What is the strangest thing...

[CaffeinePOQ4HPRN]

What is the strangest thing you have caught patients and/or their family members attempting to steal from your place of work?

We've lost a lot of tympanic thermometers, sphygmomanometers, pulse oximeters throughout the years, linens commonly vanish, and last winter someone made it into our change-room (i.e. a closet with a coat rack and tiny lockers) on our unit and stole the evening shift staff's winter coats. *Sniffles* I miss my winter coat

But this week... This week, I caught a patient's adult daughter trying to steal our brand new bladder scanner (which costs over $20,000). This thing is huge and connected to a large apparatus on wheels, yet she was wheeling it towards the elevator with such confidence and ease. When staff members attempted to address the situation it was quite a Winona Ryder moment.

[Angelicpurl]

We had fridge EMPTIED totally. Even the protein liquid stuff....premixed thicker water....ugh!

lady partsl speculum at MD office....nurse came out saying she JUST restocked all the rooms where I'm a patient & 2 rooms were empty.

Bedside tables....I know they're nice, but they are FURNITURE. Do these people go in a house scoping out what they should take home?

Pill packages--empty ones. They prove what???

[sevensonnets]

We had a patient years ago who went down to the lobby in the middle of the night and stole 3 paintings off the wall in the art gallery the auxiliary maintains. They're wired to the wall and have security alarms on them. How did he manage to get the doggone things off the wall? With a MACHETE!!!! He just chopped them down, calmly got on the elevator and headed back up to floor. He was dressed in street clothes but it was 3 oil paintings, the machete, and the CVL sticking up out of his coat collar that gave him away. He also was a lunch thief, but he only took the contents of the sandwich, not the bread.

[Christy1019, ASN, RN]

We had a patient years ago who went down to the lobby in the middle of the night and stole 3 paintings off the wall in the art gallery the auxiliary maintains. They're wired to the wall and have security alarms on them. How did he manage to get the doggone things off the wall? With a MACHETE!!!! He just chopped them down, calmly got on the elevator and headed back up to floor. He was dressed in street clothes but it was 3 oil paintings, the machete, and the CVL sticking up out of his coat collar that gave him away. He also was a lunch thief, but he only took the contents of the sandwich, not the bread.

Omg!!! Lol, how does one get admitted without anyone noticing his machete?? Lol

[emtpbill, ASN, RN, EMT-P]

Yikes!

Within the last year we had a pt break open a sharps and use a syringe to inject the liquid from a night-time cold gel tab (that he brought from home) shot it into his vein. That was a scary couple hours. Pt was ok.

During this same timeframe, a visitor overdosed on heroin and died in the public bathroom on my unit.

Does that count as a sentinel event? Or does it have to be a registered patient? (I'm being serious, I'm still a student)

[Kitiger, RN]

My hospital got lovely new furniture for the lobby. There was seldom staff in the lobby at night, unless walking through to the parking garage. One morning, most of the furniture was gone...

My unit was closed on the weekends. Someone threw the chairs out a window into the bushes to steal them!

[DoeRN]

We had fridge EMPTIED totally. Even the protein liquid stuff....premixed thicker water....ugh!

lady partsl speculum at MD office....nurse came out saying she JUST restocked all the rooms where I'm a patient & 2 rooms were empty.

Bedside tables....I know they're nice, but they are FURNITURE. Do these people go in a house scoping out what they should take home?

Pill packages--empty ones. They prove what???

I worked at a clinic and we had to lock them up and bring them out for one time use only. We couldn't stock the rooms because they kept disappearing. So weird.

[mysonsmama]

I used to work at a primary care clinic many years ago. We couldn't keep supplies in the room because patients took everything. Including the jars on the counter with cotton balls, tongue depressors, curettes, band aids. Everything!

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

Omg!!! Lol, how does one get admitted without anyone noticing his machete?? Lol

I don't know about THAT patient, but I had a visitor walk in with a machete cunningly secreted down his pants leg.

[NOADLS]

I saw this young girl who must have been 4-6 years old trying to pry open a sharps container moments after a nurse deposited a needle into it. I've never seen someone so desperate to get hep c / HIV.