Share Your Funniest Patient Stories...

Nurses Humor

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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. :lol2:

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!!!

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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.

What's your story?

A few years ago there was a patient on my unit on C-Diff isolation. I walked by the room to see her adult son, wearing gloves and gown, and blowing up the donut she'd been sitting on for days.

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My first two pts in clinicals were the best. My first one had dementia and kept saying she needed to get to the bus.. when I asked if she was allergic to anything she said money! Loved her! Second pt was a drama queen.. my instructor wanted me to give her a bed bath but she refused times three. My instructor did not care it had to be done.. so I got a washcloth thown at me. Then I also had a nurse who was my pt.. she and her roommate pulled out their straws and started making really annoying sounds with them. It wasnt bothering me but the other nurses who had to take care of them. Made me laugh. They were so fun

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Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.

There are so many pages to this thread that I don't know if I have posted this before or not. But here goes:

I was the med nurse on a small med-surg unit on the 3-ll shift. My assignment, in addition to the meds was to help the patients in a four bed room to get ready for bed. Three of the four beds were occupied by some college guys who had been injured in a football game the previous night. None of them required much beyond the cursory basics.

The fourth bed was occupied by an old guy with dementia who was a sweetie, and we'd had him on several previous admissions. He was sitting in the chair, and I just had to help him back into bed. After I pulled the curtain around for privacy, he murmured that he had to pee. I handed him the bottle and turned my attention to pulling down the bed-covers and after a few seconds I felt a warm stream hit my leg. He was holding the urinal in one hand and his business-end with the other hand and staring off into space.

In dismay I turned to help him place his member IN the bottle and said the worst possible thing I could have said in that room: "Oscar! Oscar! You're 88 years old and you don't know how to use it yet?! Put it IN! Put it IN!"

Laughter erupted and soon all of us were helpless with it. Naturally, the college guys couldn't get over it, and for the next two or so days, every time I entered or passed by the room, at least one, if not all of them just had to mimic in falsetto: "Put it in! Put it in!"

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Specializes in ICU.

Okay, just remembered this thread so I copied this post I made from a preventing falls thread:

Speaking of funny bed alarms... we have these fancy brand new electronic touchscreen beds (love them to pieces, really, they are the best thing since sliced bread and they are probably what I am going to miss most about my current job when I leave at the end of the month) that play music and even translate things into other languages. Really. I can push the "are you in pain?" option in Spanish/German/Italian/Vietnamese or one of like 20-something other languages and my patient can shake his head yes or no... we recently had a Spanish-speaking patient on the vent that everyone assumed was delirious because we couldn't get him to follow commands, somebody pushed the "hold up two fingers" option in Spanish, and... he held up two fingers. It was awesome. Love these beds...

Anyway. So, one option for the bed alarms is for it to beep so we can hear, but also say in a pretty, feminine voice, "Hold on, your nurse is coming!" I was sitting at my perch between my two patients' rooms when the bed alarm started to go off one night. I got in right after my patient had sat up and inched his feet close to the edge. He was sitting perfectly still, exclaiming, "My nurse is coming! My nurse is coming!" I lost it. It was so freaking funny that I was doubled over laughing while I was putting his legs back in the bed. Seriously going to miss those beds! Maybe I can somehow sneak these giant, heavy beds out, tie a couple of them to the top of my car, and take them with me for future use... ;)

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That would scare me to death

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Specializes in ICU.
desireemiranda said:
That would scare me to death

Nobody has been terrified yet... the people with dementia just start talking to the bed alarm like it's totally normal for weird voices to come out of nowhere. LOL. I wish I could process things like dementia patients do for one day, just to see what it's like so I'd know how to take care of them better.

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I took care of a younger patient who had a heart condition and a fracture. He and his wife had a wicked sense of humor. His wife joked that he needs to look at the trapeze bar on his bed like Rocky looks at a punching bag.

This gave me an idea.

When the physical therapist came, I downloaded "Eye of the Tiger" on my phone, stood by the door and blasted it as loud as I can.

Patient started laughing. Wife started laughing. Physical therapist started laughing. It was one of those self-perpetuating cycles of laughter. The more I laughed, the more they laughed, the more they laughed, the more I laughed!

Totally professional? Probably not. But I counted it as therapeutic and I think it also counts as coughing and deep breathing haha!

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Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.

CWP--that was a great story and a really inspired bit of humor!

When I lived in Nashville for a while, I worked in a small hospital as a med nurse. One slow night I made a life-size cardboard guitar

and taped it to the side of the med-cart; in fancy ,colorful lettering it bore the label "MUSIC CITY MEDICINE NURSE".It didn't get many guffaws, but it did bring a surprised smile to many a face, because EVERYTHING in Nashville is "Music City" This-or-That. Eventually the supervisor vetoed the sign as 'not professional'. Maybe not, but it sure was fun!

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Muser69 said:
Cutest little 90 year old kept telling us "call the doctor and have me pronounced dead. All my arrangements are made at (local funeral home"

Sounds like the LOL at my clinic site who kept trying to convince me that she was dead.

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There's no way. I was thinking the same thing until he was back the next day in a cast, still in the chair that caused the incident.

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I received a post op patient on the oncology floor, with an NGT, an epidural and at least a double lumen PICC. She was very confused, but alert and . . . .busy.

I got her VS, explained at least twenty times where she was and why, and very nervously ran to grab the piggybacks that were overdue for her. By the time I returned, she had disconnected both her NGT from suction and her epidural from the pump -- and hooked them together. There was bile flowing gently upward toward her spine :)

It took me about 30 LONG seconds to figure out what in the HELL she did. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, it made no sense and well, I couldn't really SEE it at first, if you know what I mean :D

I pushed the clamp up above the bile flowing gently toward her CNS, clamped it and called the charge for some nice mitts and a waist belt (she was still very busy). Anesthesia had to pull her epidural and gave me orders for a PCA, like she'd know how to work that from Pluto or wherever she was. I got a low basal for the PCA and some Haldol. That was the craziest thing I've yet seen in 23 years.

Well, then there was the guy admitted to acute psych who believed a demon lived in his testicles. He took a handgun and shot his left testicle into infinity. I had to do a dressing change on that daily that still makes me shudder. One other time we admitted a woman who had pounded a framing nail into her own forehead, just missing the dura. Another patient (a borderline personality) wasn't getting enough attention so she used viscous lidocaine and cut BOTH of her own achilles tendons. She was completely sane, no psychosis. Just ****** off at her caseworker.

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Specializes in Emergency/Trauma/Critical Care Nursing.
Gooselady said:
I received a post op patient on the oncology floor, with an NGT, an epidural and at least a double lumen PICC. She was very confused, but alert and . . . .busy.

I got her VS, explained at least twenty times where she was and why, and very nervously ran to grab the piggybacks that were overdue for her. By the time I returned, she had disconnected both her NGT from suction and her epidural from the pump -- and hooked them together. There was bile flowing gently upward toward her spine ?

It took me about 30 LONG seconds to figure out what in the HELL she did. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, it made no sense and well, I couldn't really SEE it at first, if you know what I mean :D

I pushed the clamp up above the bile flowing gently toward her CNS, clamped it and called the charge for some nice mitts and a waist belt (she was still very busy). Anesthesia had to pull her epidural and gave me orders for a PCA, like she'd know how to work that from Pluto or wherever she was. I got a low basal for the PCA and some Haldol. That was the craziest thing I've yet seen in 23 years.

Well, then there was the guy admitted to acute psych who believed a demon lived in his testicles. He took a handgun and shot his left testicle into infinity. I had to do a dressing change on that daily that still makes me shudder. One other time we admitted a woman who had pounded a framing nail into her own forehead, just missing the dura. Another patient (a borderline personality) wasn't getting enough attention so she used viscous lidocaine and cut BOTH of her own achilles tendons. She was completely sane, no psychosis. Just ****** off at her caseworker.

How in the heck does one connect a NG tube to an epidural?? That's talent!

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