused elderly lady with bacterial endocarditis and she also had a foley in... sometime during the night she had to take a dump, so the night nurses put her on the BSC, and after the work was done they left the bucket for the commode in the bathroom. in the morning when i was in report, my lady got herself out of bed, unscrewed her foley from the bag, and sat on the commode (without the bucket) to take another dump... all over the floor. we took care of everything and about an hour later she pulled her foley out and walked to the nurses station with the foley in her hand and said "can you guys help me with these damn worms" i had an interesting day with her and learned quickly to stay on my toes!!!!
Specializes in Occupational Medicine, Orthopedics.
I work in a regular run-of-the-mill nursing home. A resident today was yelling down the hall for someone to help him. I don't know this fella because I work on the opposite hall (on call mind you, so I don't know many of the residents). Any way, he's yelling, so I went down to see if it was anything I could do.
"Can you take off my shoe?" pointing to his right foot.
I take off his shoe and set it on the floor next to him.
He proceeds to loudly proclaim for all to hear: ""Who the hell took my shoe!!!"
When I was still a CNA in the LTC facility I still work at, a co-worker and I were getting a female resident ready for bed who wasn't quite all there. She was concerned that their wasn't enough room in her house for all of us, including myself and my coworker, to sleep. After rearranging some sleeping situations, she decided that instead of sleeping on the couch, she would just tough it out and sleep in bed with her husband. She then said something about, but if I sleep with him, I'll never get my book finished because he never left her alone when they were in bed together. I then asked the resident what book she was reading. She looked at me and said "well, it's a book on all the different positions," as in sexual positions. I held my laughter in as best as I could, until, with a very serious expression, the resident looked at me and says "What's your favorite position?" At that point I couldn't help but laugh. My coworker jokingly says in a hushed voice, hoping the resident wouldn't hear, says "doggystyle." Well, the resident did hear, and the rest of the night, while she was lying in bed, she barked.
Had a female patient of mine get quite upset because the hospital would not let her bring in her own medications and the hospital did not supply the special herb that she had been taking for years. When I asked her what she was taking this "Herb" for she replied, "I take it for my prostate!" Had to have a little anatomy session after that one! :chuckle
An 80 yo man in with #NOF had been settled for the night, he was wearing a pad and as moving him was very painful for him I did not put his pj shorts back on him. He agreed to this. He is in a ward with 3 other men all with dementia.
Well....
This gentleman has dementia, the docs did not write up any of his meds (risperiadal sp?) ect...
So the sundowners sets in...
He kept yelling out to the other pt across from him.
"Hey you, you have pants on, go tell someone that they have captured us and are keeping us prisoner here!!'
So I would go back in and reorient him to where he is and why he is in here...
As soon as I left the room he would start yelling again!!
He also thought the other men in the room were intruders, and he would 'get' them except someone 'has done something to his leg and he can't walk'
Specializes in OR, ICU, Tele, Psych, LTC, Palliative.
He kept yelling out to the other pt across from him.
"Hey you, you have pants on, go tell someone that they have captured us and are keeping us prisoner here!!'
So I would go back in and reorient him to where he is and why he is in here...
As soon as I left the room he would start yelling again!!
One of the things they used to tell us in nursing school is to always "reorient your patient with reality" You've heard the phrase 'come over to the dark side'? :innerconfThere's no way on this little green planet that you're going to be able to orient someone who's delusional, hallucinating, or suffering sundowning, to our reality. (Well, not on the spot without a bit of chemical help, anyway!) The best way to go, IMHO, is to join their reality and assure them in their terms. We had an episode a week ago where the RN of the building was called to the locked unit because someone was going to hurt himself or others. The resident was delusional and thought that a truck full of TNT had been left at the door. He was yelling that everyone was going to be blown up and he was trying to break open a window and not letting anything or anyone get in his way. Now, this RN took a look, listened to what the resident was saying and in a very firm voice says, "No, Fred, they took it all away. The area's secured! Blasting caps, TNT, it's all gone." Fred calmed down, asked for reassurance and the rest of the night went peacefully. Personally, in another LTC situation, I had a woman come to me while I was giving out meds and asked if I have appropriate staffing for the floor, have all the receipts been counted and the money deposited? She had been a restaurant manager earlier in her life. I assured her that all was well, we had the floor covered and she went happily on her way.
Specializes in Paediatrics, Orthopeodics, ENT, General.
He kept yelling out to the other pt across from him.
"Hey you, you have pants on, go tell someone that they have captured us and are keeping us prisoner here!!'
So I would go back in and reorient him to where he is and why he is in here...
As soon as I left the room he would start yelling again!!
One of the things they used to tell us in nursing school is to always "reorient your patient with reality" You've heard the phrase 'come over to the dark side'? :innerconfThere's no way on this little green planet that you're going to be able to orient someone who's delusional, hallucinating, or suffering sundowning, to our reality. Running and ducking!
Oh, yeah!! There were some days working on our orthopoedic ward when I spent more time in my confused patien't reality than I did in my own! I swear dementia's contagious, and it happens when you have 6 patients, all with NOF's, and they're ALL confused, and you have to be very inventive with explanations of why they really shouldn't walk on their broken hip!
My mom is also an RN in the ER at a well known hospital in Los Angeles, one day a female rushes into the ER claiming that she is about to go into labor. She said she is having twins, and the reason she came to this hospital was because she was in labor at another hospital in the past and had triplets and one of them died so they didn't allow her to go back there (WHAT?!) LOL.
As if that wasn't a weird and suspicious story already...Without wasting time for an assessment, they wheel her off to L and D. They admit this lady in L/D, put an ID band on her and made a name plate, and once they start doing an assessment (finally)...they realized she wasn't pregnant at all and was actually a sixty-something year old psych patient!!! :chuckle So they call down to ER and tell them their findings and asked why no one actually looked at the patient...but it was all good...both departments had a good laugh that day!
I was preparing to give an elderly pt her Heparin SQ and she asked me if I I could make a smilie face with her injection sites :wink2: Then she proceeded to giggle through her injection, I love patients with great attitudes
DF-LPN
72 Posts
When I was an aide many moons ago, I had a fellow aide ask me to help her with a b/p. She said she had trouble hearing it. So we walked in the room and the and the res was pasty gray with blue lips. I told the other aide to go get the nurse NOW!! Well unfortunately the res passed away brfore the aide and nurse got back the the room. The aide looked at the res then at me, then at the nurse and said "She was alive when I left the room!" The nurse and I just stood there with our mouths open for a few sec then burst out laughing. The poor aide blushed pure red when she realized what she had just implicated..