Things Patients Have Taught Me NOT To Do

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Never....NEVER...cut a potato in half and use it as a pessary! :eek:

Anybody got anything to add?

Never ever reach down a hole it the ground to see what it in it. You might just find out.

(28 year old male second time bit by a rattler. )

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Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.

I cannot believe i forgot this one!!!

People in the ER waiting area really don't want to know about your raging yeast infections, and how you get them "quite often".

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Pts' families teach us things to not do as well-

Do not bring your 90-yr-old toothless, demented mother tacos, potato chips and a Snickers bar for lunch, then loudly DEMAND a swallow eval when she then has a choking episode.:rolleyes:

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Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.

I have ALL my teeth and even I can't chew a Snickers!:stone

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Specializes in Critical Care.

Regarding OD's:

Don't call your best friend to let her know that you have taken 5 whole Lortabs because your boyfriend wasn't giving you enough attention that day. Then when she calls the squad to come get you, do not try to fight 4 police officers with your 90 pound body. Also, when you finally wake up in the ICU suddenly craving Mucomyst, DO NOT try to explain your Miranda rights to your nurse (I am not a cop!)

Also, if you are being held under an emergency psych hold, try not to repeat the work "yoda" over and over again for 12 hours straight. We will close your door.

Don't pee into your empty apple juice container and leave it on the bedside table.

Don't suddenly wake up from a head injury, sprint down the hall to one of the window rooms and go SPLAT on the window. And then, when the window doesn't break, don't run into my bosses office and leave a poop smear on her phone. Well, maybe just do the poop smear part :)

If your frail 89 year old grandma needs a CABG, consider it long and hard. If grandma decides to have surgery and barely makes it out of the OR on a balloon pump and codes a few minutes after getting to the ICU, please don't think you are doing her any favors by encouraging 50 of your white trash relatives to storm the locked ICU doors. (The surgeon had a police escort when he finally had to tell the family there was no hope).

And my favorite:

Don't get into an MVA while driving around, drunk and high on meth with your girlfriend who is 8.5 months pregnant while your wife is in the hospital you are about to be admitted to having your baby. AND, if you must do this, please be sure that your girlfriend does not plan on going into labor that very night in that hospital. But, if you cannot resist all of the above, PLEASE don't let your girlfriend visit the ICU with your baby and her proud friends while your wife, your baby and the in-laws are visiting.

Maybe, that is why we used to have a no children policy. Does that count as Irish twins?

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When you are a young, male paraplegic, and your nurse is transfering you, do not think that this is a great time to grab her breasts, because she won't be able to stop you. You may get dropped on the floor.

Do not use saliva to lubricate your self-cath for insertion.

We also learn a few things not to do from the families-

Do not bring your 90-yr-old, toothless, demented mother a Snickers bar, tacos, and potato chips for lunch, then loudly demand a swallow eval when she has a choking episode.

When your 30 -yr-old paraplegic son has a small wound on his coccycx, do not advise him to sleep with a bleach-soaked rag between his buttocks, in order to ward off infection. The small wound will soon become a big wound.

When your post CVA, on a G-tube mother "looks uncomfortable", do not roll the head of the bed down so that she is laying flat, and then scream for the nurse when she has Jevity running out of her mouth. Do not then yell "I'm gonna sue you!" when she develops aspiration pneumonia.

When another hospice pt's family member smokes a cigarette outside of your wife's room, and smoke drifts in through the open window, do not pull the fire alarm, just because you are pizzed-off.

We really will have to evacuate all of the bed-bound, dying pts (including your wife) outside at 3am in freezing weather. The fire dept really will have to come and declare the situation safe before we can bring all the pts back inside.

When your elderly husband is actively dying of CA in a hospice, do not try to force feed him, despite all the teaching you've received as to why this is unadvisable.

Do not sneak in food hidden in your purse because those nurses are "starving him to death." Especially, do not do this when he is non-responsive and apnic. Do not continue to ignore all the ongoing teaching you are receiving about this.

When the nurses do his post-mortum care, they will learn that it was not the CA that actually killed him- it was all the apple sauce and pudding you inadvertently packed into his trachea.

Do not then write a letter to the unit stating "I hold all of you personally responsible for my husband's death."

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Javajunkie said

Don't suddenly wake up from a head injury, sprint down the hall to one of the window rooms and go SPLAT on the window. And then, when the window doesn't break, don't run into my bosses office and leave a poop smear on her phone. Well, maybe just do the poop smear part

:rotfl: :rotfl:

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Specializes in Emergency/Critical Care Transport.

Don't ever tell the 6foot5 245lb weightlifting hospital constable that you don't have to listen to "no f***ing 300lb rentacop." The resounding thump from you getting bodyslammed will actually knock items off shelves in the nearby stockroom. :chuckle

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Originally posted by tymomrn

It's a bad idea to snort coke when you have WPW. This guy got a 14g IV.

OK...Probably a dumb question but, whats WPW??

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Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome. A type of tachycardia that doesn't respond to convention treatment.

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

Do NOT take an entire bottle of plain Tylenol in a fit of self-pity because your boyfriend is being an a$$**** and your parents don't understand why you still care about him. You will not succeed in killing yourself.....all you will do is make yourself ill AND screw up your liver so badly that you wind up needing a transplant.:(

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Do not let your parrot visit you in the hospital...and especially do not attempt to give your parrot a kiss when you have an NG tube and extremely small nares...or the parrot might just bite the NG tube in half you you'll have to get the NG tube replaced.:nono:

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