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.
I kind of appreciate the courtesy of the lunch-stealer who took the food but left the bags... I'm VERY attached to my lunch bag (aren't we all attached to ALL of our bags?) and would be pretty ****** to have to find a replacement.
Yeah, but bad for the poor night shift nurses that doesn't get lunch because there are NO open restaurants in the area (IF we could've left, but couldn't per policy) & cafeteria isn't open except during meal times.
I never could believe people just walk into break room thinking whatever they found was fair game! What part of the sign, "staff only" don't they get?
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
Dude, if someone were that desperate for food, I'd have helped them out, but that's just wrong!
If they were that desparate for FOOD, there are the "Service Recovery" freebies we could have given them. Of course, no service recovery freebies for nurses who have had their lunches stolen.
Not if they'd already cleaned those out! I remember buying OJ & peanut butter crackers for a diabetic patient once when i worked there because we didn't have anything to treat them!
Our items were delivered at breakfast & we were lucky if anything survived lunch! Diabetics had snacks delivered to their rooms, but I saw people stealing them off the delivery cart....
I was laughed at for suggesting locks. I went to work at a place with an RN who was SO lazy that she gave her badge to the family so they could "help themselves." They propped the door open & I went & undid it as soon as they left. But, their kitchenette was better stocked & staff was encouraged by the manager to grab a drink or snack if we needed it. Our dining area was MUCH better too, open longer hours....
But I sit in an office all day now. My biggest theft is my pen & Post-it notes. I can't use the pens we get & I don't like plain yellow notes. So, I get a pack of hot pink sometimes! I'm encouraging use of emails, but they are slow to catch on.
A 4-months-pregnant patient came in once with a small lac from a fall, and I cleaned her up, set the dermabond and dressing supplies up in the room for the provider, and then sent a student in to get FHT. The student came back and reported she couldn't find them, so I go in, and can't find them, either. A second nurse checks and also can't find them, so we tell the provider, who orders an ultrasound.
When she tells the patient that we need to do an ultrasound, she starts getting very agitated and says she needs to leave, her husband is coming to pick her up, she already has an ultrasound scheduled at her ob/gyn for that afternoon and she wants to go to that instead. The provider points out that it's much faster to do the ultrasound now, and the patient agrees but asks her to hurry. At that point, a code is called so we rush off to that... and when we come back, the patient is gone, along with the dermabond and all the dressing supplies.
At that point, the hcg test comes back from the lab... she's not pregnant. The provider called the ob/gyn the patient claimed she had an appointment with that afternoon about all this bizarreness and they said she was a past patient but was not currently being seen by them.
We figured she'd told husband she was pregnant and wanted to get out of there before he saw an u/s with no baby more than she cared about having her lac glued up by a pro.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
Yeah, but bad for the poor night shift nurses that doesn't get lunch because there are NO open restaurants in the area (IF we could've left, but couldn't per policy) & cafeteria isn't open except during meal times.
I never could believe people just walk into break room thinking whatever they found was fair game! What part of the sign, "staff only" don't they get?
Thanks for understanding!
I also don't believe the residents (as in MDs in training) who eat whatever food they find, regardless of where they find it or whose name is on it. It happens to someone at least a couple of times a year -- they get called away from their lunch to deal with a patient care issue and some resident finishes the lunch while they're gone.
A sippy cup! This was by a 50 odd year old 'frequent flyer' who also pocketed as many plastic tympanic thermometer caps as she could. Heaven knows what she was going to do with them, maybe little witches hats for Lego men??
My father-in-law takes all the boxes of gloves remaining in the wall units (and anything else that's not nailed down) home with him at the end of a hospital stay (or family member's hospital stay) saying "we paid for these."
lol...too much. I think I use 3 boxes of gloves per shift all on my own. 1/3 fall onto the floor when I try to take a pair out.
These are funny but I have to fess up. I have personally taken a florescent yellow gait belt that was sooo bleeding cool, from the physical therapist who was helping me after my surgery, lol. Yes, I was pretty doped up upon discharge, so I just put it in the bag with my other stuff. In my defense, I assumed that since it was left in my hospital room, it was probably something I paid for with my stay. I dont know if that is true, but that is my defense anyways.
Ok, so its not grand theft, but still. Ironically, to this day, I still feel bad about it, lol.
I knew an elderly person (not a patient, but someone a close friend's mother took care of in her old age, so I was around her a lot growing up) who was truly wealthy- I mean, .00001%, couldn't have spent all her money in her lifetime if she tried wealthy, and she stole petty things CONSTANTLY. Condiments, silverware, anything in a hotel room that wasn't nailed down. She also charged her friends "gas money" when her caregivers gave them all rides, even though she didn't pay the caregivers mileage.
She wasn't a bad person, it was just one of the early ways her dementia manifested. She had been very poor in her childhood, and as she declined, all the years of wealth were forgotten and she acted like someone living close to the edge. And she was furious whenever her treasures were discovered and returned. She really believed that she needed a thousand sugar packets and extra forks.
I had a patient that did things like that... I read into her background history one night and found out that she was a child in the great depression, in the dust bowl. So they saved everything. My patient was not cognitively intact, so she revered to what she knew... stealing sugar packets, salt and pepper and all things of the sort, including condiments. Her stealing made more sense. so on her bath days, one of us would raid her room and take out the stolen items.
SpruceToSea, BSN
11 Posts
I kind of appreciate the courtesy of the lunch-stealer who took the food but left the bags... I'm VERY attached to my lunch bag (aren't we all attached to ALL of our bags?) and would be pretty ****** to have to find a replacement.