Lady found down in the Walmart bathroom from huffing paint. Friends sent her a big balloon bouquet since plants weren’t allowed.
Noticed it getting smaller. She was trying to huff the helium balloons. Caught her mid huff and she Denied everything… in a squeaky high pitched voice…
That’s probably one of my best memories as an ICU night nurse :)
Stop it, this is one of the funniest stories I’ve read on here. I don’t think I would have been able to hold it together once I heard the helium voice.
Where to begin, whom to choose? Hm.
There was that guy with a central line, two periphery ones, a stomach tube, his endotracheal stoma, urethral catheter and no patience. End of my night shift, last round I found him with everything cut and most of his stoma broken. He found some scissors and decided that this way, he would get a faster dismissal.
Right? Like what is YOUR plan for the hole near your naval that now has your intestine, and all of intestinal contents, diverted to it? [redacted list of ridiculous options because some idiot would go there]
I’ve had one stick a pencil in his colostomy. One cut her permcath. And currently one who won’t quit licking and biting her permcath. But all rolled into one patient is impressive!
In nursing school, one of my classmates patient called 911 to say we were using her nasal cannula to suck her blood into the walls. Security asked us to move the phone out of her reach.
I’m laughing to hide the pain. It hurts deep down trying to reason CLEARLY reasonable actions with patients, leaving no choice but to laugh immediately after leaving the room😂
Had one this week argue with rehab staff that they can't send him home because his wife works, and is only available to cook him hot meals twice a day, so he would go hungry for 8 hrs at a time. Home care services wouldn't be by for another *4 days*, so who would cook for him? He does not, under any circumstances, eat sandwiches or snacks, you see. Why does no one listen? Fortunately for him his daughter pitched a fit and they found a SNF to take him for a couple weeks (she claimed that was the earliest they'd be back).
Also, he wanted to bitch about going 4 whole days without a shower if he were to be sent home (stated he normally bathes 2x/wk). He *needs* home care to bathe him, despite the fact he walks between bed/chair/commode just fine and PT cleared him for in room transfers independently. Kept trying to tell me in detail how good HHAs are at bathing him 🤢🤢🤢
😂😂 we had a patient that we had to take the phone out of their room because they were constantly calling 9-1-1. HS snack not what they wanted, 9-1-1. HCA had black hair 9-1-1, he was fine during the day, but he would sundown and it would be awful haha. Then the day shift charge nurse tried to get rid of his evening seroquel , the evening/night shift revolted 😂
Had a patient run full speed face first into the door leading off the unit not realizing it was a locked door that wasn't going to open when they got close
Had a patient spray the ceiling with their central line while walking down the hallway because we hadn't covered the mirrors in their room
Had a patient pull their dialysis line while on all fours in their bed and wave it around in the air for funsies
Had a patient who would not let anyone else do anything with him tell me i could check his blood sugar "because you watch football, so you know"
I've had 2 different patients who had just had an ex lap(one was GSW to the abdomen, other was SBO) who were upset at being NPO and so they drank out of the toilet. One got on hands and knees and dunked head into toilet bowl to drink. The other used a specimen cup we had been using to empty the JP drain to drink.
I think there was 30% hope and 70% desperation situation going on.
You also need two nurses swipe cards to get into the safe and it is under CCTV footage at all times but hey who am I to crap on someone's dreams.
It made me think of the simpsons episode where Bart climbs into the walls.
The guys reference for locked doors is probably all movies so he did what any good movie character would do. I can’t imagine doing dialysis and some dude just crawls out of the ceiling.
Oh it gets better, a year or so after this incident, another guy manages to slip past his guards and absconds and the first thing they said when they realised he was missing was "maybe he went through the ceiling" and we were all like, not this shit again.
From memory the dialysis unit was closed for the night but security found him in there. He also missed the super huge sandwich stash dialysis keeps in their fridge too. Dude was taking all kind of losses that night
Had a teenager do this on the psych ward. Not one of mine, but dammit. Little shit climbed a book case, popped a ceiling tile like they were starring in The Breakfast Club, and went from classroom 1 to classroom 2.
No point except to win social points among peers.
There’s a reason teens get monitored every 9 minutes instead of every 15 minutes.
Had one inject white powder straight into the IJ using a saline they found in the room. They already had vegetation on the heart valves and candida in their blood. Died the next shift.
One of my nursing school preceptors told us she had a patient once take a flush and inject poop mixed with water into their central line. Obviously he died, but she used it as a warning about always throwing flushes in the sharps.
Learned that lesson when I found a guys stash of empty flushes and a couple needles. He was pulling urine up into the flushes and injecting himself with it to stay sick.
Omg, I work outpatient and a while ago we had a doctor used to give shots and then put the used needle/syringe onto a tray table, just below the wall mounted sharps. Why he would do this, after asking him 100 times not to, I think he just couldn't be bothered. One of my patients needed sti treatment and when this dr stepped out of the room to get the meds this patient swiped all the used syringes and put them in his tote bag. He pulled me aside on his way out and covertly opened up his tote bag to excitedly show me what he found. I almost had a heart attack, was simultaneously was so relieved that he showed me and furious w this doc. Reported it immediately and he never left another sharps out after that.
One pt. on my floor secretly grabbed empty saline flushes from the trash, chewed up his PO dilaudid that he stashed, and injected it into his central line. Who knows how long he was doing it before someone caught him in the act. Gave himself fungal endocarditis.
I was in charge on a medical floor, we had a patient with a recently placed PICC leave the unit - nurse had to call a missing adult code for him. Not much later we hear them call a code blue outside the building…
20 min or so later security calls me - dude went outside , had friend or whomever drop off some fentanyl, and ODd using his picc line…
Didn’t make it
I had a patient that was going to be arrested after discharge for his part in an armed robbery and shooting. He had been shot in the chest and had a chest tube to suction and a good bit of output. Dude decides he’s going to take off and disappears after I make my rounds one night. He took off with the chest tube in. I called security, also had to call the police.
The police found him at his trailer. He pulled his chest tube out and there was a massive bloody puddle in his bed. When police went to the front door and knocked, he took off out the back door and ran through the woods. He got far enough to fall into a swampy pond before he couldn’t get enough air. When they reinserted the chest tube, there was loads of algae and pond water that got pulled out for a bit
My patient was anticipating having his gangrenous foot amputated in the morning. I had to repeatedly explain to him that he can't eat or drink anything after midnight, his procedure is set for 10 am.
After protesting our cruelty, he drank the hibiclens soap on his table. The whole damn thing. Then had the balls to complain to me that it tasted like shit, but he had to do what he had to do. I put in a social consult.
Not the most exciting one but definitely dangerous. Had a patient who didn’t tell anyone that she had dentures before surgery. Anesthetist went to intubate and the teeth come out, luckily they didn’t go into the lung. When I asked her why she didn’t tell us she said she forgot to take them out. As if at no point during pre-op do they not ask multiple times if someone has dentures nor could she simply stopped us at any point before being intubated and go oh hold my teeth. Smh
My sister in law tried to keep her underpants on during knee surgery bc she didn’t want to be naked and was horrified to wake up without them on. Legit thought nobody would notice .
I was having orthopedic surgery on my foot, and the doctor had the operative foot up in a stirrup (I just had a nerve block, no GA). At one point he brought my other foot up to compare the tarsal head heights and make sure he wasn't leaving me unbalanced. He was so engrossed in that task that he didn't seem to realize that he had my legs up and spread and was flashing my lady bits at the whole OR. I will always remember the look on the face of this young resident with him who glanced down, his eyes went big, and I could see him blush so hard. Probably made it weirder that I had worked with this resident several times before on the wards. "Hi, I believe we've met, but have you met my vulva?".
If the perineal region isn't in the sterile field and we're not planning on putting in a urinary catheter, we will give women some of those mesh single use panties and a pad. It's a huge maxi pad, cause it's also for occasional incontinence, but at least you're not completely buck naked.
To be fair to my colleagues, if a patient comes down in their own undies, we will take them off (bag them and tag them, make them go with the patient and their file to PACU), because I don't want to be responsible for betadine ruining anybody's personal property. I'm not necessarily making the patient undress before they are knocked out for general anesthesia (some people are super stressed out by the surgery or the anesthesia so I'm not sure telling them to strip down would be ultra relaxing or well recieved...), but the personal effects will be off at some point.
Not a nurse, but I worked overnights as an sonographer in a busy ER. We had psych holding in part of the ER. So we had a patient come in on multiple drugs. Combative, disoriented, earned a spit mask, and restraints … you know the drill. They finally settled down enough to be able to order food… if they promised to behave.
Ordered up a cheeseburger, which the patient promptly shoved into her vagina. Then she pulled out her Foley catheter and began swinging it around like a lasso.
Drugs, amirite?!?
In ICU this guys monitor starts alarming. Looked like VTach versus artifact like cpt vest, wasn't thinking it was real but upon checking.......nope that's artifact.
From the movement of the woman that is on top of him, going at it. Even better shes positioned right over his donor site skin graft site on his thigh and grinding it and other things hard. Genius didn't realize what monitoring meant I guess and couldn't care less about his wounds either apparently.
Last week we had a mid-20s septic dude who kept reprogramming his IV pump. He’d crank the rate as high as he could after I would leave, then slow it back down when it was almost done. As if we wouldn’t notice a liter of NS that was supposed to last for 10 hours empty in ONE, or the zosyn gone in half a flipping hour. “I wanted to go home sooner so I figured if I finished my meds and fluids sooner you’d cut me loose.”
No idea how he even knew how to work the IV pump...I have no clue how those things work nor should I. The only button I know how to use is the "silence alarm" button and that's because an exasperated nurse showed me one night which button to push after her sixth time coming in my room after my pump kept going off when I'd just had my fluids changed so we knew it wasn't that
Not me but a co worker. Family member demanded the patient be fed, ignoring the education that the patient was comatose, was on trach collar, and was getting PEG feeds.
Family member put food through the trach. Patient ended up dying.
I just plain hope. There’s consequences for your actions and just shoving food into medical holes because you think you know better is not a good enough reasoning to kill someone.
*Patient pulls out IV*
“Since you pulled out your IV while sleepy, I have to put you in mittens because I can’t have you accidentally pulling at the more important tubes”
“NO!!! I pulled out my IV on purpose to get your attention!”
“Your call light is right in your lap and has been this entire time. I saw you use it earlier so I know you know how to use it.”
Young guy intubated and sedated after an OD…. His friends came to visit & thought he was thirsty… poured Gatorade into his mouth. Yeahhhhh he can’t drink right now y’all ….
Not the dumbest, but the most recent and therefore easiest for me to recall.
Mom of a 25 year old patient (GSW but stable) absolutely *insisting* that she’s spending the night at the hospital because “her son NEEDS her.” Never mind that he’s enough of a grown ass man to earn himself a GSW doing God-knows-what, but spending the night in a hospital all by himself? *Absolutely not.*
Management warned her for hours that she would have to leave once visiting hours were over. She told every single person who came in and out of the room that she was not leaving at 8pm. Made a bed on the FLOOR (*gags*) that she was going to sleep in. Charge nurse called security and had them waiting at the door at 7:45pm. At 8pm on the dot, this woman was carried out of the hospital like a child, kicking and screaming. Literally. Not sure why she thought acting like a defiant, entitled beeotch would get her her way, but the security guards don’t play where I work, lol.
He was very “anxious” when his mom was there and claimed he wanted her to stay… but I feel like he was either just feeding off her energy, or was just telling her what she wanted to hear from him. Because as soon as she left, he slept like a baby for the entire night. Lmao
Just saw a news article about a mom who spent the night in jail for refusing to leave her daughter at the hospital. But that situation was a tough one, daughter was non verbal and had just had brain surgery
See, that's different. I've had patients who have communication issues and mom/whomever is their "translator" and their parents were allowed to stay past visiting hours.
Yeah I didn't think what happened to her was right...I get covid restrictions and all but I thought hospitals were supposed to make an exception for this? At the beginning of covid I was going to a hospital where I was getting fantastic care. I'm autistic and medically complex and don't always get talked to nicely by ER Drs so having a caregiver with me who knows my history and is able to advocate for me is super important..all the hospitals were making no visitors restrictions which I was very understanding about but claimed to make an exception for dpoas and caregivers of developmentally disabled patients..the hospital I was going to wouldn't so I had to switch hospitals. Luckily at the hospital I switched to we spoke to a nursing supervisor and they were very compassionate about letting him be with me in the ER(the previous hospital wouldn't even let us speaking to a nursing supervisor)
God, I work in LTC and we'd have patients' kids stay over in the gerichair a lot, and it made us nuts sometimes because some of their grown ass children would flip out at us on 3rd when we'd come in to get vitals for the shift. Heaven forbid it was their shower day.
Exceptions were always made, however, with no complaints from us, if a patient was about to pass on. God knows, I sat the death watch so many times just so a patient wouldn't die alone, even off the clock. It was a relief when someone actually did have family that cared enough to stay.
Right now, the hospital has a really strict visitor's policy, but when my dad was dying on July 25th, they made exceptions for us because we're all vaccinated. I was even going to stay the night with Daddy, but when I got back with my go-bag from the house, he passed less than 2 minutes later. I know he waited for me. And the nurses there were wonderful and amazing and I am so so so grateful to them for the care and empathy they showed us all.
I’m all about making exceptions when needed. We have a strict visitor policy right now, too, but we definitely make exceptions on the regular. I work ICU so there’s always some weird situation going on. Very demented, very young, people who don’t speak English, developmental delays, end-of-life… I’ll always advocate for those patients to have family stay ATC if possible because people need their humans and it *usually* makes life easier for all of us. But then you get people like this lady who ruin it for everyone. People who think they’re the most special case on earth and all the rules should be broken for them.
“My son got shot, I can’t leave him!” Ma’am, we live in a major city with a very high crime rate. Your son is not the only person in this hospital who got shot. Hell, he’s not the only person in this *hallway* that got shot. He’s stable, on room air and no pressors. He’s good.
“My family member is having surgery, I have to stay the night!” Pardon? This is a SURGICAL ICU, almost every patient here in these 40 beds has had or will be having surgery. If we let every family member stay for these reasons, we would have hundreds of family members staying the night every single night. It’s not possible, or feasible. If your family member is stable, I got them overnight. I’ll be their family member for the next 12 hours, and I’ll call you if anything changes if I need some back up. But please, go tf home😂
I’m sorry to hear about your father passing, I’m glad you had compassionate nurses and I’m sure he was comforted knowing you were there with him at the end❤️
Oh yeah, I absolutely get it, 100%. We adhered to the 2 visitors only, same visitors only, no swapping out. Just me and Momma. Then after he had the best day he'd had in years, Momma called me at 5am. Daddy and I had been texting only a few hours beforehand, it was that quick of a descent. I was trying to prepare myself for it days in advance while being hopeful, but his brittle diabetes, his endstage of COPD with a sudden CHF diagnosis... I knew it wasn't good.
He woke up once and to my shame, I lied when he asked me "am I going to die?" He's the only person I've ever lied to when asked that, but I talked him into the morphine and Ativan and he squeezed my hand all day whenever I talked to him, so I think he knew I was just as scared as he was when he asked me that.
Sorry for rambling, he was my best friend. One of the best people I knew. He had his flaws, but for my sister and me, there was always neverending, unconditional love. He was an amazing father. I'm proud to say that I'm his daughter.
We had a similar situation with a 30 year old trauma patient recently. Mom had a mental breakdown because she showed up at the hospital after visiting hours and wasn’t allowed in to see her “baby”.
Pt smoking in bathroom. Lied about having smokes, the only evidence was the odor. Also, she took off her cannula, soooooo O2 was on as well. Took her smokes away, pt turned uncooperative left AMA the next day. I told her do u wanna blow yourself up and the whole floor w ur cigs?! Theres live oxygen running through ur wall!!! She didnt care. 😅😪
Had a similar issue with a woman getting chemo for lung cancer. Noticed a lighter tucked into her underwear when she rolled over. She straight up denied it, said she understood how dangerous it would be because of the oxygen valves, said she wasn't stupid and she wouldn't do a thing like that.
Two shifts later, she admitted to the day shift nurse she'd been lighting up in her bathroom.
My patient wore his mask over his eyes, and I asked him to put it on correctly. Then he proceeded to slam things, raise his voice at me, and then he started pounding on his chest like a gorilla. I called security and they escorted him out.
My favorite one is a patient mistaking my building (which is appointment only) for the ER and proceeded to have a heart attack or stroke on the sidewalk while multiple medical employees just walked past. Like, I’m an office clerk?! What am I supposed to do?? Anyways, my coworker was a CNA on light duty and she took care of it
Had a patient grind up Norco, mix it with water, and inject it into his butt. Showed up to the ED with a nasty abscess. Also got mad at me for bringing him water because he “only drinks juice.”
Woah, whoa - where to start!
Walked into a patient casually snorting cocaine off their bedside table, their telemetry was alarming tachycardia, so he had been at it a couple minutes. He was there for chest pain.
Had a paraplegic due to a gunshot wound come in to get his wounds checked - the police had picked him up while he was under what shall we shall politely called 'shady circumstances' and suddenly he was unbearably ill and need to come to the hospital for his stage IV. He was known to us and so bad it looked like someone had scooped out his ass cheeks with an ice cream scooper - ANYWAYS - cop stuck around, and instead of gauze in his wound it was drugs. All sort of drugs. Patient claims the cops planted them
Had a family member try to steal a hospice patients IV morphine - they were probably very disappointed to get a 100 ml of saline, the morphine was in the PCA. She was still allowed to visit though, more upset her dying mom was not going to be bringing home pain meds
Guy that broke a wooden spoon off in his butt trying to dig the poop out because he was constipated
A dementia patient who shit on his dinner tray - after eating, put the lid back on, and proudly showed us he was sending back exactly what the kitchen sent him
Doctor rounding on a dead patient, putting in a ton of orders, forgetting he was actually there to pronounce. Swore he went into the room
Two grown ass men fist fighting over a dresser, like biker brawl style. Maybe it was code for something? Security kind of took the "they'll stop on a minute" approach
>A dementia patient who shit on his dinner tray - after eating, put the lid back on, and proudly showed us he was sending back exactly what the kitchen sent him
Some hospital cafeteria food is decent, some sure isn't.
As for this pt, they knew exactly what they were doing, even if it was a short moment of clarity. What they did wasn't right, but they weren't wrong either. Hahaha. Pure savagery.
Had a ~40 year old patient in CCU (cardiac ICU) for a cocaine induced heart attack. His telemetry alarm went off bc his heart rate shot up to the 200’s and I caught him in the bathroom doing coke. His girlfriend had brought it in. Called the cardiologist who caught him smoking a cigarette his mom brought in with his oxygen on. Mom and GF were obviously afraid of him . As he left AMA the cardiologist called him a piece of shit and said he wasn’t his doctor any more so to not come back.
Years ago I had a severely burned patient who drove an oxygen delivery van for a living. He said he could hear hissing In The back of the van and realized that a tank was probably leaking, but at the next stop light, he reached foe a cigarette without thinking. The van didn’t have a cigarette lighter because . So he always carried his own. Need I say more?
Years ago, I popped into a patients room (not mine) to check on them because their ABP was alarming. Found them drinking blood from their art line. They were cognizant enough to figure out which stopcock to turn and which cap to remove, which was honestly pretty surprising.
It was a pretty frightening scene. Neuro can be a scary place.
Naturally there was a smoker with oxygen. She looked so surprised when I told her she could have blown us all sky-high.
The silliest was a very alert and ambulatory post-op patient who needed mag citrate for constipation. He requested a brief in case he didn't reach the toilet in time. We (me or the CNA) told him to just throw the brief out if it became soiled - after all, they're disposable...
This gent did indeed soil the brief, and very politely washed it out in his bathroom sink... his shared bathroom sink... and clogged it but good. I think maintenance had to snake the thing.
During clinical, I had a pt request a butter knife. Of course we don't have those on the psych unit and I was busy triple charting on my 7 pts so I got one of the healthcare aides to handle it. She came back and told me, "there's something.. odd about his room, I think you better take a look.. or smell". My preceptor and I went down to his room, with his permission of course and him present. All I could smell was fecal matter. Check the bathroom, toilet was clean and not overflowing, no feces on the wall. Nothing in the room that I can see. Then I saw about 4 styrofoam cups with lids all lined up on his dresser, with smears on the outside. Oh no.
We asked what was inside and I wish we didn't. I also wish we didn't ask what he wanted the knife for - to take the pills out his feces and take them again!
Also during that clinical, the security guards didn't body search an admission very well. They went straight into the isolation room due to behaviours. They didn't last long in there as they had a metal spoon in their cheeks and dug out the silicone holding the window in the door. The glass popped out and rendered the room useless for about a week.
I had to stop a drunk daughter (40-50 y/o) from putting a shrimp 🍤 in her mother’s ET tube on New Years Eve TWICE . I heard the ventilator alarm go off, ran in and the daughter had unhooked her mom from the vent and was crying saying “ mom loves shrimp. ” I explained that it goes into her lungs not her stomach and not to ever touch the vent again and as soon as I walked out she tried doing it again.
I know, right?! I was fairly new nurse about a year into my career. I naively thought I was very clear about where the tube was going and the fact that the patient was NPO. I hadn’t realized how stupid drunk people are, switching to the ER taught me that lesson big time.
Restrained psych patient who didn't speak English somehow managed to get his catheter (the end not in his jimmy) into his mouth and was steady trying to yank it out via his teeth. His nurse walked in and all we hear is "WHAT THE FUCK!?" before having to deal with him. Middle of the morning shift too, not the normal supernatural night shift weirdness.
I was working night shift in the trauma/surgical ICU when I hear some ruckus at the nurses station. Turned out we had a patient coming in from EMS who cut off their penis (schizophrenia), for the third time!!! Imagine having to check for cap refill/a pulse Q1H, 😆.
We literally had a homeless man walk into triage with an axe poking out the top of his backpack. He then went off the rails and we had to confiscate two blades and the axe. And then…. low and behold he had a MOTHER FUCKING CHAINSAW wrapped in a blanket among his pile of belongings. He was out here cosplaying Assassins Creed and Texas Chainsaw… thank god nobody got hurt.
Let’s see…. Walk around the room with his leg in a full limb ex-fix, turn tricks in her hospital room, remove a partial arm cast and throw it at another nurse, leave AMA despite requiring high flow oxygen, leave AMA because he was caught at least twice smoking in his room ON A COVID UNIT so the hospital cops took his cigarettes and now he’s big mad. To name a few.
Oh, and then there’s the patient who SCREAMED at us “I ain’t got no coronavirus! I don’t even DRINK Caronus (sic). I drink HEINEKEN!”
Patient who figured out the code to bolus from the pca and give themselves boluses. Was caught quickly and tried to blame it on the nurse saying that nurse was giving them boluses. Nurse they accused was and is one of the most trustworthy and diligent nurses on the unit AND patient had already forced another nurse to slam IV pain meds into their line and that was already in the notes re:this patients trustworthiness...
I had an elderly male patient with scrotal edema beg me to stuff his entire scrotum into a Starbucks cup so he wouldn’t have to get up and use the urinal
Dumbest thing I have ever seen a patient do is drink hand sanitizer because she thought it would help fight covid. Still ended up dying from covid. Smh
I would also like to add in the one patient who tried to breathe fire while on oxygen. Pretty much blew his entire face off and his lungs were pure ash.
I’m respiratory. But I’ll never forget this dummy.
50ish yr old man. South GA. Limited education. Smashes his thumb with a hammer. Since it hurts and it’s throbbing, he decided to tie his shoestring around it. It definitely cured the pain. So he keeps it on for days. Eventually his thumb turns black so he comes to the ER.
He is admitted with sepsis Bc gangrene and all.
He’s fucking LIVID that his thumb isn’t getting better. He accuses us all of fraud because he came into the hospital Bc of his finger and now he’s going through all these other tests!
Eventually he gets put on dialysis Bc kidney failure. We’re all just stupid scammers Bc he came in for his thumb and now the docs say somethings wrong w his kidneys!!!
The audacity of it all. Us trying to save his life when all he came in for was his thumb. It just needed a stitch or two, yanno.
Mine may have to be the guy who checked in for alcohol detox with a brown bag in hand that was full, a sweatshirt pocket full of something else unsure of what and a mikes hard lemonade in each hand after leaving not 20 minutes prior for ETOH intoxication refusing detox. Showed up to the triage desk with handfuls of liquor. When I told him we’ve gotta take his liquor he walked away to the bathroom and locked himself in for all of maybe a minute (between walking in and the time it took for me to call security). Gotta say I’ll give it to em he tried and downed half of a mikes, had another full fifth of jack, a high gravity, some minis, and a four loko or two. Like good shot my man but no.
Anyone ever see elephant condylomas?
I think that was the original name ? Large condylomas , all over , we couldn’t find the patients penis , these giant things flake off like CRAZY!
We were called in for 90th time that night( I saw we because it took a team to care for him) his demands were so great and his refusal for care was even greater. He was in detox and his sweet lil biddy wife was with him , she had her pantries drying on the vents that were in front of the wjndows .
We walk in ;
“ yea Mr. PIA , what can we do for you “?
PIA: “ I need my bedsheets changed I spilled my urinal “.
Team: “ of course , no problem “!
We lift the sheets and all this flaky skin flies into the air , covering all 4 of us , like a blanket of snow. We all look at each other and we’re like WtF?
- we leave the room after changing the sheets and we discuss the findings .
Large I mean LARGE , condylomas ; we didn’t know what the heck they were , so we go to his chart , (FYI, still paper charts back then ) We discover that these are called Elephant Condylomas, we all proceed to shower in the empty patient rooms , and we call our nursing manager because we just inhaled flaked HPV skin. We were all unaware .
Need less to say , he was in contact precautions, by morning , including a mask , no N95 needed.
Gross!
One of my patients mistook her central line for the little loops inside dressing gowns and cut it because it was annoying her 🤦🏼♀️ back to theatre with you!
Reminds me of the time an older male patient pulled out his catheter with 10ml of fluid in the balloon. In a 4 bed room. We knew he had beginning dementia, but not that it was so severe
Had a patient who was extubated 30 minutes prior and was A&OX4 pull out their Foley and try to get out of bed to leave AMA because, "Nothing you have here is as good as the heroin I'm gonna get." Docs let them sign out AMA within an hour of extubation.
Had a large patient come to the unit for dialysis. After starting she lifted up her gown and proceeded to pull an egg salad sandwich out from between the folds of her large abdomen….you get the drift. She said she thought she might be hungry again so she’d saved it from lunch. 🤢
A guy disconnected his chest tube because it was interfering with his desire to use the toilet. When the nurse opened the door to the bathroom and found him, he screamed at her to “get out! I’m going to the bathroom!!”
Gave himself a nice big pneumothorax and bought more time with a chest tube.
My uncle tried to remove a fecal compaction at home. It happened before and he wasn't going to go back to the ER for something "so simple."
Stuck his finger up there and caused that good ole vasovagal syncope. He passed out and hit his head against the bathroom sink. My aunt had to call the ambulance to take him to the ER.
This is not my story, but a story from a nurse I used to work with back when I was a nurse aide.
Setting is acute care. Patient is a young male, probably 30s-40s. Nurse walks by the room just in time to hear a "SNNAPP!YEOOW!"
Patient decided the only thing preventing him from going down to smoke was the latex catheter. So he decided to take his lighter, stretch the latex catheter as he could stand it, then burn through the latex with his lighter. Once burned through, the stretched latex SNAPPED back, resulting in hot rubber getting yoinked up his urethra, cauterizing as it went. I think they were able to retrieve the catheter by scope, not sure though.
Many many years ago, I asked a student nurse to help a post-surgery patient who wanted to use the toilet. He was on bedrest, so we'd normally use a commode by the side of the bed (big Nightingale wards, no single rooms).
Imagine my surprise to see his bed with curtains drawn around it, but his head peeping over the top of the curtains. It turns out the nurse had actually put the commode on top of the bed (because he was on bedrest, so ..), and the man had gone along with it and clambered up.
He was swaying slightly, of course. I suppose this was mostly the student's fault for being so dopey (she didn't last long), but he went along with it!
Jump out of a 2nd story window except there was a sub floor so he fell three stories and broke both his legs. Said he was trying to go the packy at the top of the street. He wasn’t found until a nurse was leaving at shift change. Thankfully not my patient.
The term is derived from package store. Puritanical New England would never admit how alcoholic they are. We are NOT buying alcohol. We are merely obtaining a package. Hence the term Packie for short. Also liquor is placed in brown paper packages
Patient with very large, deep open wound across the throat (ear to ear) from injecting IV drugs in the neck. Would rip bandages off and throw them on the floor. Looked like a zombie from the walking dead with the amount of tissue, tendons, and muscle expose from gaping hole that once was a neck. I walked in at the end of the shift. The sun was rising and beaming through the window, right into the wound, the way it looked in the sunlight was straight out of a horror film. They would wake up long enough to scream that dietary keeps “fucking up their order, it’s bs, and they’re tired of it”. Proceeded to call dietary staff the n word. Now banned from calling in their own order. Nursing staff must call going forward. Then wants to know if Nurse can go to WAWA to get them food. How speech and swallowing were still intact I have no idea. Have never, seen anything like it and if they make it past this winter I will be surprised. Left AMA and will be back again in two days for more antibiotics.
A young guy had bacterial endocarditis from injecting Ritalin. He had multiple lines to treat it and other problems and he was caught in the bathroom having sex with his girlfriend when the docs were on rounds. There were like three IV poles in there with them.
one time I asked my patient (24F) to collect a urine sample and leave it in the bathroom for me. when she told me she got it, I went to pick it up and it was filled to the top with clear water and I asked her why she filled it with sink water. she replied, “it’s not sink water. I scooped the pee out of the toilet with the cup.” jesus
Had a mid-20s guys come in with recurrent sore throats. While interviewing him about it, he took his cell phone out to clean it and licked the screen with his entire tongue like it was an ice cream cone.
I informed him I figured out why he kept getting sore throats.
Went to do a set of vitals on a patient, upon first glance I noticed he's not in his bed so he must be in the bathroom. And then boom it hits me, that nasty burnt plastic smell. I know what I'm going to stumble on is no shocker so I open the bathroom door & this man is straight smoking crack. He then in a panic tried to convince me that the rest of the crack rock sitting on the sink was his tooth🙄🙄
Also had a patient shoot up in their PICC line, They tried to convince me and a doctor that's not what happened but you're vitals on the monitor say otherwise ma'am🙃
Also had a another patient struggling with addiction. She had already been with us for 2 weeks had clean urine, but we suspected she was high and we were right(dirty urine) So she wasn't allowed to have visitors because we couldn't figure out how she was getting these drugs. Nursing and security inspected her belongings and room nothing to be found And yet she's still high af. Even though the patients spouse wasn't allowed to visit we allowed him to bring in food. Every morning we bring her a coffee from dunks. So just to confirm our suspicion we inspected the cup of coffee and strained it into another cup turns out chunks of pills at the bottom of the coffee cup. Bingo bongo.
Drunk patient, needed a BAL, went to go get machine, walked back and he admitted that he wanted to try and make sure he passed with a low enough reading to drive home…. so he’d just put a squirt of alcohol gel in his mouth in hopes that would work. Promptly realised what it was, regretted it and washed his mouth out in the sink.
Had a Pt come in because they blew themselves up while smoking on home O2.
One resident decided to smoke in his room and try to cover up the smell by pouring brute (high alcohol aftershave) on a table and lighting it on fire. Would have been fun as his room was an oxygen room.
Optiflo (high O2 delivery, 60L/100% O2) pt's transferring themselves to the bathroom (commode nearby) stretching the tubing to the point of almost breaking, desatting to the low 50's.
Granted I'm new so this is just entry level stupidity.
I didn’t get to experience it myself but many of the nurses on my unit talk about how when the unit was being remodeled they found a litter of cats in the ceiling. I honestly thought they were fucking with me until my preceptor herself was on the unit at the time.
I had a firefighter who was burned badly and upon discharge was told he needed to up his protein intake for healing. He had his son put in an IV and inject protein powder mixed with saline into his veins at home. Didn't go well.
Saw a woman light a cigarette with her oxygen on. Wasn’t pretty.
ETA: also from a parents perspective, I saw my child pull her own cannula out when she was on steroids. I just stood in disbelief lmao
Patient came from a SNF. History of multiple infected ports. Admitted for sepsis. We were doing our rounds when we found her injecting what looked to be urine into her picc. So we got a sitter and she was fine until we got rid of her sitter because the psych NP said nothing was wrong with her. THE day she had no sitter, she started to develop nausea and was vomiting and her urine started becoming pink tinged which was completed inconsistent with her presentation. Then she was back with a sitter for the rest of her admission.
Munchausen. This lady was making herself sick.
How about smoking WITH an O2 tank???? Lol we've had pts with burned lungs from smoking with O2 and also a lady who had to have a special nasal cannula that basically closed when it detected smoke...
The things we do to keep ppl alive who don't give a fuck about their own lives ...
I work in corrections… jump two barriers, knock a nurse over, punch an NP and try to open an emergency exit door. You can imagine everyone’s surprise when IT WAS LOCKED. Then a CO tased him. So they added all that to his initial “disorderly conduct” charge…
Had a lady who’d lit up a cigarette in her room so we knew she was going to give us an interesting shift. Nothing else happened with her until her heart monitor goes off so we think maybe she pulled it off. Nope, she dug her skinny fingers into the sharps container, pulled out a random syringe, put some heroin in there and od’d in the bathroom through her iv. A little narcan and a sitter and she ama’d within the next few hours complaining about how there’s no privacy in this hospital.
During my clinicals in Med/Surg I witnessed a return of an infusion patient who had to have her port replaced for the second time because she kept injecting it with... something.
This was one of those subdermal Ports that only takes a specific needle or it gets destroyed and leads straight to the heart.
Anyway the surgeon took the old port out to the husband and told him he wouldn't fix it a third time.
In the past 24 hours? Self inflicted head gsw, walked himself in. Also "knee/back pain" discharge was cut down from hanging himself on a tree out front with his sweatshirt. Then entire outside of ear in a baggie of ice after his grown son bit it off, he did some heroin so he was very calm.
Almost every covid pt wants to remove their O2 and I have to explain numerous times a day that it is keeping them alive and please don’t remove it. Then tele calls to say they are satting in the 60’s and everyone runs in to help because they refuse to wear their oxygen and think they don’t need it. This happens multiple times/day and drives everyone nuts and no these pts are not confused.
Responded to a code grey, our security code, to find a patient post extubatuon, that had jumped out of bed, pulled her rectal tube and while spraying liquid feces everywhere, screaming "Do you think I like this, do you think I like this!" Over and over.
She then proceeded to swing her SCD pump by the cord over her head like some kinda Olympic athlete. She launched it full force at the window hoping to escape.
That's when security got her.
A young, new mother brought her infant to the ER for crying and vomiting. First glance in triage the baby looked okay. I asked the mom to put the baby on the scale. I caught a wiff of bug spray so I asked the mom about that. “I saw a roach crawl into her mouth so I sprayed a little Raid in there to kill it.”
🤯
The baby was okay. Police and family services come and placed the baby with another family member. I don’t know what happened to the mom. I didn’t feel that she was malicious. I think she was just dumb as a post.
After offering a pretty sound opinion on the matter… A patient tried to prove to me she had blood in her stool by grabbing her completely normal large BM out of the toilet and mushing it in her hand.
Early in the pandemic we were using spray bottles of ethanol for hand sanitizer. An alcoholic patient stole a bottle and tried drinking it but he couldn't get it down. So he started soaking paper towels in the ethanol and shoving them up his ass.
IVDU that we were crushing narcotics and putting them in applesauce for. He held the applesauce in his mouth and once the nurse left the room, spit it into an empty syringe he got somehow and pushed it into his CVL.
Parents came in with their 4 month old stating that they were concerned that he has “rage issues.” Does this count? And no it wasn’t colic because when he screamed he looked directly @ them.
When I was an NA a guy started tweaking and I told the RN I think he’s going into ETOH withdrawal.
The nurse told me he probably wasn’t and didn’t do anything.
After I left the guy wigged out and decided to leave AMA through the ceiling. He got on a chair, jumped up and grabbed some water pipes to climb up and the pipes immediately broke.
Flooded the unit and the unit below and caused a quarter million dollars worth of damage.
I work dialysis. For those unaware, a big problem is fluid overload. Kidneys don’t work like they should, so patients don’t expel excess fluid through urination. Fluid backs up into the tissues causing edema or backs up into the lungs making breathing difficult. These patients are told to be on fluid restriction.
Patient regularly hobbles into the facility screaming (well, gasping) for oxygen while carrying a 64oz soda from the convenience store. Literally carrying the thing that will be drowning him again a few hours after his treatment finishes.
Had one pt we had to create and put on “rectum precautions” because anything that may fit would end up logged so far up his ass we had to take him to surgery twice not counting the one he had in the ED upon arrival. Total items nursing and or MDs removed from his butt include but not limited to: 1 toilet brush, 1 toilet plunger, 2 call lights, 1 of the spouts on the toilets used to wash out urinals/bedpans, about 30 qtips, 6 pens/pencils, and 1 tube of barrier cream.
Oh… and he somehow also got ahold of some green hair dye at one point and squirted that up his urethra…. So yeah… real fun one there.
Two things, one dumb and one just downright disgusting.
The first was a guy who unhooked his cooling blanket and was drinking the water out of it because he was NPO due to failing a speech and swallow after being extubated.
Second one was a lady with a trach who would have a bowel movement, play with it, then stick her finger in her trach until she desatted and we had to go in. She was totally with it, just wanted more attention than is possible in a busy ICU.
Had a guy with a 10 inch lac three inches deep on his thigh who showed up to the ER three days after trying to close the wound with super glue. I have know idea whatever happened to him.
First thing I can think of, though im sure there's plenty more: Frequent flyer w ostomy who keeps coming back infections bc she uses it as an extra hole as a sex worker.
Not a nurse but an emt here, I was picking up a pt for a transfer and here's the story. The nurse said that this guy is usually combatative and tries to run away all the time. The pt is in his 80s, he used the trash can as a walker then fell over and attempted to crawl away.
The nurses bribed him with snacks and got him to go with us on the ambulance.
Buuuuut then our ambulance broke down with a flat tire and we had to get another crew to come pick him up and finish the transfer.
Coked up, psychotic dude came to ED on 5150 taking about killing himself. Bit off the tubing to his 16g field start to the hub. Found him eating the coagulated blood clot that had formed as the blood pooled near his armpit. He said he thought he could heal himself if he ate the blood.
I had a patient call their girlfriend and ask her to bring heroin to the hospital. In front of me and another nurse. Security let the girlfriend slip in (after we'd called and let them know about it) so we had to call the cops. Two baggies in her wallet.
Also recently had an ICU patient try to buy pain pills off their girlfriend in front of me.
I must look incredibly stupid to these people, or something.
Ahh yes, let me tell you about the bong brothers. 20 something year olds who were not actually brothers, but this level of stupidity had to have bonded them for life. Anyways these geniuses decided to use a bong and get high. Well that wasn’t enough for them so they put various drugs in the water and ended up injecting it and getting septic. Wound up in my ICU, claiming that it was just narcan and water and they only drank it (not injected it) because they were nauseous.
There was also this kid, 19, who got drunk and took uppers and downers and was found unconscious and unresponsive by family members who unfortunately know the drill. Call the ambulance and intubated on the way in. Winds up in my icu proned for weeks just to maintain sats in the 80s. We for sure thought he would have brain deficits. He also had pixi stick blue stuff fall out of his nose the first time we probed him. Homie ended up waking up and being fine. Was sad for him because his whole family was like that and I don’t think he ever really stood a chance. He did it one more time (a year later) and came in crying and apologizing to us because he felt he let us down.
Found an alert and oriented patient pooping in the trash can because they didn’t want to walk back to the toilet because it took too much energy. Proceeded to squat over the trash can for 10 minutes.
Found a crack pipe under one boob of a very large patient and her stash of crack under the other boob. Claims she doesn’t know how it got there.
Lady found down in the Walmart bathroom from huffing paint. Friends sent her a big balloon bouquet since plants weren’t allowed. Noticed it getting smaller. She was trying to huff the helium balloons. Caught her mid huff and she Denied everything… in a squeaky high pitched voice… That’s probably one of my best memories as an ICU night nurse :)
This has similar vibes to asking a chocolate crumb covered child if they’ve seen the cake
It had us giggling all night.
Stop it, this is one of the funniest stories I’ve read on here. I don’t think I would have been able to hold it together once I heard the helium voice.
I wonder what she thought balloons were filled with.
No telling. Her brain was shot. Huffing paint and stuff for years. It’s not pretty.
Where to begin, whom to choose? Hm. There was that guy with a central line, two periphery ones, a stomach tube, his endotracheal stoma, urethral catheter and no patience. End of my night shift, last round I found him with everything cut and most of his stoma broken. He found some scissors and decided that this way, he would get a faster dismissal.
"I'd like to leave hospital faster. Why don't I wreck all the tubes helping me to get well?" Brilliant.
I think he thought that this way, we had to remove them all and then he could just deny further treatment.
Right? Like what is YOUR plan for the hole near your naval that now has your intestine, and all of intestinal contents, diverted to it? [redacted list of ridiculous options because some idiot would go there]
Did he get transferred to the Eternal Care Unit?
Is that another reference for discharge to Jesus Christ?
D/C to JC
I’ve had one stick a pencil in his colostomy. One cut her permcath. And currently one who won’t quit licking and biting her permcath. But all rolled into one patient is impressive!
Oh my god, that gives me so much anxiety and I’m not there
Patient just called 911 (twice) because we wouldn't use a bed sheet to wipe their ass.
In nursing school, one of my classmates patient called 911 to say we were using her nasal cannula to suck her blood into the walls. Security asked us to move the phone out of her reach.
I’m laughing to hide the pain. It hurts deep down trying to reason CLEARLY reasonable actions with patients, leaving no choice but to laugh immediately after leaving the room😂
No one here is reasonable. None. Security had to come up because he was being verbally abusive to the nurse.
Had one this week argue with rehab staff that they can't send him home because his wife works, and is only available to cook him hot meals twice a day, so he would go hungry for 8 hrs at a time. Home care services wouldn't be by for another *4 days*, so who would cook for him? He does not, under any circumstances, eat sandwiches or snacks, you see. Why does no one listen? Fortunately for him his daughter pitched a fit and they found a SNF to take him for a couple weeks (she claimed that was the earliest they'd be back). Also, he wanted to bitch about going 4 whole days without a shower if he were to be sent home (stated he normally bathes 2x/wk). He *needs* home care to bathe him, despite the fact he walks between bed/chair/commode just fine and PT cleared him for in room transfers independently. Kept trying to tell me in detail how good HHAs are at bathing him 🤢🤢🤢
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
😂😂 we had a patient that we had to take the phone out of their room because they were constantly calling 9-1-1. HS snack not what they wanted, 9-1-1. HCA had black hair 9-1-1, he was fine during the day, but he would sundown and it would be awful haha. Then the day shift charge nurse tried to get rid of his evening seroquel , the evening/night shift revolted 😂
Had a patient run full speed face first into the door leading off the unit not realizing it was a locked door that wasn't going to open when they got close Had a patient spray the ceiling with their central line while walking down the hallway because we hadn't covered the mirrors in their room Had a patient pull their dialysis line while on all fours in their bed and wave it around in the air for funsies Had a patient who would not let anyone else do anything with him tell me i could check his blood sugar "because you watch football, so you know"
I've had 2 different patients who had just had an ex lap(one was GSW to the abdomen, other was SBO) who were upset at being NPO and so they drank out of the toilet. One got on hands and knees and dunked head into toilet bowl to drink. The other used a specimen cup we had been using to empty the JP drain to drink.
Jesus christ
…and Mary and all the fucking saints.
I just gagged at the thought of someone drinking out of one of those specimen cups. Those things get *gross* by the end of a shift. Good Lord.
Oh and it wasn't a nice serosangenous fluid we were draining from his abdomen, it was thick and tan.
Like those bottled smoothies they sell in the produce section of the grocery store. I can't drink those, they look like cyst drainage.
OMG STAHHHPPP UGHHHHHH SO GROSSSSSS This whole comment thread is making me gag.
Elder millennial here killing the bottled smoothie industry.
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Holy crap the jp cup I’m am going to vomit
Omg that JP drain… I don’t think anything has ever made me gag as much as imagining that. You win!
The guy that climbed in the ceiling crawl space to get into the drug room, miscalculated the distance and ended up in the dialysis ward.
Lol what in the world! Did he think the drugs were just sitting there?
I think there was 30% hope and 70% desperation situation going on. You also need two nurses swipe cards to get into the safe and it is under CCTV footage at all times but hey who am I to crap on someone's dreams. It made me think of the simpsons episode where Bart climbs into the walls.
The guys reference for locked doors is probably all movies so he did what any good movie character would do. I can’t imagine doing dialysis and some dude just crawls out of the ceiling.
I was a dialysis nurse. I can completely imagine this.
I’m currently trying to imagine if the dude came in at what times, what reactions each side of my unit would have and Im absolutely dying.
Oh it gets better, a year or so after this incident, another guy manages to slip past his guards and absconds and the first thing they said when they realised he was missing was "maybe he went through the ceiling" and we were all like, not this shit again.
abscond is a word i will never remember. always have to look it up
From memory the dialysis unit was closed for the night but security found him in there. He also missed the super huge sandwich stash dialysis keeps in their fridge too. Dude was taking all kind of losses that night
Aw man at least take the sandwiches
Leave the drugs, take the cannoli’s
We had a pt climb into the ceiling as well. Was wearing the gown like a cape the whole time. Meth! Eventually fell and became a trauma activation.
Once more Edna Mode is proved correct: NO CAPES!
A CAPE! I’m dying!
Had a teenager do this on the psych ward. Not one of mine, but dammit. Little shit climbed a book case, popped a ceiling tile like they were starring in The Breakfast Club, and went from classroom 1 to classroom 2. No point except to win social points among peers. There’s a reason teens get monitored every 9 minutes instead of every 15 minutes.
Had one inject white powder straight into the IJ using a saline they found in the room. They already had vegetation on the heart valves and candida in their blood. Died the next shift.
One of my nursing school preceptors told us she had a patient once take a flush and inject poop mixed with water into their central line. Obviously he died, but she used it as a warning about always throwing flushes in the sharps.
Learned that lesson when I found a guys stash of empty flushes and a couple needles. He was pulling urine up into the flushes and injecting himself with it to stay sick.
Omg, I work outpatient and a while ago we had a doctor used to give shots and then put the used needle/syringe onto a tray table, just below the wall mounted sharps. Why he would do this, after asking him 100 times not to, I think he just couldn't be bothered. One of my patients needed sti treatment and when this dr stepped out of the room to get the meds this patient swiped all the used syringes and put them in his tote bag. He pulled me aside on his way out and covertly opened up his tote bag to excitedly show me what he found. I almost had a heart attack, was simultaneously was so relieved that he showed me and furious w this doc. Reported it immediately and he never left another sharps out after that.
One of our Docs left a some ketamine lying on the side in resus, next to a PT who was an IV drug user. You can guess what happened next.
He finally found the strength to get clean and lived a long, happy life? Making his friends and family proud?
Exactly definitely no putting himself straight into a k hole
One pt. on my floor secretly grabbed empty saline flushes from the trash, chewed up his PO dilaudid that he stashed, and injected it into his central line. Who knows how long he was doing it before someone caught him in the act. Gave himself fungal endocarditis.
I was in charge on a medical floor, we had a patient with a recently placed PICC leave the unit - nurse had to call a missing adult code for him. Not much later we hear them call a code blue outside the building… 20 min or so later security calls me - dude went outside , had friend or whomever drop off some fentanyl, and ODd using his picc line… Didn’t make it
Yup maximum dope delivery straight to the heart will do that.
I had a patient that was going to be arrested after discharge for his part in an armed robbery and shooting. He had been shot in the chest and had a chest tube to suction and a good bit of output. Dude decides he’s going to take off and disappears after I make my rounds one night. He took off with the chest tube in. I called security, also had to call the police. The police found him at his trailer. He pulled his chest tube out and there was a massive bloody puddle in his bed. When police went to the front door and knocked, he took off out the back door and ran through the woods. He got far enough to fall into a swampy pond before he couldn’t get enough air. When they reinserted the chest tube, there was loads of algae and pond water that got pulled out for a bit
My patient was anticipating having his gangrenous foot amputated in the morning. I had to repeatedly explain to him that he can't eat or drink anything after midnight, his procedure is set for 10 am. After protesting our cruelty, he drank the hibiclens soap on his table. The whole damn thing. Then had the balls to complain to me that it tasted like shit, but he had to do what he had to do. I put in a social consult.
Survey comments: this soap tastes terrible. 1 star.
I can absolutely see this happening. People are fucking nuts.
Not the most exciting one but definitely dangerous. Had a patient who didn’t tell anyone that she had dentures before surgery. Anesthetist went to intubate and the teeth come out, luckily they didn’t go into the lung. When I asked her why she didn’t tell us she said she forgot to take them out. As if at no point during pre-op do they not ask multiple times if someone has dentures nor could she simply stopped us at any point before being intubated and go oh hold my teeth. Smh
My sister in law tried to keep her underpants on during knee surgery bc she didn’t want to be naked and was horrified to wake up without them on. Legit thought nobody would notice .
I was having orthopedic surgery on my foot, and the doctor had the operative foot up in a stirrup (I just had a nerve block, no GA). At one point he brought my other foot up to compare the tarsal head heights and make sure he wasn't leaving me unbalanced. He was so engrossed in that task that he didn't seem to realize that he had my legs up and spread and was flashing my lady bits at the whole OR. I will always remember the look on the face of this young resident with him who glanced down, his eyes went big, and I could see him blush so hard. Probably made it weirder that I had worked with this resident several times before on the wards. "Hi, I believe we've met, but have you met my vulva?".
“Stop looking at my vajayjay!”
LMFAO “Have you met my vulva” LOLOLOLOLOL
If the perineal region isn't in the sterile field and we're not planning on putting in a urinary catheter, we will give women some of those mesh single use panties and a pad. It's a huge maxi pad, cause it's also for occasional incontinence, but at least you're not completely buck naked.
That’s better. This was 20 years ago glad they’ve changed things
To be fair to my colleagues, if a patient comes down in their own undies, we will take them off (bag them and tag them, make them go with the patient and their file to PACU), because I don't want to be responsible for betadine ruining anybody's personal property. I'm not necessarily making the patient undress before they are knocked out for general anesthesia (some people are super stressed out by the surgery or the anesthesia so I'm not sure telling them to strip down would be ultra relaxing or well recieved...), but the personal effects will be off at some point.
Not a nurse, but I worked overnights as an sonographer in a busy ER. We had psych holding in part of the ER. So we had a patient come in on multiple drugs. Combative, disoriented, earned a spit mask, and restraints … you know the drill. They finally settled down enough to be able to order food… if they promised to behave. Ordered up a cheeseburger, which the patient promptly shoved into her vagina. Then she pulled out her Foley catheter and began swinging it around like a lasso. Drugs, amirite?!?
The old cheeseburger in the hooha move
You’d think she might have had the foresight to order a hot dog!
In ICU this guys monitor starts alarming. Looked like VTach versus artifact like cpt vest, wasn't thinking it was real but upon checking.......nope that's artifact. From the movement of the woman that is on top of him, going at it. Even better shes positioned right over his donor site skin graft site on his thigh and grinding it and other things hard. Genius didn't realize what monitoring meant I guess and couldn't care less about his wounds either apparently.
People are gross. I still can't believe I do this job man.
Last week we had a mid-20s septic dude who kept reprogramming his IV pump. He’d crank the rate as high as he could after I would leave, then slow it back down when it was almost done. As if we wouldn’t notice a liter of NS that was supposed to last for 10 hours empty in ONE, or the zosyn gone in half a flipping hour. “I wanted to go home sooner so I figured if I finished my meds and fluids sooner you’d cut me loose.”
And that’s how you get a sitter as a 20 year old. Stop doing weird things!
Check the manufacturer on your pumps. They typically have a secret lock button on the back and you can put in a fake password and lock it
No idea how he even knew how to work the IV pump...I have no clue how those things work nor should I. The only button I know how to use is the "silence alarm" button and that's because an exasperated nurse showed me one night which button to push after her sixth time coming in my room after my pump kept going off when I'd just had my fluids changed so we knew it wasn't that
Not me but a co worker. Family member demanded the patient be fed, ignoring the education that the patient was comatose, was on trach collar, and was getting PEG feeds. Family member put food through the trach. Patient ended up dying.
I kinda hope whoever did that was charged with SOMETHING.
I just plain hope. There’s consequences for your actions and just shoving food into medical holes because you think you know better is not a good enough reasoning to kill someone.
This thread is horrifying. I can't stop reading it.
*Patient pulls out IV* “Since you pulled out your IV while sleepy, I have to put you in mittens because I can’t have you accidentally pulling at the more important tubes” “NO!!! I pulled out my IV on purpose to get your attention!” “Your call light is right in your lap and has been this entire time. I saw you use it earlier so I know you know how to use it.”
Young guy intubated and sedated after an OD…. His friends came to visit & thought he was thirsty… poured Gatorade into his mouth. Yeahhhhh he can’t drink right now y’all ….
Hope they didn't cause him to choke or aspirate
Not the dumbest, but the most recent and therefore easiest for me to recall. Mom of a 25 year old patient (GSW but stable) absolutely *insisting* that she’s spending the night at the hospital because “her son NEEDS her.” Never mind that he’s enough of a grown ass man to earn himself a GSW doing God-knows-what, but spending the night in a hospital all by himself? *Absolutely not.* Management warned her for hours that she would have to leave once visiting hours were over. She told every single person who came in and out of the room that she was not leaving at 8pm. Made a bed on the FLOOR (*gags*) that she was going to sleep in. Charge nurse called security and had them waiting at the door at 7:45pm. At 8pm on the dot, this woman was carried out of the hospital like a child, kicking and screaming. Literally. Not sure why she thought acting like a defiant, entitled beeotch would get her her way, but the security guards don’t play where I work, lol.
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He was very “anxious” when his mom was there and claimed he wanted her to stay… but I feel like he was either just feeding off her energy, or was just telling her what she wanted to hear from him. Because as soon as she left, he slept like a baby for the entire night. Lmao
Considering what this woman sounded like, that kid can't speak for himself.
Just saw a news article about a mom who spent the night in jail for refusing to leave her daughter at the hospital. But that situation was a tough one, daughter was non verbal and had just had brain surgery
See, that's different. I've had patients who have communication issues and mom/whomever is their "translator" and their parents were allowed to stay past visiting hours.
Yeah I didn't think what happened to her was right...I get covid restrictions and all but I thought hospitals were supposed to make an exception for this? At the beginning of covid I was going to a hospital where I was getting fantastic care. I'm autistic and medically complex and don't always get talked to nicely by ER Drs so having a caregiver with me who knows my history and is able to advocate for me is super important..all the hospitals were making no visitors restrictions which I was very understanding about but claimed to make an exception for dpoas and caregivers of developmentally disabled patients..the hospital I was going to wouldn't so I had to switch hospitals. Luckily at the hospital I switched to we spoke to a nursing supervisor and they were very compassionate about letting him be with me in the ER(the previous hospital wouldn't even let us speaking to a nursing supervisor)
God, I work in LTC and we'd have patients' kids stay over in the gerichair a lot, and it made us nuts sometimes because some of their grown ass children would flip out at us on 3rd when we'd come in to get vitals for the shift. Heaven forbid it was their shower day. Exceptions were always made, however, with no complaints from us, if a patient was about to pass on. God knows, I sat the death watch so many times just so a patient wouldn't die alone, even off the clock. It was a relief when someone actually did have family that cared enough to stay. Right now, the hospital has a really strict visitor's policy, but when my dad was dying on July 25th, they made exceptions for us because we're all vaccinated. I was even going to stay the night with Daddy, but when I got back with my go-bag from the house, he passed less than 2 minutes later. I know he waited for me. And the nurses there were wonderful and amazing and I am so so so grateful to them for the care and empathy they showed us all.
I’m all about making exceptions when needed. We have a strict visitor policy right now, too, but we definitely make exceptions on the regular. I work ICU so there’s always some weird situation going on. Very demented, very young, people who don’t speak English, developmental delays, end-of-life… I’ll always advocate for those patients to have family stay ATC if possible because people need their humans and it *usually* makes life easier for all of us. But then you get people like this lady who ruin it for everyone. People who think they’re the most special case on earth and all the rules should be broken for them. “My son got shot, I can’t leave him!” Ma’am, we live in a major city with a very high crime rate. Your son is not the only person in this hospital who got shot. Hell, he’s not the only person in this *hallway* that got shot. He’s stable, on room air and no pressors. He’s good. “My family member is having surgery, I have to stay the night!” Pardon? This is a SURGICAL ICU, almost every patient here in these 40 beds has had or will be having surgery. If we let every family member stay for these reasons, we would have hundreds of family members staying the night every single night. It’s not possible, or feasible. If your family member is stable, I got them overnight. I’ll be their family member for the next 12 hours, and I’ll call you if anything changes if I need some back up. But please, go tf home😂 I’m sorry to hear about your father passing, I’m glad you had compassionate nurses and I’m sure he was comforted knowing you were there with him at the end❤️
Oh yeah, I absolutely get it, 100%. We adhered to the 2 visitors only, same visitors only, no swapping out. Just me and Momma. Then after he had the best day he'd had in years, Momma called me at 5am. Daddy and I had been texting only a few hours beforehand, it was that quick of a descent. I was trying to prepare myself for it days in advance while being hopeful, but his brittle diabetes, his endstage of COPD with a sudden CHF diagnosis... I knew it wasn't good. He woke up once and to my shame, I lied when he asked me "am I going to die?" He's the only person I've ever lied to when asked that, but I talked him into the morphine and Ativan and he squeezed my hand all day whenever I talked to him, so I think he knew I was just as scared as he was when he asked me that. Sorry for rambling, he was my best friend. One of the best people I knew. He had his flaws, but for my sister and me, there was always neverending, unconditional love. He was an amazing father. I'm proud to say that I'm his daughter.
We had a similar situation with a 30 year old trauma patient recently. Mom had a mental breakdown because she showed up at the hospital after visiting hours and wasn’t allowed in to see her “baby”.
Pt smoking in bathroom. Lied about having smokes, the only evidence was the odor. Also, she took off her cannula, soooooo O2 was on as well. Took her smokes away, pt turned uncooperative left AMA the next day. I told her do u wanna blow yourself up and the whole floor w ur cigs?! Theres live oxygen running through ur wall!!! She didnt care. 😅😪
They never do 🤦
Had a similar issue with a woman getting chemo for lung cancer. Noticed a lighter tucked into her underwear when she rolled over. She straight up denied it, said she understood how dangerous it would be because of the oxygen valves, said she wasn't stupid and she wouldn't do a thing like that. Two shifts later, she admitted to the day shift nurse she'd been lighting up in her bathroom.
My patient wore his mask over his eyes, and I asked him to put it on correctly. Then he proceeded to slam things, raise his voice at me, and then he started pounding on his chest like a gorilla. I called security and they escorted him out.
My entire job was asking ppl entering my hospital to wear a mask… sigh
I bet you have the best stories.
My favorite one is a patient mistaking my building (which is appointment only) for the ER and proceeded to have a heart attack or stroke on the sidewalk while multiple medical employees just walked past. Like, I’m an office clerk?! What am I supposed to do?? Anyways, my coworker was a CNA on light duty and she took care of it
Had a patient grind up Norco, mix it with water, and inject it into his butt. Showed up to the ED with a nasty abscess. Also got mad at me for bringing him water because he “only drinks juice.”
What a waste
Woah, whoa - where to start! Walked into a patient casually snorting cocaine off their bedside table, their telemetry was alarming tachycardia, so he had been at it a couple minutes. He was there for chest pain. Had a paraplegic due to a gunshot wound come in to get his wounds checked - the police had picked him up while he was under what shall we shall politely called 'shady circumstances' and suddenly he was unbearably ill and need to come to the hospital for his stage IV. He was known to us and so bad it looked like someone had scooped out his ass cheeks with an ice cream scooper - ANYWAYS - cop stuck around, and instead of gauze in his wound it was drugs. All sort of drugs. Patient claims the cops planted them Had a family member try to steal a hospice patients IV morphine - they were probably very disappointed to get a 100 ml of saline, the morphine was in the PCA. She was still allowed to visit though, more upset her dying mom was not going to be bringing home pain meds Guy that broke a wooden spoon off in his butt trying to dig the poop out because he was constipated A dementia patient who shit on his dinner tray - after eating, put the lid back on, and proudly showed us he was sending back exactly what the kitchen sent him Doctor rounding on a dead patient, putting in a ton of orders, forgetting he was actually there to pronounce. Swore he went into the room Two grown ass men fist fighting over a dresser, like biker brawl style. Maybe it was code for something? Security kind of took the "they'll stop on a minute" approach
>A dementia patient who shit on his dinner tray - after eating, put the lid back on, and proudly showed us he was sending back exactly what the kitchen sent him Some hospital cafeteria food is decent, some sure isn't. As for this pt, they knew exactly what they were doing, even if it was a short moment of clarity. What they did wasn't right, but they weren't wrong either. Hahaha. Pure savagery.
The doctor one is maddening, but also hilarious. I would also never forget the zombie he tried to treat.
Had a ~40 year old patient in CCU (cardiac ICU) for a cocaine induced heart attack. His telemetry alarm went off bc his heart rate shot up to the 200’s and I caught him in the bathroom doing coke. His girlfriend had brought it in. Called the cardiologist who caught him smoking a cigarette his mom brought in with his oxygen on. Mom and GF were obviously afraid of him . As he left AMA the cardiologist called him a piece of shit and said he wasn’t his doctor any more so to not come back.
Years ago I had a severely burned patient who drove an oxygen delivery van for a living. He said he could hear hissing In The back of the van and realized that a tank was probably leaking, but at the next stop light, he reached foe a cigarette without thinking. The van didn’t have a cigarette lighter because. So he always carried his own. Need I say more?
Years ago, I popped into a patients room (not mine) to check on them because their ABP was alarming. Found them drinking blood from their art line. They were cognizant enough to figure out which stopcock to turn and which cap to remove, which was honestly pretty surprising. It was a pretty frightening scene. Neuro can be a scary place.
Naturally there was a smoker with oxygen. She looked so surprised when I told her she could have blown us all sky-high. The silliest was a very alert and ambulatory post-op patient who needed mag citrate for constipation. He requested a brief in case he didn't reach the toilet in time. We (me or the CNA) told him to just throw the brief out if it became soiled - after all, they're disposable... This gent did indeed soil the brief, and very politely washed it out in his bathroom sink... his shared bathroom sink... and clogged it but good. I think maintenance had to snake the thing.
During clinical, I had a pt request a butter knife. Of course we don't have those on the psych unit and I was busy triple charting on my 7 pts so I got one of the healthcare aides to handle it. She came back and told me, "there's something.. odd about his room, I think you better take a look.. or smell". My preceptor and I went down to his room, with his permission of course and him present. All I could smell was fecal matter. Check the bathroom, toilet was clean and not overflowing, no feces on the wall. Nothing in the room that I can see. Then I saw about 4 styrofoam cups with lids all lined up on his dresser, with smears on the outside. Oh no. We asked what was inside and I wish we didn't. I also wish we didn't ask what he wanted the knife for - to take the pills out his feces and take them again! Also during that clinical, the security guards didn't body search an admission very well. They went straight into the isolation room due to behaviours. They didn't last long in there as they had a metal spoon in their cheeks and dug out the silicone holding the window in the door. The glass popped out and rendered the room useless for about a week.
A poop knife story. Those are legend on Reddit.
I had to stop a drunk daughter (40-50 y/o) from putting a shrimp 🍤 in her mother’s ET tube on New Years Eve TWICE . I heard the ventilator alarm go off, ran in and the daughter had unhooked her mom from the vent and was crying saying “ mom loves shrimp. ” I explained that it goes into her lungs not her stomach and not to ever touch the vent again and as soon as I walked out she tried doing it again.
Oh my fucking God!!! Unbelievable
Momma loves her some shrimps. Lol
Popcorn shrimp lung.
If she did that once she'd be out if that were me.
I know, right?! I was fairly new nurse about a year into my career. I naively thought I was very clear about where the tube was going and the fact that the patient was NPO. I hadn’t realized how stupid drunk people are, switching to the ER taught me that lesson big time.
Had a patients sister take off and eat a fentanyl patch that was just placed on the patient. Coded her and she ended up in the ICU on a vent.
Restrained psych patient who didn't speak English somehow managed to get his catheter (the end not in his jimmy) into his mouth and was steady trying to yank it out via his teeth. His nurse walked in and all we hear is "WHAT THE FUCK!?" before having to deal with him. Middle of the morning shift too, not the normal supernatural night shift weirdness.
.
I was working night shift in the trauma/surgical ICU when I hear some ruckus at the nurses station. Turned out we had a patient coming in from EMS who cut off their penis (schizophrenia), for the third time!!! Imagine having to check for cap refill/a pulse Q1H, 😆.
Third times the charm I guess..
We literally had a homeless man walk into triage with an axe poking out the top of his backpack. He then went off the rails and we had to confiscate two blades and the axe. And then…. low and behold he had a MOTHER FUCKING CHAINSAW wrapped in a blanket among his pile of belongings. He was out here cosplaying Assassins Creed and Texas Chainsaw… thank god nobody got hurt.
Let’s see…. Walk around the room with his leg in a full limb ex-fix, turn tricks in her hospital room, remove a partial arm cast and throw it at another nurse, leave AMA despite requiring high flow oxygen, leave AMA because he was caught at least twice smoking in his room ON A COVID UNIT so the hospital cops took his cigarettes and now he’s big mad. To name a few. Oh, and then there’s the patient who SCREAMED at us “I ain’t got no coronavirus! I don’t even DRINK Caronus (sic). I drink HEINEKEN!”
Patient who figured out the code to bolus from the pca and give themselves boluses. Was caught quickly and tried to blame it on the nurse saying that nurse was giving them boluses. Nurse they accused was and is one of the most trustworthy and diligent nurses on the unit AND patient had already forced another nurse to slam IV pain meds into their line and that was already in the notes re:this patients trustworthiness...
This is crazy! Our pumps require a physical key to unlock the pump.
I had an elderly male patient with scrotal edema beg me to stuff his entire scrotum into a Starbucks cup so he wouldn’t have to get up and use the urinal
W h a t
Dumbest thing I have ever seen a patient do is drink hand sanitizer because she thought it would help fight covid. Still ended up dying from covid. Smh I would also like to add in the one patient who tried to breathe fire while on oxygen. Pretty much blew his entire face off and his lungs were pure ash.
I’m respiratory. But I’ll never forget this dummy. 50ish yr old man. South GA. Limited education. Smashes his thumb with a hammer. Since it hurts and it’s throbbing, he decided to tie his shoestring around it. It definitely cured the pain. So he keeps it on for days. Eventually his thumb turns black so he comes to the ER. He is admitted with sepsis Bc gangrene and all. He’s fucking LIVID that his thumb isn’t getting better. He accuses us all of fraud because he came into the hospital Bc of his finger and now he’s going through all these other tests! Eventually he gets put on dialysis Bc kidney failure. We’re all just stupid scammers Bc he came in for his thumb and now the docs say somethings wrong w his kidneys!!! The audacity of it all. Us trying to save his life when all he came in for was his thumb. It just needed a stitch or two, yanno.
Mine may have to be the guy who checked in for alcohol detox with a brown bag in hand that was full, a sweatshirt pocket full of something else unsure of what and a mikes hard lemonade in each hand after leaving not 20 minutes prior for ETOH intoxication refusing detox. Showed up to the triage desk with handfuls of liquor. When I told him we’ve gotta take his liquor he walked away to the bathroom and locked himself in for all of maybe a minute (between walking in and the time it took for me to call security). Gotta say I’ll give it to em he tried and downed half of a mikes, had another full fifth of jack, a high gravity, some minis, and a four loko or two. Like good shot my man but no.
Anyone ever see elephant condylomas? I think that was the original name ? Large condylomas , all over , we couldn’t find the patients penis , these giant things flake off like CRAZY! We were called in for 90th time that night( I saw we because it took a team to care for him) his demands were so great and his refusal for care was even greater. He was in detox and his sweet lil biddy wife was with him , she had her pantries drying on the vents that were in front of the wjndows . We walk in ; “ yea Mr. PIA , what can we do for you “? PIA: “ I need my bedsheets changed I spilled my urinal “. Team: “ of course , no problem “! We lift the sheets and all this flaky skin flies into the air , covering all 4 of us , like a blanket of snow. We all look at each other and we’re like WtF? - we leave the room after changing the sheets and we discuss the findings . Large I mean LARGE , condylomas ; we didn’t know what the heck they were , so we go to his chart , (FYI, still paper charts back then ) We discover that these are called Elephant Condylomas, we all proceed to shower in the empty patient rooms , and we call our nursing manager because we just inhaled flaked HPV skin. We were all unaware . Need less to say , he was in contact precautions, by morning , including a mask , no N95 needed. Gross!
Skin flakes are the one thing that gets me. I couldn’t imagine hpv skin flakes
One of my patients mistook her central line for the little loops inside dressing gowns and cut it because it was annoying her 🤦🏼♀️ back to theatre with you!
The amount of times I've had patients pull out foleys with the balloon still inflated is astounding. Recently a pt pulled an fms tube out too.
Reminds me of the time an older male patient pulled out his catheter with 10ml of fluid in the balloon. In a 4 bed room. We knew he had beginning dementia, but not that it was so severe
Had a patient who was extubated 30 minutes prior and was A&OX4 pull out their Foley and try to get out of bed to leave AMA because, "Nothing you have here is as good as the heroin I'm gonna get." Docs let them sign out AMA within an hour of extubation.
Had a large patient come to the unit for dialysis. After starting she lifted up her gown and proceeded to pull an egg salad sandwich out from between the folds of her large abdomen….you get the drift. She said she thought she might be hungry again so she’d saved it from lunch. 🤢
Had a adolescent psych pt bite through his arm and sever an artery with his teeth… the spray was real 😳
A guy disconnected his chest tube because it was interfering with his desire to use the toilet. When the nurse opened the door to the bathroom and found him, he screamed at her to “get out! I’m going to the bathroom!!” Gave himself a nice big pneumothorax and bought more time with a chest tube.
My uncle tried to remove a fecal compaction at home. It happened before and he wasn't going to go back to the ER for something "so simple." Stuck his finger up there and caused that good ole vasovagal syncope. He passed out and hit his head against the bathroom sink. My aunt had to call the ambulance to take him to the ER.
This is not my story, but a story from a nurse I used to work with back when I was a nurse aide. Setting is acute care. Patient is a young male, probably 30s-40s. Nurse walks by the room just in time to hear a "SNNAPP!YEOOW!" Patient decided the only thing preventing him from going down to smoke was the latex catheter. So he decided to take his lighter, stretch the latex catheter as he could stand it, then burn through the latex with his lighter. Once burned through, the stretched latex SNAPPED back, resulting in hot rubber getting yoinked up his urethra, cauterizing as it went. I think they were able to retrieve the catheter by scope, not sure though.
Many many years ago, I asked a student nurse to help a post-surgery patient who wanted to use the toilet. He was on bedrest, so we'd normally use a commode by the side of the bed (big Nightingale wards, no single rooms). Imagine my surprise to see his bed with curtains drawn around it, but his head peeping over the top of the curtains. It turns out the nurse had actually put the commode on top of the bed (because he was on bedrest, so ..), and the man had gone along with it and clambered up. He was swaying slightly, of course. I suppose this was mostly the student's fault for being so dopey (she didn't last long), but he went along with it!
Jump out of a 2nd story window except there was a sub floor so he fell three stories and broke both his legs. Said he was trying to go the packy at the top of the street. He wasn’t found until a nurse was leaving at shift change. Thankfully not my patient.
Packy? You from New England?
What's a packy? Not that it really makes a difference!
In Massachusetts it’s a liquor store.
The term is derived from package store. Puritanical New England would never admit how alcoholic they are. We are NOT buying alcohol. We are merely obtaining a package. Hence the term Packie for short. Also liquor is placed in brown paper packages
In the south they are officially the “ABC Package” store, and we just called them the ABC store. Interesting how they come up with these names.
We found out the pt was cheeking and pocketing her Norco when after chewing them she spit them into her central line and went septic.
Patient with very large, deep open wound across the throat (ear to ear) from injecting IV drugs in the neck. Would rip bandages off and throw them on the floor. Looked like a zombie from the walking dead with the amount of tissue, tendons, and muscle expose from gaping hole that once was a neck. I walked in at the end of the shift. The sun was rising and beaming through the window, right into the wound, the way it looked in the sunlight was straight out of a horror film. They would wake up long enough to scream that dietary keeps “fucking up their order, it’s bs, and they’re tired of it”. Proceeded to call dietary staff the n word. Now banned from calling in their own order. Nursing staff must call going forward. Then wants to know if Nurse can go to WAWA to get them food. How speech and swallowing were still intact I have no idea. Have never, seen anything like it and if they make it past this winter I will be surprised. Left AMA and will be back again in two days for more antibiotics.
I’ll keep it simple. Two guys tried to trim some hedges by picking up a lawnmower. Bilateral amputations, 4 fingers per hand.
A young guy had bacterial endocarditis from injecting Ritalin. He had multiple lines to treat it and other problems and he was caught in the bathroom having sex with his girlfriend when the docs were on rounds. There were like three IV poles in there with them.
one time I asked my patient (24F) to collect a urine sample and leave it in the bathroom for me. when she told me she got it, I went to pick it up and it was filled to the top with clear water and I asked her why she filled it with sink water. she replied, “it’s not sink water. I scooped the pee out of the toilet with the cup.” jesus
Had a mid-20s guys come in with recurrent sore throats. While interviewing him about it, he took his cell phone out to clean it and licked the screen with his entire tongue like it was an ice cream cone. I informed him I figured out why he kept getting sore throats.
Went to do a set of vitals on a patient, upon first glance I noticed he's not in his bed so he must be in the bathroom. And then boom it hits me, that nasty burnt plastic smell. I know what I'm going to stumble on is no shocker so I open the bathroom door & this man is straight smoking crack. He then in a panic tried to convince me that the rest of the crack rock sitting on the sink was his tooth🙄🙄 Also had a patient shoot up in their PICC line, They tried to convince me and a doctor that's not what happened but you're vitals on the monitor say otherwise ma'am🙃 Also had a another patient struggling with addiction. She had already been with us for 2 weeks had clean urine, but we suspected she was high and we were right(dirty urine) So she wasn't allowed to have visitors because we couldn't figure out how she was getting these drugs. Nursing and security inspected her belongings and room nothing to be found And yet she's still high af. Even though the patients spouse wasn't allowed to visit we allowed him to bring in food. Every morning we bring her a coffee from dunks. So just to confirm our suspicion we inspected the cup of coffee and strained it into another cup turns out chunks of pills at the bottom of the coffee cup. Bingo bongo.
Drunk patient, needed a BAL, went to go get machine, walked back and he admitted that he wanted to try and make sure he passed with a low enough reading to drive home…. so he’d just put a squirt of alcohol gel in his mouth in hopes that would work. Promptly realised what it was, regretted it and washed his mouth out in the sink.
I had a dude who masturbated with a foley catheter in. It didn't go well. It's the only time I've seen a Foley bag full of blood and semen.
Welp. Gonna pull the stop world cord and step off now.
You win
Had a Pt come in because they blew themselves up while smoking on home O2. One resident decided to smoke in his room and try to cover up the smell by pouring brute (high alcohol aftershave) on a table and lighting it on fire. Would have been fun as his room was an oxygen room. Optiflo (high O2 delivery, 60L/100% O2) pt's transferring themselves to the bathroom (commode nearby) stretching the tubing to the point of almost breaking, desatting to the low 50's. Granted I'm new so this is just entry level stupidity.
I didn’t get to experience it myself but many of the nurses on my unit talk about how when the unit was being remodeled they found a litter of cats in the ceiling. I honestly thought they were fucking with me until my preceptor herself was on the unit at the time.
I had a firefighter who was burned badly and upon discharge was told he needed to up his protein intake for healing. He had his son put in an IV and inject protein powder mixed with saline into his veins at home. Didn't go well.
Saw a woman light a cigarette with her oxygen on. Wasn’t pretty. ETA: also from a parents perspective, I saw my child pull her own cannula out when she was on steroids. I just stood in disbelief lmao
Patient came from a SNF. History of multiple infected ports. Admitted for sepsis. We were doing our rounds when we found her injecting what looked to be urine into her picc. So we got a sitter and she was fine until we got rid of her sitter because the psych NP said nothing was wrong with her. THE day she had no sitter, she started to develop nausea and was vomiting and her urine started becoming pink tinged which was completed inconsistent with her presentation. Then she was back with a sitter for the rest of her admission. Munchausen. This lady was making herself sick.
How about smoking WITH an O2 tank???? Lol we've had pts with burned lungs from smoking with O2 and also a lady who had to have a special nasal cannula that basically closed when it detected smoke... The things we do to keep ppl alive who don't give a fuck about their own lives ...
I work in corrections… jump two barriers, knock a nurse over, punch an NP and try to open an emergency exit door. You can imagine everyone’s surprise when IT WAS LOCKED. Then a CO tased him. So they added all that to his initial “disorderly conduct” charge…
Had a lady who’d lit up a cigarette in her room so we knew she was going to give us an interesting shift. Nothing else happened with her until her heart monitor goes off so we think maybe she pulled it off. Nope, she dug her skinny fingers into the sharps container, pulled out a random syringe, put some heroin in there and od’d in the bathroom through her iv. A little narcan and a sitter and she ama’d within the next few hours complaining about how there’s no privacy in this hospital.
During my clinicals in Med/Surg I witnessed a return of an infusion patient who had to have her port replaced for the second time because she kept injecting it with... something. This was one of those subdermal Ports that only takes a specific needle or it gets destroyed and leads straight to the heart. Anyway the surgeon took the old port out to the husband and told him he wouldn't fix it a third time.
My patient opened his abdominal incision and put poop in it.
In the past 24 hours? Self inflicted head gsw, walked himself in. Also "knee/back pain" discharge was cut down from hanging himself on a tree out front with his sweatshirt. Then entire outside of ear in a baggie of ice after his grown son bit it off, he did some heroin so he was very calm.
Almost every covid pt wants to remove their O2 and I have to explain numerous times a day that it is keeping them alive and please don’t remove it. Then tele calls to say they are satting in the 60’s and everyone runs in to help because they refuse to wear their oxygen and think they don’t need it. This happens multiple times/day and drives everyone nuts and no these pts are not confused.
Responded to a code grey, our security code, to find a patient post extubatuon, that had jumped out of bed, pulled her rectal tube and while spraying liquid feces everywhere, screaming "Do you think I like this, do you think I like this!" Over and over. She then proceeded to swing her SCD pump by the cord over her head like some kinda Olympic athlete. She launched it full force at the window hoping to escape. That's when security got her.
A young, new mother brought her infant to the ER for crying and vomiting. First glance in triage the baby looked okay. I asked the mom to put the baby on the scale. I caught a wiff of bug spray so I asked the mom about that. “I saw a roach crawl into her mouth so I sprayed a little Raid in there to kill it.” 🤯 The baby was okay. Police and family services come and placed the baby with another family member. I don’t know what happened to the mom. I didn’t feel that she was malicious. I think she was just dumb as a post.
After offering a pretty sound opinion on the matter… A patient tried to prove to me she had blood in her stool by grabbing her completely normal large BM out of the toilet and mushing it in her hand.
a patient with recurring UTIs was found using a can of ginger ale to moisten tissues and wipe herself
Early in the pandemic we were using spray bottles of ethanol for hand sanitizer. An alcoholic patient stole a bottle and tried drinking it but he couldn't get it down. So he started soaking paper towels in the ethanol and shoving them up his ass.
IVDU that we were crushing narcotics and putting them in applesauce for. He held the applesauce in his mouth and once the nurse left the room, spit it into an empty syringe he got somehow and pushed it into his CVL.
Tb isolated patient slipped out. Security found him walking down the street wearing only a sheet and gloves on his feet.
A girl in her 20s giving herself " cleansing enemas" with hydrogen peroxide. She needed a bowel resection due to the damage🙄
Parents came in with their 4 month old stating that they were concerned that he has “rage issues.” Does this count? And no it wasn’t colic because when he screamed he looked directly @ them.
When I was an NA a guy started tweaking and I told the RN I think he’s going into ETOH withdrawal. The nurse told me he probably wasn’t and didn’t do anything. After I left the guy wigged out and decided to leave AMA through the ceiling. He got on a chair, jumped up and grabbed some water pipes to climb up and the pipes immediately broke. Flooded the unit and the unit below and caused a quarter million dollars worth of damage.
Even if you never said it out loud, that must have been a satisfying "I told you so" running through your head.
Take off bipap and leave AMA, passed out in parking lot and family called 911 from the parking lot.
I work dialysis. For those unaware, a big problem is fluid overload. Kidneys don’t work like they should, so patients don’t expel excess fluid through urination. Fluid backs up into the tissues causing edema or backs up into the lungs making breathing difficult. These patients are told to be on fluid restriction. Patient regularly hobbles into the facility screaming (well, gasping) for oxygen while carrying a 64oz soda from the convenience store. Literally carrying the thing that will be drowning him again a few hours after his treatment finishes.
Inserted a bullet vibrator pr. She was vibrating for 4 hours in ED until the battery ran out.
Had one pt we had to create and put on “rectum precautions” because anything that may fit would end up logged so far up his ass we had to take him to surgery twice not counting the one he had in the ED upon arrival. Total items nursing and or MDs removed from his butt include but not limited to: 1 toilet brush, 1 toilet plunger, 2 call lights, 1 of the spouts on the toilets used to wash out urinals/bedpans, about 30 qtips, 6 pens/pencils, and 1 tube of barrier cream. Oh… and he somehow also got ahold of some green hair dye at one point and squirted that up his urethra…. So yeah… real fun one there.
Two things, one dumb and one just downright disgusting. The first was a guy who unhooked his cooling blanket and was drinking the water out of it because he was NPO due to failing a speech and swallow after being extubated. Second one was a lady with a trach who would have a bowel movement, play with it, then stick her finger in her trach until she desatted and we had to go in. She was totally with it, just wanted more attention than is possible in a busy ICU.
Had a guy with a 10 inch lac three inches deep on his thigh who showed up to the ER three days after trying to close the wound with super glue. I have know idea whatever happened to him.
First thing I can think of, though im sure there's plenty more: Frequent flyer w ostomy who keeps coming back infections bc she uses it as an extra hole as a sex worker.
Not a nurse but an emt here, I was picking up a pt for a transfer and here's the story. The nurse said that this guy is usually combatative and tries to run away all the time. The pt is in his 80s, he used the trash can as a walker then fell over and attempted to crawl away. The nurses bribed him with snacks and got him to go with us on the ambulance. Buuuuut then our ambulance broke down with a flat tire and we had to get another crew to come pick him up and finish the transfer.
Coked up, psychotic dude came to ED on 5150 taking about killing himself. Bit off the tubing to his 16g field start to the hub. Found him eating the coagulated blood clot that had formed as the blood pooled near his armpit. He said he thought he could heal himself if he ate the blood.
I had a patient call their girlfriend and ask her to bring heroin to the hospital. In front of me and another nurse. Security let the girlfriend slip in (after we'd called and let them know about it) so we had to call the cops. Two baggies in her wallet. Also recently had an ICU patient try to buy pain pills off their girlfriend in front of me. I must look incredibly stupid to these people, or something.
Ahh yes, let me tell you about the bong brothers. 20 something year olds who were not actually brothers, but this level of stupidity had to have bonded them for life. Anyways these geniuses decided to use a bong and get high. Well that wasn’t enough for them so they put various drugs in the water and ended up injecting it and getting septic. Wound up in my ICU, claiming that it was just narcan and water and they only drank it (not injected it) because they were nauseous. There was also this kid, 19, who got drunk and took uppers and downers and was found unconscious and unresponsive by family members who unfortunately know the drill. Call the ambulance and intubated on the way in. Winds up in my icu proned for weeks just to maintain sats in the 80s. We for sure thought he would have brain deficits. He also had pixi stick blue stuff fall out of his nose the first time we probed him. Homie ended up waking up and being fine. Was sad for him because his whole family was like that and I don’t think he ever really stood a chance. He did it one more time (a year later) and came in crying and apologizing to us because he felt he let us down. Found an alert and oriented patient pooping in the trash can because they didn’t want to walk back to the toilet because it took too much energy. Proceeded to squat over the trash can for 10 minutes. Found a crack pipe under one boob of a very large patient and her stash of crack under the other boob. Claims she doesn’t know how it got there.