What was the MOST ridiculous thing a patient came to the ER for?

Specialties Emergency Nursing Q/A

And did you have to treat them?

I am just curious. Your stories always seem to either crack me up or shake my head in amazement.

Thanks for sharing ?

Specializes in er,cvicu,icu.

I once had a 18 year old girl check in at 2330 on a Sat night with the c/o tumor on her neck. I triaged the girl and asked her how long the tumor had been there "3years" and she wanted it checked out. Mind you, my urgent care(fast track closes at midnight) the wait at this point for the main er was 3-4 hours. I should know by now that no good deed goes unpunished but I thought I would "Educate". I looked at the tumor and told her that it was simply a fatty cyst that would more than likely go away, and that is was normal to have. Well, she replied to me "I want a doctor's opinion you are just a nurse." Okay, have a seat and get comfortable. Well I must have really been having a off night because when my NP asked me what her problem was I told him and he offered to see her in the fast track before he left. So I call the little ray of sunshine back to fast track and tell her that the NP would see her so that she wouldn't have to wait 3-4 hours. It was not 5 minutes later that she was out at the nursing station with her cell phone in hand telling me that her "momma" wanted to talk to me about my attitude. So I get on the phone and precede to hear a 10 minute lecture from "momma" about how I had accused her baby of seeking drugs and that her baby wasn't going to wait 3 hours when there were only 2 cars in my parking lot and furthermore she was very familiar with er procedures and I didn't want her to come down there. well after I counted to ten I replied to "momma" that 1)the # of cars in my parking lot had nothing to do with the # of pts in my ER 2)her baby was 18 years old and I would not be discussing her care or problems over the phone and finally that if she was so familiar with er procedures she surely knew that pain was the 5th vital sign and every pt was asked about it. Well momma hung up on me. The NP had been standing there the whole time walked over to the pt looked at her neck and said, fatty tumor- go home.

Specializes in ER, NICU, NSY and some other stuff.

LOL just another day in paradise.

I NEVER get on the cell phone to talk to anybody's relative in these situations. That is why.

I can't think how many times I would try to educate patients and was reported for being mean. The other day a woman came up sreaming her child needed to be seen there were 3 people ahead of her. I told her to fill out the paper work and have a seat I will be with her in a few minutes. She refused she said "this is an ER isn't it well my baby is sick and needs to be seen" She then proceeded to tell me her child has had a fever and a rash and his lips are swollen" I figured I should at least look at the kid so I go to the waiting room. She then tells me the child (he was 10) has a fever for 6 days and this is the 4th time he has been to the doctor and they don't do anything. I said the child looks ok (temp 98.6 no rash no swelling of lips) for now and if she waits until I triage the others, I will take her in she starts screaming what do you know you are only a nurse. The charge nurse hears the screaming and instead of telling the mother to have a seat or you will call security I was told to take the child in (we have a separate pedi area that had an empty bed) the kid went home on claritin in less then 15 minutes. I should have held my ground and told her to take a seat but the other patients were very sweet. All this taught her was if you scream loud enough you will get seen faster. The chest pain and lady partsl bleeding got passed over for a child with allergies that was already diagnosed 3 other times with the same thing. :madface: :angryfire

Specializes in Emergency.

Shame on your charge RN for not backing you!

Someone has already mentioned it but its happened to me to on more than one occasion. Patients who use the ambulance service for a taxicab. They call 911 with a made up complaint and get transported to the ER, then leave AMA. The pickup location was of course miles away and they simply wanted a ride. The boldest bolt out of the back of the ambulance without even checking in.

Most selfish and ridiculous....As the charge nurse I had been called to the triage area to explain to an irate young lady why a particular patient was going back before her (she had checked in first with her chief complaint of hang-nail); it was an older man with known brain cancer and a mental status change/neurological deficit who had checked in after her but gone back for treatment first. She was escalating and accepting none of my explanation of acuity. I got frustrated and said...."look, he's got brain cancer, okay?". She came back with..."well, he's already dead then and you should have seen me FIRST!". I was speechless....That was eleven years ago and I still havn't forgotten it.

This poster hit the nail on the head...

"These trivial complaints are generally not covered by any form of insurance and even medicaid is cracking down on non emergent visits. The patients are usually very angry when they receive a bill for $600.00 in the mail. More and more hospitals are becomming more and more aggressive at collecting on these bills also. The way to treat under educated consumers who utilize a resource for the wrong reasons is to hit them in the pocket book. Paying a huge bill will get them to think about visiting their primary care physician first or trying home treatments. People just dont want to think any more. They'd rather go crying to "Mommy" aka the "ER" than to try to take care of it themselves. We've created a very dependent society."

I for one will be happy when the undereducated and unemployed/receiveing tax-dollar paid for insurance and benefits are penalized in a real way for the ER abuses. Like coming to the ER for tylenol and saying they can't afford it, but they have a pack of cigarettes in their pocket plainly visible. I've said it for years,,,,if the average citizen new what went on in the ER on a DAILY basis, i.e. saw how their tax dollars were being spent, there would be a popular revolt!

Stupid people do = job security in the ER to a point, stupid people with private insurance that they work for to earn. Stupid people without insurance or with tax dollar paid for insurance, on the other hand, are bankrupting the healthcare system. Hospitals end up closing from losing money and this is happening all over the country.

Regards,

David

17 yo came to ED with "blue legs". Had been worked up at another ED and they couldn't find out what was wrong. She felt so bad she had her dad bring her to us. I looked at her legs and swiped them with an alcohol wipe, the blue came off. She swore she hadn't worn any new jeans or pants. She still felt bad, poor baby, so we had a doc see her and street her. :rotfl:

Man called 911 for stubbed toe at 0300. Poor medics climbed out of bed to bring him into us, he had to find his own way home. :uhoh3:[/quote

Hey NO LIE that actually happened to me...I bought brand new dark blue jeans and didnt wash them 1st. Only my fingers were blue not my legs. I was in about 8th grade when this happened. lol and i didnt care they were blue but when my parents saw it they FREAKED OUT!!! and insisted on taking me to the docs. The doc couldnt figure it out and sent me home...Later that night I took a shower and realized what it was...I never told my parents, but I sure felt dumb!!

I had a mom bring in a one week old for "jerking movements during sleep"

Diagnosis? Startle reflex.

I can understand the new mom syndrome though.. I was there once.

Oh yeah I can definitly relate to that...I think I stayed up all night for the first weeks with my daughter, sitting right by her bed and watching her..She kept making all these lil noises in her sleep I seriously considered taking her to the ER lol but I was a young mom when I had her so I called my mom and told her and all she said was "GO BACK TO SLEEP!!!" lol thanks mom

Golfers thumb:

A man hurt his finger/nail on Monday and came in on Friday to have it taken care of so he could heal and fly out for golf the following week.

It didn't look that bad at all and he kept pressing it asking "what do you think?". (I think you should stop playing with it!) I just told him that he came to the ER for a reason and that for his own piece of mind he might as well wait. He told me he was going home to watch the Red Sox game and would be back when it was over.

Oh well..

Specializes in 6 years of ER fun, med/surg, blah, blah.

For more stupid people tricks, try www.EMTcity.com

The calls the EMS people get are sometimes more irritating than what we see in the ED. At least we don't have to get out of bed in the wee hours to peel an orange for someone or work their VCR.:monkeydance:

Specializes in ER, telemetry.

Last night had a pt come in with very strange complaint. Pt stated he was kidnapped ~3 hrs earlier, held hostage, and forced to choose a poison to ingest (was told one poison was resin, the other was rat poisoning) while blindfolded. Also stated that his assailants cut him superficially on the lower abd 3 times with unknown sharp object. Then, ALSO stated that they shoved a cold metal sharp object up in rectum. After all of this, the pt was freed. He then called 911, came to the ER for tx with police at his side, pt was placed on isolation d/t possibility that he had ingested resin, a terrorist specialist came to evaluate pt and ems staff. Labs were fine, abd xray showed something in his rectum, which turned out to be small med vial (looked like insulin vial without any writing or markings on it). The vial became police evidence.

Turns out, the pt is a psych pt (go figure!!!) and has made this story up in other localities in my area. He apparently was just seeking some narcs or attention. We all thought he was full of it when he came in, but you have to treat the pt. Poor guy is going to have the FBI following up with him too. Then, after he was discharged, he promptly went to the lobby and checked back in for "thoughts of killing myself". Turns out he didn't have a ride home and lives ~150 miles away. HA HA HA!!!!!

Had a frequent flier come in the other day, unfortunately, only having been in the er for 2 months, i did not know he was a frequent flier, ugg. He comes in swearing he is having a stroke, and playing quite the part- not moving R side at all, only moving L side of face, had the expressive dysphagia going and all, i thought it was a little odd that he had no medical history or vision changes at all, no HTN, nothing, but being a small community hospital, we don't see a lot of strokes, so i was buying it, right until the doc came in and asked him if he could'nt move, how did he walk through the triage area, sign all the papers out front, etc. His story quickly fell apart from there, he became beliggerant, screaming that he was having a stroke and needed immedient treatment with dilaudid. After about an hour, bloodwork and ct done and still no dilaudid, he abruptly got up, told us all to go F ourselves, that we neglected him by not giving him the

"proper treatment for his distress with dilaudid" and stormed out. Apparently, someone must have told him that stroke pts are seen immediently, unfortunately he was not aware that dilaudid is not the treatment for it, i'm sure he'll be in with a new story soon

Tampon "lost" for two days. One of the few times I almost blew chow from the smell. :chair: :chuckle

I actually know someone who had this happen to them. She was about 15 years old at the time and was at home alone with her dad because her mom was out of town for the weekend. (That was actually the most embarrassing part to her.) She was afraid he'd be mad but he wasn't, and took her to the ER and the doctor removed it with a hemostat. Maybe we're talking about the same person.

A few years ago, one of my technicians said her grandfather had severe chest pain one night and went to the ER (Grandma wanted to call an ambulance but he wouldn't let her) and they admitted him to the cardiac care unit overnight and came in the next morning to tell him that he had indigestion. :mad: They were all so embarrassed and apologized to everyone for wasting their time, and the rest of us pharmacy staff said the exact opposite was true.

Our hospital doesn't get very many "foreign body in the rectum" cases but the city where I used to live seemed to get that almost daily.

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