What's the meanest thing a patient has said to you?

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Just curious, what's the meanest, rudest, nastiest thing a patient has said to you? Tonight I had someone tell me they wished I would die and go straight to he!! Then they said they hoped it rained everywhere I went. They also told someone they were a son of a b. What's your best line?

Specializes in Medical Surgical.

One of my sweet LOLs, "You're not as pretty as you were yesterday." Well, mam, you start working 12 hour shifts back to back and see how hot you look. lol.

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Specializes in Mental Health/Substance Abuse.

Just yesterday my patient told me multiple times all the reasons I was going to hell. For one, he knows that I am fornicating and that is a sin (I live and work in a small town - he says he saw my boyfriend and I at a store holding hands, so obviously we have sex haha). He then told me that he was going to pray to God that I didn't sleep for 7 days, and that when I went to hell not even "1000 ice chips" could help me. I tried explaining that 1000 ice chips was not a large amount, but that didn't matter. After he left I got two "anonymous" voicemails that consisted of whispers stating "hell...that's where you are going". The whole day cracked me up!

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Specializes in Hospice.
After he left I got two "anonymous" voicemails that consisted of whispers stating "hell...that's where you are going". The whole day cracked me up!

Ok, this was kind of funny until that last part. That's just creepy.

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I once had a patient ask me if i was their nurse. i said yes, and he looked at me with this quizzical look and said "i dont know how because i thought nurses had to be skinny!"

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Specializes in Pain Management, FNP, Med/Surg, Tele.

Told me I reminded her of her house keeper after asking me what my ethnicity was. I was born on the island of Jamaica but grew up in NYC but because her housekeeper is Jamaican then automatically I must be a housekeeper as well. This happened a few months ago.

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Specializes in ICU.

Not a patient, but my hubby told me i should fit in as a nurse as i already had a fat A**

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As a new nurse on a dementia unit, I had a resident tell me "you don't know your a** from your elbow" lol. In hindsight I agree with her!

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Specializes in Pain Management, FNP, Med/Surg, Tele.
Scariest and meanest things ever said to me was by a patient the day shift nurse started report off with saying "Girl, you are going to love this patient. She is just the sweetest little thing ever". Before she could even finish giving report, that sweet little thing could be yelling "F you you Fing N-word" down the hall at anyone who passed her room. I start thinking to myself maybe sundowners is a thing just as day shift nurse informs me she DC'd her order for restraints (because why would anyone possibly restrain such a sweet little thing?!) and that she was currently up in the chair that happens to have a broken chair alarm. AWESOME.

I figure the first thing I should tackle this shift is getting grumpy granny back in bed, so I head over to her room where she is just shouting vile and nasty things at passerbys and the television. I walk in her room and am immediately pelted with a full, but open can of pepsi and told to "get the F out" before I even completely enter the room. Now soaked in pepsi, a bruise already growing on my chest and neck...I venture in further to see what kind of IV access I have to give the haldol I had the good sense to bring with me. As I lean behind her chair, she grabs me by the stethoscope stupidly hanging around my neck. She pulls me in and starts clawing at my neck screaming "I WILL PAINT THE WALLS WITH YOUR BLOOD, B____!" Which thankfully attracts the attention of some coworkers. They help untangle her talons from around my neck, which is now bleeding. As four of us endevour to get her carried over to the bed and strapped down in soft wrist restraints she yells out threats against us including such classics as "I will make you drown your babies in the river with your own hands", "I have shot 3 people dead and I ain't afraid to add your @ss to the list" and perhaps most perplexing, pleading for someone to "remove the sorghum from her lady parts". All this between the most unholy, animal like howls and screams you ever heard.

I called her husband to see if maybe he could come down and calm her down a bit. He hung up the first time I called. The second time he said it was our problem now, and that he is so scared of her himself he locks himself in his bedroom at night. Evidently this behavior was not new. Somebody needed to order that patient a young priest and an old priest and to chuck the walls against the green vomit that would later ensue....

OMG! I am traumatized just reading this. Why wasn't there a security guard with her? Better yet, why wasn't she transferred to a Psych facility. A regular nurse is not trained to deal with demon possessed patients. After the Pepsi assault, I would have been in ER getting evaluated because I would need a week off after that because of the physical and emotional distress. That patient is endangering the safety of the staff! It's an unsafe environment! Nope, couldn't do it, I'm not that big of a person.

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Specializes in Reproductive & Public Health.

It's funny, those patients who have called me horrible names didn't bother me. It's been the ones who wouldn't listen to me, or allow me to explain that got to me.

I remember one patient from when I was doing clinicals in CNM school. I had a prenatal patient with preexisting diabetes who refused to monitor her sugars. She was ~20weeks and came to an appt with her mom, and had 4 sugars listed on a scrap of paper- no note of when they were taken, fasting or not, and they were all terrible, like 190s+. No matter how much I explained, the mother of the patient said she didn't get why we cared about the sugars since they were going to see the "diabetes doctor" (ie the educator! and they hadn't kept the appointment with her or even rescheduled it!) and prenatal appointments were supposed to be happy and couldn't I see I was making her daughter upset?!?!

The patient's mother kicked me out of the room and told me I was rude and insensitive. My preceptor went in and had no better luck than me. During the whole appointment, I barely got 2 sentences out of the actual patient. The whole situation made me sad.

And even worse, they never came back to our practice. I hope the patient found a provider that was able to develop a trusting relationship with them. I always wonder what I could have done better.

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Specializes in Hospice.
Not a patient, but my hubby told me i should fit in as a nurse as i already had a fat A**

Your husband was dumb enough to say that to the person who knows the people who could someday be in charge of starting his IV or inserting his Foley?? Wow.

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Specializes in hospice.
Your husband was dumb enough to say that to the person who knows the people who could someday be in charge of starting his IV or inserting his Foley?? Wow.

He said that to the person he supposedly loves and cherishes most in the world. :no:

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Specializes in Hospice.
He said that to the person he supposedly loves and cherishes most in the world. :no:

Yeah, I really didn't want to go there. With my luck, there would have been defense of it as simply "teasing" and "how dare I judge their relationship". It's my weekend off, I'm not even on call...I don't need that grief 😛

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