Worst/silliest/are you serious pt complaint you've received?

[odaat]

I don't know if this has been done before but I was thinking today about the one and only time I have ever been pulled into the office to be read the riot act by a manager....my patient complained that the hot water I brought her for her tea at 3am wasn't hot enough. Mind you this is after spending a lengthy amount of time straightening out legit medical issues pt had including 3am phone calls to the doctor. I'm still flabbergasted over that one, more that my manager saw fit to pull me into the office over it!

The worst one I remember is that I talk with my hands a lot, like majorly, and I was communicating a deaf patients concerns to the ER doc within visual sight of the patient. Pt thought I was making fun of him, I ended up being banned from the room and the pt advocate had to get involved 😕

[NanikRN]

Pt and i were having conversation about pets, specificly the adorable dog in a picture prominently displayed at bedside. I told him about my pets and showed him a picture also. I thought it was an engaging sharing conversation

I got written up. I was "insensitive " to show a pix of my dog-- made him miss his dogs too much

[Clovery]

A quad patient with a chronic infected sacral wound became infuriated with me for waking him up at 0900 to take his meds and encouraging him to eat his breakfast. He didn't want to eat so I tried to get him to take his marinol to stimulate his appetite. He only wanted his IV dilaudid of course. After I gave him that, hung an IV antibiotic, and again talked about the importance of nutrition for wound healing, he accused me of being racist. He then asked to talk to my supervisor, who I brought into the room. He told her that I was extremely rude and said "maybe I'm the wrong color for her" (he was African-American). Management assigned an African American nurse to him and I didn't have to take care of him for the rest of his stay. Fine by me.

[WKShadowNP, DNP, APRN]

I was called into the office for "punching a patient." I did a sternal rub on her when she went "unresponsive" in the wheelchair that I was trying to get her out of.

Later in the visit she tried to demonstrate a seizure by lying half in, half out of bed, with her right shoulder in the bed, her rear end up in the air, and flopping around like a fish out of water.

When she was discharged she walked around the department with a steady and determined gait and followed me just to get my name. I happily spelled it for her and told her good luck!

[Orca, ADN, ASN, RN]

Years ago I worked for a free-standing mental health facility. I was the day shift charge nurse on the geropsych unit. One morning my DON told me that she needed for me to attend an in-house training course that would take pretty much my entire shift, and that she would cover my unit while I went. No problem - or so I thought. The training ended just as my shift was about to end. I returned to my unit to find the DON nowhere in sight, two admissions standing at the desk (on whom nothing had been done), both of them yelling and the swing shift charge nurse (who had just arrived) about to lose her mind over the chaos of it all. Since I was sitting in a classroom all day I had not witnessed anything that had happened on the unit during the shift, and I had no idea what had or had not been done. Later on that day, the DON left a nasty message on my home voice mail saying that if the swing shift charge nurse and I couldn't get along, then she was going to have to call both of us in and "settle everything". There was no problem until she caused one.

[Orca, ADN, ASN, RN]

Okay, I suppose that this wasn't really a patient complaint, but rather somewhere that my mind led me after reading another post in this thread. Okay, a real patient complaint.

Another geropsych unit from the one above. Homeless patient who came into our ER with suicidal ideation. She came to the desk irate that the culinary department had sent her corn rather than the green beans that she had ordered, and she also wanted to point out that the beds were too hard. This, coming from someone who wasn't paying for any of this, and who would otherwise have been sleeping on the sidewalk and eating out of a dumpster.

[nursej22, MSN, RN]

i had a surgeon accuse me of killing her patient. Big investigation by Risk Management.

I was told later that my documentation saved me and that the family was grateful for everything I did for their loved one.

That surgeon left shortly there after. I heard from some surgical nurses that had she a reputation for blaming mistakes on nurses and the hospital finally put an end to it.

[Orca, ADN, ASN, RN]

Okay, I suppose that that wasn't really a patient complaint, but rather somewhere that my mind led me after reading another post in this thread. Okay, a real patient complaint.

A different geropsych unit from the one above. A homeless patient came into ER with suicidal ideation and she was admitted to my unit. She came to the desk irate that the culinary department had sent her corn rather than the green beans that she had ordered, and she also wanted to point out that the beds were too hard. This, coming from someone who wasn't paying for any of this, and who would otherwise have been sleeping on the sidewalk and eating out of a dumpster.

[dlcjrnlac]

I once had a patient complain to management that I had told him his pain had to rate "at least 7 out of 10" in order to receive any pain medication. I said no such thing but had to meet with the manager about it.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

I worked in a SICU that was one big room with 14 beds around the periphery. There were curtains around the beds, but that didn't block the sounds. We used to get a lot of patient complaints from patients that spent their first post-op night in that ward, but there were a few doozies.

One patient wrote a letter to our manager complaining that he had been "tied down and sexually assaulted by three young, beautiful nurses and one fat old nurse." (We replaced his Foley after he pulled his out immediately after his IV Lasix dose and then couldn't pee. It took four of us because he was constantly trying to hit or kick someone and he bit one of my colleagues.)

"I heard the patient in the next bed having a 3-way with the nurses. If they're going to have a 3-way with the patients, how come they didn't offer me one?" (There had been quite a bit of discussion about a three-way stopcock on a central line that had cracked, allowing the vasoactive drips (and blood) to pool under the patient rather than into him.)

"The nurse let my wife visit when my girlfriend was there. I am now in the middle of an ugly divorce and losing half of my money and houses. And my girlfriend won't talk to me." (The girlfriend SAID she was his wife when she wanted to visit. The wife just breezed right in. Not my job to keep your wife and your girlfriend apart.)

[Christy1019, ASN, RN]

I worked in a SICU that was one big room with 14 beds around the periphery. There were curtains around the beds, but that didn't block the sounds. We used to get a lot of patient complaints from patients that spent their first post-op night in that ward, but there were a few doozies.

One patient wrote a letter to our manager complaining that he had been "tied down and sexually assaulted by three young, beautiful nurses and one fat old nurse." (We replaced his Foley after he pulled his out immediately after his IV Lasix dose and then couldn't pee. It took four of us because he was constantly trying to hit or kick someone and he bit one of my colleagues.)

"I heard the patient in the next bed having a 3-way with the nurses. If they're going to have a 3-way with the patients, how come they didn't offer me one?" (There had been quite a bit of discussion about a three-way stopcock on a central line that had cracked, allowing the vasoactive drips (and blood) to pool under the patient rather than into him.)

"The nurse let my wife visit when my girlfriend was there. I am now in the middle of an ugly divorce and losing half of my money and houses. And my girlfriend won't talk to me." (The girlfriend SAID she was his wife when she wanted to visit. The wife just breezed right in. Not my job to keep your wife and your girlfriend apart.)

Oh Ruby Vee, how I always love your stories! Lol

[friggasdistaff]

I just had a written complaint because I asked the parents of a two year old to stop let her playing with the ER call light after she had set it off numerous times. They didn't like my 'tone.' I really didn't like that they were so involved with their cell phones that they were using the call light as a babysitter.

[TeeKay12]

Two weeks after I started at a new hospital, on the med/surg floor, I received an email from the manager; "Patient XX in room 3294 says you left her on a bed-pan all night, never came to check on her, and only removed the bed-pan right before shift change when you suddenly became nice". I was dumbfounded. Then I realized, I work on the 5th floor! After some investigating I found that our INTERIM manager was the manager of the PCU and there was an RN down there (on the 3rd floor) with the exact same name as me!

I've received many emails with complaints from patients in them, and all of them are traced back to the other TK.

Actual complaints by patients; I've had two. One was that I asked them too frequently about their pain (we are required by hospital policy to ask about pain, 'potty', and position every single HOUR). The other that I wouldn't allow her 2 year old nephew stay the night. ALONE. As I told the patient's sister; "she's here with esophageal varices and on narcotics. There is no-one to take care of the boy if something happens to her. She is not competent to care for him, I'm sorry you planned to go to that movie for weeks, it's not my fault your sister is here."