What do you hate seeing the MOST in the ER!?

Specialties Emergency

Published

What is the thing that you hate seeing in the Emergency Room? Is it kids, traumas, lost causes, frequent flyers or........... What gives you heebeejeebies, Creeps, Chills, gags. Tears, bad taste in your mouth and Pulls your heart strings.

Specializes in peds cardiac, peds ER.

The difference in perspectives is funny. I work in a peds ED, so I hate having ADULT PATIENTS. Can't wait to get rid of them. Strokes, heart attacks, drug seeking, drunk...please go to the adult hospital if you are over 21.

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I do not like Psych pts, especially when they are out of their meds, and decide to self medicate with PCP.

Give me a DKA pt, a trauma pt, a medical code, a STEMI or someone stroking out, ANYTHING but a psych pt. They are just too unpredictable. And they are known to physically attack while in the manic phase.

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Specializes in ER, ICU.

I cannot stand lazy nurses either, which is why I choose to work night shift (my experience has been that night shifters tend to help each other more than the day shifters do at both hosp I work at).

Non-compliant psych pts scare me; there's just no reasoning with them and you never know when they'll snap. It's easy to deal with them as a 1013 bc security is there but in triage it's just you, him/her, and the panic button...

Young parents with a truly sick baby pull on my heart strings bc I've been there. Without caring, understanding, and helpful nurses, the whole thing can be a very scary experience.

Generalized non-specific abd pain x1 day that is really a preg test in disguise at 3am just ****** me off.

People who don't fill their $4 abx Rx but fill the more expensive Vicodin Rx get zero sympathy when their infection is not better or worse.

People who leave AMA after a full work-up, admission orders, and report getting called, all bc they can't go outside and smoke.

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Specializes in SNF, LTC, MED/SURG, ER.

" how long is the wait?". Do we look like a freakin' Olive Garden? People who come in seeking pain meds irritate me. Little kids and babies that are really really sick and all the mother is worried about is herself. Teenage mothers who are there with their kid and scared witless and their own mother or father are nowhere to be found. I am irritated with the teen's parents for basically hanging out to dry. I'm always extra gentle with those moms because they're basically still kids themselves. People who abuse the systemPeople who threaten to call the CEO of the hospital because their kid that threw up once an hour ago has to wait because there is a STEMI that came in CPR in progress

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I have a new one:

The 21 year old mom who runs at me in triage screaming, refusing to register, wanting me to pump her kid's stomach right there because the 5 year old walking, talking, laughing child swallowed something that looked like a pill and who cusses at me because I tell her no and she needs to register as I take a chest pain in.

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Specializes in ER.

i hate anyone who acts like they are entitled!!!!

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For me, its the mother bringing in her febrile infant, along with her three other rugrats all under the age of 3 at 2 am, all crying and screaming, with the infant lying on the stretcher and the mom is out in the hall, happily TEXTING!!!! Lady, if that baby falls, you had better start praying to sweet baby Jesus!!!

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Specializes in ER, M/S, transplant, tele.

Although I strongly dislike toxic ingestions, belligerent patients of any flavor, and overly dramatic/hysterical peoples, my biggest irritation are those patients with a condition I like to call Adult Entitlement Syndrome.

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Specializes in Emergency, Med/Surg, Vascular Access.

Suicidal pts....if u wanted to kill yourself you'd either be dead or dying, and you are neither.

Possibly biggest pet peeve? Pts. who wont give me a urine specimen. Ugh. Makes me so mad. I understand if you literally JUST went, but otherwise, you're making me want to stab a 14g IV needle directly into your bladder and pull the urine out myself. See? You DID have to go. :-))

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Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.
Suicidal pts....if u wanted to kill yourself you'd either be dead or dying, and you are neither.

Talked to a psychiatrist who is an instructor with a local medical school yesterday. He was telling me about a patient who had TWELVE prior suicide attempts. He looked at the person and said, "What are you doing here????" What he wanted to say was, "Wow, you really SUCK at this suicide stuff!"

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The ones who shouldn't be there. Ear ache since.... this morning. Sniffles for 2 days, hasn't taken any cold medicine. Headache since last night, hoped it would go away but it didn't, now it's an emergency even though they didn't even try taking Tylenol or Advil first to see if that would take care of it. "Chest pain" in a 22 year old who then starts hyperventilating in triage and then starts screaming at me that their fingers are going numb, and then go completely ape-**** ballistic on me when I dare try to coach them to slow down their breathing, usually with tirades peppered with expletives, called names, and declarations of their inability to breath.

I love traumas, hopeless or not. Love the drunks, even when they **** on the floor. Love the crazies--some of my favorites honestly. Love *most* of the druggies even, just not the heroin detoxers 'cause they are always jerks and always blame you that they hurt still. Frequent fliers annoy the crap out of me, but mostly because most of them fit the profile outlined in the first paragraph.

It always breaks my heart to see the families come in when their loved ones die provided the loved one didn't die because they were idiot thugs dying an idiot thug death and the family screams "why him? why him? what did he ever do?" at their bedside while their tears fall all over their idiot thug face tats that is. But I wouldn't say the mourning families are my least favorite thing to see, they just make me sad in a way that few other things in the ER can do. But mourning is natural, as is death, even if it feels untimely, and it's an expected part of working in a busy ER that sees lots of traumas. If I couldn't handle death, I'd need to find another job ;-)

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[" how long is the wait?". Do we look like a freakin' Olive Garden?]

EGADS YES!!! We've had crazy long waits recently, and I can't STAND to have people up at the window every flipping 20 minutes wanting to know how long the wait is, even though Every Single Time they Ask we explain that we can't predict, we can only tell them how many other people in the waiting room are ahead of them, but explain if someone comes in in a life-threatening condition they WILL go back first whether they walk in or come in by ambulance, and that all those people called before them were NOT being given preferential treatment, they are either going to a dif tx area (fast track vs main ed) or getting tests done, or they were Trying to Die On Us and we didn't realize it until we got their labs back.

Don't get me wrong I feel SO bad for people waiting a long time. I think even 2 hours is miserable and horrible. But there's usually not a dang thing I can do about it. So PLEASE don't yell at me when I tell you that there are still 4 people ahead of you!!!

It's worse when I work triage and I don't have a tech at the window because people with sniffles with yell at me through the window While I'm Triaging Another Patient to ask for the 7th time how many people are ahead of them.

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