What's the funniest thing you've heard a patient say?

Nurses Humor

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I need a little humor this morning. I'd be interested in hearing about the funniest thing you ever heard a patient say! :chuckle

Status post CABG w/ aortic valve replacement on PCA pump:

"There's a pig over there on that wall."

RN "What kind of pig?"

"A regular pig."

RN "What color is it?"

"It's a wall colored pig."

RN "Why are you seeing pigs?"

"Because I got a piggy valve!" :rotfl:

Cardioversion:

Patient finally drifts off to la la land due to sedation.

Cardiologist hits shock.

Patient jumps up in the bed . . . "Ohh! That was a premature ejaculation!" :rotfl:

Well, now I can join the ranks of the experienced, because I have some of these quips to share as well.

On the adult psych unit, where I went to pull meds (never have them all in any one accudose--what fun would that be?), overheard a nicely dressed, thin LOL asking the charge nurse if she could use the phone. "The patient phone is over there." "I can't make it get the number I want." "Okay, you can use this phone just this once." Pt: "I'll dial it." RN: "No, that's OK, I'll dial it. What's the number?"

Perfectly straight-faced, the little old lady says, "911."

Unh-huh.

Same evening, one of my adolescent psych patients very nicely asked if we had a pill to give her "motivation."

Don't we all wish for that at one time or another?

Cheers!

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I have confused patients who call 911 to tell them they have to go to the bathroom. Then the dispatcher calls me and asks me if I have a patient called_____. She then tells me the patient has to go to the bathroom. I walk 20 feet down the hall and take the patient to the bathroom. The patient tells me, well you told me to call...

Or they call the phone number of the facility and it's routed to the unit...

By now the dispatchers at emergency services know me by name and I know them by the sound of their voices.

Luckily we are still a fairly small city and EMS recognizes the phone numbers of the SNFs in town.

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Specializes in NICU, Infection Control.

To think of all the fun I've been missing all these years not working in LTC or psych!!

Oh, well, you guys do that, I'll snuggle my babies, just tell me the funny stuff! :D

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Specializes in Med/Surg.
To think of all the fun I've been missing all these years not working in LTC or psych!!

Oh, well, you guys do that, I'll snuggle my babies, just tell me the funny stuff! :D

Unfortunately this doesn't just happen in LTC or Psych ... I work on a med/surg unit and we have this happen more often than you might think. It is mostly the people who are going through AWA's, they call 911 and tell them they are being held prisoner or some other extravagant story. One time the cheif of police called us and asked us to remove the phone from this gentleman's room cause he was calling 911 so often ... figures the one thing he remembers that we told him on admission is to dial 9 to get an outside line!

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Geri-Psyche pt, says to the nurse "where are you going?" Nurse says "crazy wanna come?" Pt says "no, ive beenthere already". Gave me a giggle

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One night aroung midnight as I was making my rounds I heard one of my patients hearing aids whistling. I went in his room to investigate and found him trying to put his hearing aid in. I said to him "it's midnight, why are you putting your hearing aid in?"

He answered "I have to put it in or that crow will get it."

Me "There's no crow here."

Pt " Yes there is, right there on my bed."

Me "Your in the hospital, there are no crows here."

Pt " I know I'm in the hospital, the crow is sick!"

Heehee, I had to run out of there quick before I started cracking up. I guess it all made sense to him!

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To think of all the fun I've been missing all these years not working in LTC or psych!!

Oh, well, you guys do that, I'll snuggle my babies, just tell me the funny stuff! :D

The first thing I learned working with dementia patients was entering THEIR reality, not trying to conform their reality to mine. Makes for a much nicer shift and OH! the places I've been...

I've learned alot of local history and alot of stories about people I don't even know, stories they would be embarassed I know.

This approach does not hurt me and I don't get them so wound up I have to medicate them past a behavior I could have avoided.

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This is a somewhat delicate topic, but I remember having an agitated pt one night who was fuming and fretting about the 'N*****s' (racial slur) at the foot of his bed, and bothering him. He was getting really angry, and wasn't buying that there weren't any there. So I finally just said, "Hey, guys..you're bothering this man and he wants you to leave...", waved the imaginary people out the door, and the patient calmed down. The bad thing is that our aide coming in the next morning was African-American. And she was always jumping right in to get morning temps and get baths started and I had to tell her to stay out of that man's room, and why. I was sooooo embarrassed, but she wasn't bothered by it..she figured it was one less bath to do.

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I heard this in report:

A man had been urinating on the floor. He would pee, and then turn away, dribbling on the floor. When confronted about this, he said something to the effect of, "I can't help it; I can't hold onto it because it's too small."

Also in report:

A young man who is hypersexual was sitting on the porch of our unit, and suddenly went, "Uuuuuhhhh!!" and flailed his arms in the air a bit. One of the nurses asked him what was wrong. He said, "I just had orgasm; have you ever had one of those, [nurse's name here]?"

A lot of funny stuff happens in psychiatric hospitals.

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Try working nites in a nursing home where your grandmother is a patient with severe dementia. I learned more things I DIDN'T want to know about my family than I tought was possible. :rotfl: :rotfl:

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Specializes in ER.

the other night a rather agitated patient presented to the ER with a complaint of "I been bit." Trying to get more specifics (yeah, it really does make a difference if it was bug bite, snake bite, dog bite...), stupid me, I ask "what bit you?" Her response?

"A b*tch named Claire!"

It took everything in my power not to laugh in her face and say, "oh, so nice you named your female dog Claire!"

On closer look, I noticed that the large red mark on her forehead was not a hickey as I first assumed (hey, you see everything in our ER), but actually a human bite, complete with dental impressions. Who bites someone on the FOREHEAD???? She actually wanted to know if we could find and arrest this person based on taking a mold of the bite marks left on her forhead and compare them with dental records! Someone watches too much Law and Order or CSI or something! This poor girl had chunks of hair ripped out and multiple contusions... must have been some cat fight! :rotfl:

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I was a brand new GPN working my second 3-11 shift on a ortho/ms/low level trauma floor. My preceptor was a veteran nurse who had spent her first 13 years of nursing as any army nurse. Needless to say she could be a bit gruff at times. But I digress.....

We had a post op hip orif who was not responding well to the anesthesia. She was a climber and insisted she was going to walk home. We placed her in wrist restraints and that is when the fun started. She threatened to call the cops, yelled fire, told us we were all going to hell...etc, etc (you know, the regular rants.) Finally she settled on calling all of us F@%#ing whores. This last for hours...screaming it at the top of her lungs. After a few hours and multiple doses of "vitamin H" (haldol) my preceptor had had enough. She marched into Mrs. Xyz's room and stated "Mrs. Xyz, if we weren't f@%#ing, what kind of whores would we be? Well....Mrs. Xyz didn't know what to say to that and we didn't hear a peep out of her for the rest of the night. :rolleyes:

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