Not sure how to title this appropriately for what I am asking for so I will try to explain, since we have threads for Pet Peeves, Worst Patient, Worst CoWorker etc. etc. I wanted to ask about one. One we have probably all been guilty of at one point or another but what are some of the most off the wall medical things you have heard of that made you give that :stone:stone look and say WTH???
I had a friend that was a heavy drinker, he was 19 and had a family that were all drinkers as well. We got to talking once and he mentioned that he knew his drinking bothered me. I told him that what worries me the worst is how young he is and how much harm that he is doing to his body. He didn't ever drink and drive, manly stayed at home and would go through an 18 pack of been in one night. I was telling him once his liver starts going down hill he isn't going to be able to reverse that. (this was before I ever even thought of being a nurse, I was just a concerned friend and had another friend that lost her mother to liver failure from drinking and her mom was like 35 when she died)
So my friend kind of smiled and says "Well don't worry, I guess it's a good thing I have 2 livers, if one fails I have a back up"
Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.
Years ago when I went to the DON of a small LTC and complained about cockroaches running all over the place on night shift (including under the sheets!) she told me not to worry , that the doctor said that they don't carry diseases. I resigned a week later...
Oh my lord!!! When I lived in Fl we had the biggest roaches I ever saw. Well besides those Madagascar Hissing roaches. We lived in Navy Housing and my stepmom was a neat freak but it didn't matter how clean you kept your house, if your neighbors had them you would have them. So glad I don't live there anymore. LOL
Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.
I have a friend who up until the age of 20 thought that women had one "hole." He thought that they peed, pooped, and got their period all out the same place, and was really disturbed by this. I guess he didn't pay attention in Sex-Ed. . . .
It really surprises me how little people know about their own bodies. I have a long history of female problems so I have always made sure to read up about it.When I would go in for various things the Nurses and Docs would be surprised about how informed I was. I remember when I was getting my hysterectomy I was talking about leaving my Ovaries and Tubes in and the Nurse told me she has had so many patients that have had multiple children and have no clue what an ovary is or how you even get pregnant other than by unprotected sex. Seriously blows my mind.
We have a pt who can be inbubated but no chest compressions! We are still debating what to do if she is found with no pulse/resps.
We get those...are we supposed to intubate them, then pick them up by the arms and legs and sorta slosh them around trying to move the blood back and forth???
I was pulled to postpartum a couple of times in a small hospital I worked at. First day rounding the same time the babies were brought to the Mommies (no they didn't room in). One room had a "Mom" older and a "daughter" IMO way too young to have a baby (found out she was 14) and was also obviously mentally challenged. The newborn wound up to be the "daughters" though "Mom" held him and proceeded to bottle feed. WTH?
I was admitting a patient into the hospital...asking the usual questions...are you allergic to anything? "Tape" she answered. What does tape do to you? "It sticks to me." All the while I was thinking...I guess I'm allergic too!
Specializes in Management, Emergency, Psych, Med Surg.
I had a lady come in the ED one day thinking she was pregnant (this was before home pregnancy tests). She was pregnant and she was telling the doctor that she could not understand how this happened. She said that she always used her diaphragm. So he took a look at it to see if it had a hole in it. It was bright purple. He said to her, how did your diaphragm get this color? She said, well I ran out of that jelly they gave me when I got it and I have been using grape jelly. I though I would fall over laughing.
I have had other women wonder why they were pregnant:
1. Gave her birth control pill to her husband every morning.
2. Put the pill inside her lady parts every day.
That is what keeps me in nursing. Some of this stuff is so funny. The general public has no idea what we have to put up with.
Although it shouldn't anymore, whenever discussing code status and the patient/POA says "CPR is OK, but don't intubate them" it makes me go "WTH?"
A bit OT here but I'm dying to know how you deal with/properly educate these people (I'm just a student). Or do you just have to suck it up and go along with it no matter how impossible the request may be? Thanks. :)
Specializes in Management, Emergency, Psych, Med Surg.
Well, you have to get down to a very basic level. Any time you discharge someone with an RX make sure they understand how to take it and what it is for. Often, you will still not get through. Some people are so poor and uneducated that they simply do not have the capacity to understand. You just have to do what you can and hope it turns out for the best. What else can you do. It often does not matter if you write it down or not. Some can't read. When you are trying to educate someone about something complicated like how to take care of a dressing change or take care of a central line, it can be scary. I try to involve family if I can but very often that does not work either. You also have to use street language to describe body parts. People do not always understand lady parts and member.
I just read this on an old thread here.This was a response about hand washing vs alcohol prior to fingerstick glucose testing. I read this about the carb traces and was really like What the heck. I tried to do a quick search to see if there was any truth to this and couldn't find anything. So this is my What The Heck? moment. If anyone knows if this is true please let me know.
"Thanks for the link. I teach soap and water, alcohol wipes if water isn't available. The main point here is to get traces of carb off the finger. Instant hand sanitizer kills germs, but does nothing to get rid of traces of carb. Germs are far less an issue in BG testing than inaccurate readings from carbs left on fingers.
We sometimes see parents who scrupulously scrub their toddlers fingers with an alcohol wipe before testing...toddlers who haven't touched food since the last hand washing. But the parents haven't washed their hands before reaching in the vial and fishing out a test strip. Now the strip is contaminated with the carb residue on the parent's fingers. Another culprit for inaccurate testing...retesting after treating a low without rewashing hands ("I just washed them a minute ago before I ate 'blank' to treat my low!"). Now the BG looks sky high from the residue on the finger...and the BG might still be low!"
I left out my all time favorite, also regarding code status..."We don't want you to do anything to Mom if she dies, but it's OK to do CPR before it gets to that point." I probably wasn't the most sensitive person in the world when I looked at them like they were crazy and said "We only do CPR on dead people."
A bit OT here but I'm dying to know how you deal with/properly educate these people (I'm just a student). Or do you just have to suck it up and go along with it no matter how impossible the request may be? Thanks. :)
Some people there's just no way to properly educate them. I try to explain that during arrest, it is of utmost necessity that the patient be intubated for multiple reasons including XYZ, and that CPR stands for cardio-pulmonary resuscitation...there is no point to doing the cardio part without the pulmonary part accompanying it.
I've also gotten the ones where "It's okay to give them meds through their IV to bring them back, but I don't want them getting compressions." To which I usually reply "How are the medications going to get to their heart if we're not physically making it beat, b/c at that point in time it's not doing anything useful by itself." One time I had someone say to me "Oh, you don't inject the meds straight into their heart? They did it on Pulp Fiction, why can't you do that in the hospital?"
And there was the time I had a patient who had multiple DVTs in both legs, who insisted that his sister who was a nurse (turns out she used to be an aide in a NH) told him that the best way to get rid of them was to get up and walk around to "work them loose and my kidneys will catch them". He ended up leaving AMA b/c we just weren't taking good care of him by insisting he stay on bedrest until adequate initial treatment had been done. That one I was sure to emphasize, and underline, the "death" warning on the AMA papers, along with calling his wife and telling her that there was a good chance that if he did not get treatment, the outcome could be dire.
We had an OB pt. who had a seizure due to eclampsia and was on a magnesium drip. She wanted to smoke real bad. Her friend, AN ICU NURSE, told her it was no problem. She should just sign the AMA form and go out to smoke, and we couldn't stop her. (We did stop her BTW)
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~Mi Vida Loca~RN, ASN, RN
5,259 Posts
Oh my lord!!! When I lived in Fl we had the biggest roaches I ever saw. Well besides those Madagascar Hissing roaches. We lived in Navy Housing and my stepmom was a neat freak but it didn't matter how clean you kept your house, if your neighbors had them you would have them. So glad I don't live there anymore. LOL