Worst patient experience

Diahni · Nov 25, 2005

As a nursing student, I had an elderly doctor whose wife stayed in the room all the time - they were both "from hell" - every time I did any procedure, there would be an insulting remark from either of them: while I'm taking his BP, he says, "You're just practicing on me, aren't you?" As I approached him to check his heart monitor, she snaps, "Will you please put on some gloves?," meanwhile, I hadn't even started to deal with him. While I'm taking off the heart leads, he looks at me and says, "You really don't know what's going on, do you?" I just didn't get why they were so abusive. Finally, as he was being discharged, the wife had a s**t fit because he didn't get his bath, although he had told me a half hour before that he was leaving, so don't bother. After they left, they complained about me, saying things like I was talking about my personal life, and so on. It was horrible. It shook me up terribly, because I questioned wheter or not I wanted to have a job where people were so nasty to me. Once in a while a nurse or a doctor is less than pleasant, but not as demeaning as these two were to me. It was a constant barrage of attacks.

Harleygirl · Nov 25, 2005

Narrow it down to one?

Okay, I think the worst one was when I was an EMT and had a call for an elderly lady, first we couldn't find her house,(rural area, before E911) when we did find her house, she barely had a rythm, and then she started throwing up, FECES. She did expire, and our backboard was sitting in one of the hallways of the ED, someone makes the comment "Smells like **** in here." No kidding.

Then there was the code of a distinguished man of the community who had yelled at his wife for calling the ambulance a few months back when he was sick, so when he coded for real, she didn't call. So we are coding this stiff, bloated guy (I was on the respiratory "team") and he starts throwing up. Broccoli cheese rice. I have never been able to eat that yet (and this happened 10 years ago).

I took care of a mother and her boyfriend whos 2 little boys lit fire to their mattress and died in the fire. I rode up with her in the ambulance and due to privacy issues couldn't tell her her kids were dead. Then we had to package the bodies of the two little boys and bring them in. CISD came in but I don't think we will ever forget that night.

Oh, then there was the time in the ED my father came in because he took his catheter out after surgery (he snipped the port to the balloon, per doctors orders), and couldn't stop bleeding. Not a good experience.

Harleygirl

BJONEAL · Nov 28, 2005

I don't really know what is the worst experience I ever had in the past year,it seems to me like every week I had one.My most memorable was one patient who was admited for CHF and had condition stable till the day I found her.Dr made round about 1530, I found her distress at 1545.I got reported from one of my RN friend and she said my pt had a good day and her LCTA.it wasn't the same lung sound I assessed at all.Both of her lung sound were crackle ,especially in her left side .I asked RT to helped me to set up O2 and page doctor immediately.I knew then she wouldn't make it because her breathing more labored and she was hard to rouse,her eyes were rolled back,she was african american so hard to determined her cyanosis ,but she was so diaphoretic.we end up with sent her to ICU .One of my co-worker came to pat my back and said :she will be alright" I told her she isn't.Later that night she died cause she had aspirated Gastric content .I cried because I took care of her for a past week and I never heard her lung sound never been cleared, I alway kkep her HOB up right 30 minutes after her meal ,I was so disappointed ,so I cried.I still remember her till now