Stupidity is a lot like nuclear energy---it can be used for good or for evil, but either way, you don't want to get any on you.
This is never more true than when taking care of patients who have done incredibly idiotic things to themselves that require medical attention. I've had a few who make me feel as though my I.Q. drops 25 points every time I walk into their room.........as if their stupidity somehow rubs off on me and causes me to go through the rest of my day pulling boneheaded stunts, like writing half a page of nursing notes in the wrong patient's chart and going home with the narc keys.
If I nurse for another forty years, I'll never forget the young tough-guy wannabe who was admitted to our Med/Surg floor some years ago for repair of his left testicle, which had evidently been in the way when he decided to make like John Dillinger and shove his TEC-9 in the waistband of his Wranglers. Apparently no one had ever informed him that this practice is a little riskier than they make it look on TV, and he was incredulous at the idea of having shot off one of his "boys":
"I can't bleepin' believe I bleepin' shot my bleepin' BALL off," he murmured as the effects of the anesthesia wore off. We should've known that the next four days would be a challenge as he recovered from his surgery and began to deal with what he'd done..........but we didn't have time to ponder this, as he kept us running back and forth the entire time he was in the hospital.
He wanted pain medicine. He wanted his girlfriend. He wanted Pepsi. He wanted McDonalds. He wanted more Pepsi. He wanted a candy bar. Mostly, he wanted sympathy: "Ohhh, this hurts so bleepin' bad, ow, ow, yanno how it feels to get shot in the nuts, oh, no you don't, you're a girl, owwwwwwwww!!" He whined. He cried. He put on his call light every five minutes. He did everything but take responsibility for his own predicament. "If that cop hadn't driven by at that second, none of this would've happened, yanno," he said repeatedly.
Naturally, Ms. Big Mouth here can only put up with so much sheer stupidity, so I asked him if he'd ever thought that maybe he shouldn't have been messing with the gun in the first place. I grew up around firearms and know how to use them.....and never in a million years would I be foolish enough to shove a loaded pistol into my waistband.
"NO," he answered with some vehemence. "Guys like me, we always gotta protect ourselves, yanno?" Well, I didn't know, but this reply gave me an idea, which was pretty much confirmed when one of the other nurses found traces of marijuana in the bathroom after one of his frequent 'visitors' had been in to see him. Additionally, a search of his belongings by the security staff turned up several baggies filled with weed, a pipe, and a couple of old pill bottles with crystal meth inside.
Does it get any dumber than dealing drugs from your hospital room? Yes, if you happen to be a lanky, dishwater-blond twentysomething from Felony Flats, Oregon. One lovely autumn day several months after his discharge, the word came up to the floor that he was back in the ER, again a victim of a self-inflicted GSW..........only this time, he'd not only shot off his remaining testicle, but a good portion of his manhood as well!
This is one of those things that you can't believe unless you see it for yourself. And as terrible as it sounds, all I could think of was how fortunate it was for society that this character had rendered himself permanently incapable of producing offspring........you just can't fix that kind of stupid. Yanno?
Specializes in Management, Emergency, Psych, Med Surg.
I am an animal lover, of any kind. So this particular patient warmed my heart, even though what he did was really stupid. The guy walks up to the triage desk with this really big swollen hand and a bait bucket in the other. I ask him what the trouble is and he tells me that he was bitten by a snake. So the story goes that he was driving down this little dirt road and this snake was crawling across the road. He did not want to run over the snake so he got out and picked it up to move it out of the way. When he did this, the snake bit him. So then, he figured he had to come to the hospital so he picked up the snake to put it in the bait bucket so we would know what kind of snake bit him. And that was when the snake bit him the second time. I looked into the bait bucket and sure enough, there was this large cotton mouth in the bucket and he seemed unhappy. So I asked the patient to take the bait bucket to his truck since I did not want this snake to get lose in the ED. We fixed up the patient and he was fine, leaving the hospital a few days later only to rescue other snakes in the future I am sure.
The other gentleman I enjoyed was the one who presented to triage with his hand wrapped up, blood running everywhere and all of his fingers in a zip lock bag. Seems he needed to extract something from under his lawn mower and attempted this without turning the mower off first.
For those who are unaware, there are sites such as Medical Maniacs that list Darwin Doctor Awards, too. It's amazing how many have accidentally blown themselves up. Brings new meaning to the term "Big Bang Theory."
Specializes in LTC, CPR instructor, First aid instructor..
For those who are unaware, there are sites such as Medical Maniacs that list Darwin Doctor Awards, too. It's amazing how many have accidentally blown themselves up. Brings new meaning to the term "Big Bang Theory."
You are Soooo right about nurses and what you go through - and have for centuries.
While working on my book project, I asked nurses nationwide to give me their stories. 300 of them did. I was astonished at the hilarity - and the depth of emotion of their responses. I had a boss once when I was young and worked in a gas station. What he said had nothing to do with the medical field, but he said, "Some people honestly bleed for their customers."
Does ANY profession on earth bleed more for their "customers" than nurses?
I think not.
God bless our nurses, one & all, even those of a cranky tone. They didn't get that way in a vacuum.
Specializes in psychiatric, UR analyst, fraud, DME,MedB.
Truly this is good , a funny one !!!! I think this guy came from the "Deliverance " gene pool . sure sounds like it .....
Now it will be better if nature keeps filtering these type of genes and induce and introduce a much better gene pool !!!!, but thanks to mother nature f here, for she fixed her oen error , in this case !
just for the record, the "idiot gene" does not live in the shallow end of the pool at all. it swims up and down the iq river, spawning its goofiness like salmon. in fact, one could make a terrific argument that the dumbest behavior is done by the "brighter" bulbs.
in the file of wacky doctors, you can add nine who have accidentally blown themselves up; 3 who hid secret cameras to film nursing staff in the bathroom, or patients in treatment rooms, only to have secretaries open up the subsequent bills for camera installation; and then there are the 1124 who - according to law enforcement - used credit cards to purchase illegal drugs. the one in ohio who said someone else sneaked into his house, murdered his wife, broke up the concrete floor, buried her, then re-poured the cement and covered it with a lovely carpet - well . . . you get the picture.
sort of makes the rest of us feel downright normal.
there are some dumb people but i firmly believe that people can learn to change and improve if they want
You just keep on thinking that, Jason, until you realize that the child you had with your ex, is a clone of that person, who you have to get along with forever........
Specializes in Hospice, ONC, Tele, Med Surg, Endo/Output.
Throughout my nursing career of 15 years, patients and their family members, and even other staff members have tried and have been successful at "getting me in trouble" with management. Patients will smoke, eat sweets while they're diabetics--one patient even set his bed and curtains on fire, and reported me--the charge nurse--for not stopping him from smoking. I ,of course, was written up. One manager I had for eight years had me in her office weekly to discipline me for various complaints-- "your body language needs work; the patient thinks you're mad at him, the cna wants you to help her but you didn't", etc, etc....
Btw, is there any nurse out there who feels that SOME cna's aren't doing their work and are jealous of the rn's. I am very tired of doing their work--if i wanted to remain a cna i would not have gone to nursing school; and my goodness, i am treated by crap by SOME lvn's--it is not my fault that they are not registered nurses.
I quit working for a large hospital after an 8 year, legendary, charge-nursing career, with an excellent rapport with nearly every doctor on campus, when an md reported me to management for telling the family that "the doctor was here at 3 am to see your mom." The doctor was avoiding the family during the day and the family was besides itself with frustration because the doctor would not speak a word to any family members and was never present. I lost my job because the doctor did not want grief from the family the next day. I left my 8 yr career when my manager called me to come in "to investigate the matter"; and when i told her not unless with my lawyer i was told a lawyer was not allowed in human resources for the meeting. I voluntarily surrendured my job to avoid further embarrassment. I later found out from one of the other nurses that the md was spewing filth about me in the nurse's station and said he would take his business elsewhere unless i was fired.
And, btw, i'm sure that most of you know that the union reps don't really help the nurses--they back down really quickly when confronted by management and human resources and the nurse is left with no defense. It wasn't until i became a nurse that i discovered people at their cruelest.
I am now a hospice nurse and am rarely in trouble, but i am on call a lot because one of the other case managers has a new ailment each week and i cover for her constantly. If i didn't have a 14 year old daughter to love I would have put a gun in my mouth long ago. Nurses are responsible for every single thing and are blamed for every single thing in the big hospitals. CHW is the worst. I will avoid hospitals like the plague.
:yeah:
, but thanks to mother nature f here, for she fixed her oen error , in this case ! 
MMCRN
11 Posts
Job security! As long as folks like that are able to reproduce, ER nurses will never have to worry about a lack of job opportunities.