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

Nurses Relations

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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 😕

Specializes in Addictions, psych, corrections, transfers.

I had a psych patient become angry because he thought someone gave him heroin. I asked him what made him think that someone gave him heroin. He said, "there is white powder all over me." Side note: he had painted his coat that evening. I said, "Do you think it might be the paint rubbing off from your jacket." He said, "maybe," and walked away.

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My client's daughter thought it was absolutely absurd that I discouraged her 89 year old, diabetic, fall risk father from having 4 beers within an hour.

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Specializes in SICU, trauma, neuro.
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.

How racist of you, wanting him to heal. :sarcastic:

I hope the AA nurses claimed racism, having to deal with him by virtue of their skin color. :roflmao:

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My client's daughter thought it was absolutely absurd that I discouraged her 89 year old, diabetic, fall risk father from having 4 beers within an hour.

maybe she was trying to collect his insurance.

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maybe she was trying to collect his insurance.

It almost makes you wonder.

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Specializes in ER, Med-surg.

A patient cut open her bag of lipids with a scissors, and when I walked in to the room to find her standing there, with a sticky pair of scissors in her hands and her lipids running everywhere, and asked her what was going on, she started screaming that it was leaking, and I said "Because you cut it open" and boy, that did not go over well.

Her family lodged multiple complaints against me spanning a wide variety of topics (including "stealing her scissors" when I confiscated them), but ultimately they were all dismissed and she got the Munchausens diagnosis she very badly needed.

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Specializes in HH, Peds, Rehab, Clinical.

I would be most concerned to learn if he considered me one of the three hotties or the fat old nurse....

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.)

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Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.

Wasn't me personally but all the nurses. In an outpatient clinic, a guy's wife lost her insurance/membership card. He called management and accused us of stealing her card and using it as part of our black-market insurance card ring. This was the same guy who brought back a Hem-occult card with two perfectly formed ping-pong ball sized spheres of poop wedged in there, in a sandwich baggie, wrapped in a rubber band, so the strangeness wasn't a really new behavior.

Thank God in those days nutty complaints didn't require a stern sit-down meeting with management demanding we fess up to our insurance fraud ring!

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Specializes in pediatric, PICU.

I had that one patient out of six that wasn't super needy that complained about me not rounding on him enough to know that he wanted to soda! He was a self care patient, so he could have gotten his own beverage. Anyway, also included in my patient load were two stroke patients (I didn't work on the stroke/neuro unit). Little did this patient know that I had to call code saves on BOTH of these patients because they were both becoming increasingly weak and lethargic; they both ended up being transferred to ICU because they probably should not have been admitted to our "stable" floor to begin with.

My manager still felt the need to call me into the office to discuss the complaint after she and I left the code save together, lol. Needless to say, I was pissed, and I let her know just how dumb the conversation was.

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These are funny. I had a pt who told my manager in Spanish that I had " cop eyes" and he didn't like that I shut the door to his room. I do not speak Spanish. He could speak English but threw a fit and called for manager after I shut his door. He was also upset that the charge nurse had a few words with him after he snuck off the floor to get a big sac of McDonald's from his wife in the lobby and even brought some for his diabetic room mate!!! Seriously the stuff we put up with most people would not even believe!

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I had a patient call the police due to my actions once. It was LTC and I was the DON. He called the police because I had the care home van and was chasing him around the pool table (rec room) in the van. Apparently I was driving.

The police showed up, they actually wanted to investigate. For real? I finally pointed out we don't have a van, we have a Lincoln for patient transportation.

Driving around the rec room was believable for them until they discovered, we had no van.

?? I swear to Zog those officers went to the same college as Nurse managers. They have the SAME critical thinking skills!

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I should clarify my above comment regarding nurse managers.

It is merely MY experience that nurse managers justify their jobs by writing up people whether it was deserved or not. I should not paint with a broad brush. That is merely my experience.

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