Share Your Funniest Patient Stories...

shortcake06 · Jul 7, 2008

My first week out of orientation we had a patient on the floor who was a fresh hip going throught DT's, always a pleasant combination, to make matters worse, there was construction and he was what seemed like miles from the nurse's station, so although he wasn't my patient, we were all keeping and eye on him. I'm making my rounds and the bed alarm is going off, I meet another nurse in the room and we get him before he lands in the floor. We ask him what he's doing getting out of bed the other nurse reminds him, "You're in the hospital". He replies, "Oh, yeah right, this is the first hospital I've ever seen with a piano in every room" The nurse replied, without missing a beat, "Well, it's a really nice hospital".

apple25 · Jul 7, 2008

We were going home from our graveyard shift (as student nurse) in medical ICU when our clinical instructor checked the patient assigned to me and asked me to fix the bed of the patient before we went home. My patient asked for something (my patient is a CVA pt.)

Pt: "could you give me 'saging' (banana in English)?" (my patient was pointing on the side table..)

Me: "saging po?" (asked my patient then handed the banana to my patient. suddenly, my patient laughed and pointed on the eyeglasses (salamin) at the side table.) =)

after that incident, the staff nurse, my clinical instructor, one or two of my group mates, my patient and me laughed:D

kjetski · Jul 18, 2008

My sister is a PA. She drinks like a fish and chain smokes. I have seen her light one from the end of another.

A couple of years ago I was visiting her in the Florida Panhandle. In keeping with her tradition she was holding a Budweiser, Marlboro Red in her mouth (she did not bother to take it out as she spoke) giving me "medical advice" on who could take my vericose veins out.

That same week she asked me if she needed to lose weight. Being her older brother I gave her my kindest words, "you could stand to lose 20 pounds of baggage". She stalked off uttering obscenities under her breath. In the background my brother in law was snickering. A day later I was setting up a wonderful black and white sunset picture and my wonderful sister proceeds to fly the one fingered salute in the middle of my sunset.

Priceless....

nurse430+yrs · Jul 22, 2008

Please note: I am posting this story in the most delicate way possible without intentionally giving offense.

Many years ago a young man in his early 20's arrived in ER unconscious (this was the disco dancing era.) He had a cucumber taped to his upper

inner thigh. Someone had apparently slipped him a "mickey" in his drink and he passed out --only to awaken in ER with several nursing staff around him; as he opened his eyes he stated; Oh, (crap), "I wish I were dead"; apparently he wanted to "excite" his dance partners!

Nurse430+yrs:nurse:

Tash4nvyblues, RN · Jul 22, 2008

Working in ccu, we had, a four bed high dependency unit not far from the nurses station, this particular day something smelt repulsively like poop, through the whole of ccu. We searched high and low for where it was coming from, then the little demented lady in the HDU smiled a great, brown, cheesy grin. I didn't have to clean it up.

Tash4nvyblues, RN · Jul 22, 2008

At our local hospital we had a repeat visitor to the hospital, he got the nickname coke bottle bob, if you need me to elaborate let me know!!!

Cathlabnurse46 · Jul 26, 2008

Ok, now some stories from when I was a patient.

I have some time now, my wife is away taking ACLS. She hasn't taken it in 18 years! Our business is failing (thanks to this wonderful economy.. GW Bush) and she has to go back to hospital nursing after being out for 17 years! So here I go.

I was injured at the age of nine when a mosquito bite became infected and turned into cellulitus. three weeks later I developed oseomylitis in my right femur which started many years of surgeries and long hospitalization in Shriners. For now I won't say which one. I spent from 1973-1980 in and out of Shriners hospital (I was injured in 1972).... the longest admission was 13 months. It's where I got my first kiss, met my first girl friend, experienced the death of a close friend my age and met kids just like me... that could do some AMAZING THINGS! The story I'll share is this one, one that puts a human face on health care workers and, as I watched that Randy Pausch video last night (the last lecture) reminds me that nothing is more important than kids and what we pass on to them in lessons that we learned in our life (head fake #2). So relax, grab some coffee and read on.

It was summer, I think about 1978. After my third hip replacements failed and my third revision to the cup failed also, I was being "serial casted" to reduce the flexion contracture of 55 degrees in my right leg. Every week or two I had to go back to the casting room and be placed on the spika table, have the old cast removed, 2-3 residents would force my leg down to stretch the tendons (sending me screaming in pain) and then they would recast me in another hip spika. This went on for about 7 months.

The grounds outside of Shriners was beautiful. The apple orchard attracted deer every night that would feed on the fallen and fermenting apples. The nurses and residents would push us kids in wheelchairs, gurneys, beds or even carry us out to the ball field to watch the deer or to just play.

Leonard Skenard was just becoming popular. The residents and aides had a little party planed for us this day out by this ball field back by the lawn shed on a hot summer day. We had a picnic complete with a baseball game. I was on a wheeled gurney, on my stomach so I could wheel myself. I didn't play baseball that day but watched my friends run on stumps (without there prosthetics) and those who could run, pushed a child bound to a wheelchair after he hit the ball around the bases.

Toward the end of the day, we all were hot. The resident broke out baskets of water balloons and we got into a huge water fight.... not the kind of thing that mixes well in those days with plaster cast! When we were done... we lined up at the casting room (the smell I can still remember of silver nitrate, pedals of lambs skin and dead skin flaking off or a dirty wet cast) to have all of our cast changed... as they got so wet they softened and were in risk of falling apart. The residents stayed up late that night, changing all of our cast. the Chief of Staff never found out and we never told on them.

That day we got to act as kids again, if only for a few moments we secured our time in line in the casting room to pay for our fun. We never did that again. I feared the casting table for many years, the small spike that balances a patient while the are entombed in plaster is cold and hurts. But I faced it that time with honor and was glad that theses resident treated us as kids not as patients.

That hospital is now torn down and lives only in the last vestiges and memories of those of us who once resided in those walls. Healing is an art on so many levels. It has been my honor to be a nurse and a patient, but mostly to be a witness to mans humanity to others when it is needed the most.

nursval · Jul 26, 2008

I was working on a med-surg floor one night, when 2 of our nurses had to go to the ER to help with a very mad, very drunk patient. Apparently, he had been clean for 7 years, and fell off the wagon with a bottle of crown royal. I knew he was being transferred down to the floor because I could hear "Moooooo"....and "Ba-Ba!" (Very similiar to a sheep or goat, not really sure which one he thought he was) We got him to a room, and he started trying to count to three in Spanish, which he never got past "tres". I was the lucky one to have him as a patient, and he was one on one with his four point leathers. The next morning, I explained to him some of his behavior, and he successfully convinced his entire family that he was possessed. By the devil. I was sure to explain that although his faith would be an excellant way to help him through the crisis, perhaps other ideas for the cause of the episode should be explored as well. Moooooo........

cursenurse · Jul 27, 2008

Cathlabnurse46 said:

staying with the last two themes, over the years I have seen plenty of X-rays of
forgiven objects in places they shouldn't be. While being a traveler in Bristol TN, an elderly man came into the ER with a lacerated rectum. Seems his favorite HARDEE'S collectable glass had broken that he would use to stimulate his "O" during a certain act. I got him in my ICU... needless to say he couldn't sit nor lay flat too well. He actually lost a lot of blood and way critically ill. In the days prior to PAX and digital radiology, we had real film (for you newbies, this process was done in a dark room). I would have a friend that would run films up to the CCU to show us vibrators, dildo, rings... small mammals in peoples colons! Of course this was before HIPAA and confidentiality concerns were addressed (we tried not to laugh too loud). However this one event, way before HIPAA, sticks with me. It happened while I was still in Nursing school.

A "TV sports news broadcaster" came into my hospital with a bowel obstruction/acute abd. He'd been "gerbiling" when the string broke and the little critter scurried into the colon where it managed to lacerate his bowel before it died. He was rushed into surgery for a bowel resection (no the gerbil didn't make it). Some of my other classmates were doing their OR rotation (in diploma programs we spent 13 weeks in the OR, many times scrubbing in) and witnessed what happened. During lunch the surgeons spoke about the patient (a breach in patient confidentiality now know as HIPAA) in the cafe and it got out who this person was. They fired 3 OR nurses (a lesson to be learned to newer nurses)! The sport's caster moved to another market some years later as the story spread. This was in the early 1980's.

Along those lines, has anyone ever tried to counsel one of these patients about how to find anatomically correct safe appliances for them to use instead of the various household and pet shop items they use to satisfy their sexual urges? I'm considering it.

Tash4nvyblues, RN · Jul 27, 2008

cursenurse said:

Along those lines, has anyone ever tried to counsel one of these patients about how to find anatomically correct safe appliances for them to use instead of the various household and pet shop items they use to satisfy their sexual urges? I'm considering it.

You could counsel them but an anatomically correct device probably wouldn't have the same effect as a little creature ripping your insides out. OUCH!

Cathlabnurse46 · Jul 27, 2008

cursenurse said:

Along those lines, has anyone ever tried to counsel one of these patients about how to find anatomically correct safe appliances for them to use instead of the various household and pet shop items they use to satisfy their sexual urges? I'm considering it.

Don't the sex shops do that? What will you do, host a "pleasure party"? I can see it now, invite Dan Hannah or the Croc Hunters family! OMG!

hotpotato101, RN · Jul 29, 2008

nursval said:

I was working on a med-surg floor one night, when 2 of our nurses had to go to the ER to help with a very mad, very drunk patient. Apparently, he had been clean for 7 years, and fell off the wagon with a bottle of crown royal. I knew he was being transferred down to the floor because I could hear "Moooooo"....and "Ba-Ba!" (Very similiar to a sheep or goat, not really sure which one he thought he was) We got him to a room, and he started trying to count to three in Spanish, which he never got past "tres". I was the lucky one to have him as a patient, and he was one on one with his four point leathers. The next morning, I explained to him some of his behavior, and he successfully convinced his entire family that he was possessed. By the devil. I was sure to explain that although his faith would be an excellant way to help him through the crisis, perhaps other ideas for the cause of the episode should be explored as well. Moooooo........

what a lame excuse! haha! :yeah: