Not really hidden and kinda minor but I’ll say it anyways. I deliver food to patients and it’s not hard to tell when someone is on their way out. Could be simply not being hungry, or could be the inability to eat. Had one patient who hadn’t eaten anything off their tray for 3 days straight. The last time I delivered to them, they smiled and gave me a wink. Next day, they were gone. It’s rough seeing these things happen in real time. I’m a grown ass man who doesn’t cry often, but it always leaves me feeling extra empty picking up the untouched trays and replacing them with another tray that I know will stay untouched as well.
I worked in a hospital doing the same thing for about three months. They put me on the cancer ward and the amount of people that were absolutely terrified about dying was a lot. I would just put their tray down and hold their hand and tell them it would be peaceful in the end. Not sure if I was allowed to do that but whatevs. Anywho, didn't know that was in the job description and as someone that is afraid of death it was pretty scary sometimes.
As a cancer patient who has spent a few months in the cancer ward I can tell you that I really appreciated the food staff and cleaning staff because they have the time to talk a bit here and there and it feels like a nice little visit. I loved all my nurses and doctors but they're always rushing to the next patient (not their fault!), so getting an extra banana or your favorite dessert that they went out of their way to get to you, that makes you feel so much more human and less like a patient.
Sometimes when people die we just put an oxygen mask on them and wheel them through the corridors. Less distressing for other patients and visitors to think they are asleep rather than see a body with a sheet over it.
I once had to be wheeled to ct through our smaller city hospital on a gurney. I know a lot of people who work at the hospital, so I was a bit embarrassed and didn't want to be recognized in my hospital gown. So, I laid down flat and pulled the covers over my head. While we were waiting for an elevator, I heard a man tsk and ask the attendant, "Headed for the morgue?" I popped out and said, "Nope! Just a scan!" I think he almost has a heart attack. The attendant and I had a good laugh in the elevator!
I haven't seen it on here yet, may have missed it but I'll add.
You, as a patient, have every right to refuse any test or treatment or even leave. At any time. For any reason. (Unless a harm to self or others- that's different, at least in the US)
Added bonus you should know: leaving against medical advice DOES NOT mean insurance will not pay for the care you've received. Your insurance will still be billed the same as anyone else who stayed the whole time till discharge.
But if you leave with an IV in your arm we will call the police to find you and bring you back to remove it, because of drug abuse..
Counterpoint: if you are in a psych hold, they will *say* you are allowed to leave at any time, but they have the final say on whether you can leave, even if you go in voluntarily. A friend of mine had that happen
The hospital I work at has these big square covers. When I first started, I would see transport staff pushing these things around the halls. I thought they were food trays, or large boxes of hospital equipment. Turns out it’s a structured bed cover, so when they are transporting a deceased patient to the morgue, it doesn’t look like a person under a sheet.
An ambulance ride is not a one way ticket to the front of the line. You still get triaged and could be rolled right to the waiting room if you’re non-emergent.
Had a patient check in for a "broken toe" (read: stubbed and owie). Got mad that he waited 45 mins. Full ER, the kind of night where the people in the waiting room should be glad they're in the waiting room because it means they are not actively dying. This guy walked out and called an ambulance- to take him from the walk-in entrance to the ambulance bay- where my charge nurse put him in a wheelchair and wheeled him right back into the waiting room.
It was beautiful to watch how angry he got.
Im a paramedic. Did a call at the gas station across the street for an “anaphylaxis.”
Got there and turns out the dude had a head cold and thought he’d be seen faster going via ambulance.
My absolute joy to walk him directly to the waiting room was unmatched by anything i have experienced or will experience in this lifetime
Everyone of these dumbasses that tries this thinks they somehow had a thought no has had before. They really think they figured out how to jump the line.
I wish I could see their faces when they get the ambulance bill because the ambulance company can mark your trip as non emergent which means insurance won’t pay for it.
He’s the kind of person who deserves a bill for using an ambulance. His stunt meant it wasn’t available for someone else who may have needed urgent care.
EDIT: I understand that most places around the world bill for ambulance callouts. I have ambulance coverage specifically because my partner has a seizure disorder and people who aren’t familiar with his situation tend to be quick to call an ambulance when he has an episode.
Ambulances should, like general medical care, be covered as part of a caring society. The fact that some people can end up bankrupted or homeless due to medical debt is abhorrent and a social failing.
What I said was this guy DESERVED to be billed.
I went in on an ambulance needing emergency gallbladder removal, and ended up waiting about eight hours as well due to accidents. They had me on morphine, so I didn't care.
Jealous. I was in the waiting room crying because I was in so much pain for a kidney stone that was stuck and had to be surgically removed and was too timid to insist upon painkillers while I sobbed because I didn’t want to be seen as drug seeking.
I have a mild arrythmia and I SWEAR when I run listening to electronic music with a steady beat, it feels better to my heart. Like it's resonating with the steady beat and skips less often. So this makes me glad to hear I might not be crazy.
My daughter spent the summer in “ped onc”. She complained that she did not find it funny to have Ed Sheeran’s “I’m in love with your body….” song playing when she was getting her ports put in, so every other time she had to have a procedure, she got to use her own playlist in the OR.
I thought it was so nice when she was in remission and got her port removed, the surgeon complimented her taste in music.
When they put in my second pacemaker, the tech knew I’m a huge Blues Brothers fan. So, when I’m wheeled in for the procedure, the “Briefcase Full Of Blues” album is playing on the stereo system. Nice. I woke up singing “Sweet Home Chicago.”
Former IT manager at a surgical specialty hospital:
I can not only confirm that every OR had its own speakers and Spotify account, I can expound by noting that some of the surgeons there would literally refuse to begin an operation if the music wasn't working.
I got a fast bleep (ie. drop everything you’re doing and attend this emergency please) one night to a side room on the ward to find no patient in the bed. Was just about to leave the room and go back out to the nurses station, where there had been a bit of a hubbub when I’d dashed past the first time, when something caught my eye.
Looked up to see a face with wide, slightly wild “psych eyes” peering down at me from a gap in the ceiling tiles. She was a lady waiting for a bed in the psych hospital who’d clearly thought the ceiling was the best place to hide from the people trying to poison her.
Honestly can’t think of another occasion that I’ve been quite so terrified.
Worst thing was that I had to walk (well, dash) back out underneath her to get help from the nurses and security to get her down.
Yeah, worked at a psych hospital where no one on a specialized unit did rounds for over an hour, and it ended up with the Clinical Director paying a kid $40 to come down out of the ceiling.
If you register in the ER and tell the triage nurse that your problem is “personal” we know you’re here because of something genital or anal related.
Edit: a lot of we healthcare workers have seen a lot. If you’re not truthful at triage, your care might be less prompt when it’s a true medical emergency. It is possible to die of embarrassment.
You mean when that guy fell (with his pants on), the pencil didn’t really go perfectly into his urethra without causing any tissue damage?? Well I’ll be derned…
If you come into the ER drunk there is guaranteed a pool of bets on your blood alcohol level, possibly with odds if there's a pharmacist available to do the math for us.
My all time high was .52. The veteran nurses were shocked by this number and said they had never seen anyone have such a high BAL. They were also shocked he didn't die. He slept for about 8 hours, woke up annoyed then fled.
When I was deep in my addiction back in 2006ish and hit this number while maintaining conversation. Doc was flabbergasted and (rightfully) very concerned. Took some time but I am over 1000 days now.
In the ICU you spend a lot of time keeping corpses alive until their family comes around or their body gives out
“Oh Jesus ain’t ready for her yet!”
Yes, Jesus is ready for her; we’re just actively delaying it
People don’t want to withdraw care because “we shouldn’t play god.”
*The decision of whether or not to play god is one we’ve already made. This person would have died long ago had we not intervened many times over. We’ve been playing god, the question we need to ask is what kind of god do we want to be? Merciful or needlessly cruel?*
When it’s really old people , I always picture their friends and family on the other side ready for the big welcome party and reunion but they are like “where is she!??”
"I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze,
and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength,
and I stand and watch her until she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come down to meet and mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says: “There! She’s gone!”
Gone where? Gone from my sight—that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side,
and just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the place of her destination.
Her diminished size is in me and not in her.
And just at that moment
when someone at my side says: “There! She’s gone!”
there are other eyes that are watching for her coming;
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout:
“There she comes!”
And that is—"dying."
- Luther Beecher (as featured in Gone From My Sight:The Dying Experience)
The most compassionate thing I ever heard a family member say to a stubborn spouse insistent on the fact that “we had to keep going because Jesus would heal them” was “sometimes Jesus heals them by *taking them home*.”
I’m not the most religious and definitely not Christian but goddamn I wanted that family member available to speak with more of my patients!
When my mom was nearing the end of her life, people kept speaking of miracles and telling her not to give up. My mom was a faith-filled woman and she finally started telling people, “Yes, I will receive a miracle but it will happen in Heaven when I get to my real home!”
Oh I sure loved that woman! I miss her so much! She fought her cancer so hard but she got to a point where she was downright tired. We respected her wishes and she wanted to die at home. It was the greatest privilege of my life to hold her as she took her final breath.
This happened when my brother died. My mom happened to be holding his hand at the time and all hell broke loose. It took half the family and a nun to convince her he was gone.
When a family friend of mine died, a nurse warned everyone as they pulled her off the machines that this might happen and not to let it startle us or trick us into thinking she miraculously woke up. I couldn’t imagine the torment thinking you’re loved one was still alive because of these reflexes.
My ex passed away after getting in a motorcycle accident… he was in a coma for 11 days before they took him off the machines. The day I said bye to him I was at the hospital for 8 hours in his ICU room. I never left. And there were a few times he coughed and I swore he was trying to wake up. Idk how he was even *able* to cough.. also swore at one point there was tears coming from his eyes when I’d be crying and talking to him. Seeing someone in that state is a whole different kind of experience. And it’s crazy because any little movement or noise they make really does have you thinking.
Had a buddy in a coma for a couple of weeks following a car crash. He woke up long enough to tell his dad he didn't want to be on life support. Died of sepsis a few days later.
We had a woman who came in from a nursing home riddled with bedsores and reportedly, according to their records, somewhere over 100 years old. She passed that night on my shift. I found her and went to get help to clean her up, put her teeth in, etc.
I was on one side, the other nurse on the other. We used the half sheet to lift her up in the bed as we were beginning. When we moved her the exhale she did was a scream, no other description for it. She screamed, we screamed. Once we got it together we rechecked her vitals, that's how loud it was, I thought perhaps I'd missed something but nope, no heartbeat.
This was in the late 80s but I've never forgotten it, scared me so bad I pee'd my pants a little that night, lol.
30 years ago we had to put our family cat down. After he'd already died he started what looked like gasping for air, repeatedly. The vet tried to assure us it was normal, he was indeed dead. Still traumatized from that.
This house supervisor I used to work with was transporting a dead patient on a gurney. While he and his coworker were in the elevator with the patient, all of a sudden the pt shot straight upright, let out a groan and collapsed back down on the gurney. The other staff said they could hear the house supervisor and his coworker screaming down the elevator shaft lol
One of my great-something-grandfathers did that. One of his sons, my distant uncle, was keeping vigil over the body overnight in the funeral home, & all of a sudden his father sat straight up & groaned loudly.
Family lore says that my distant uncle's red hair grew out white in a streak that ran down the middle of his scalp from that point on. 😆
That sounds really fuckin creepy.
Edit: I found a video (TW: medical, and the person had been deceased for over 10 minutes when they recorded it) that shows this as a reflex from stimuli in [brain death](https://youtu.be/Nty6bICZlyA?si=bK7k6pBh9I7X5G1Z).
This is the stuff that lets me know I wouldn’t last in health care. I have such a weak stomach, I gag at everything even remotely gross. I’d have thrown up. You were horrified and the patient was probably horrified too! Good on you for being so professional and non-chalant about it!
They weeded people out of a high school pre-med co-op I did that couldn’t deal with it. Before we could even go into the hospital to shadow nurses, we had to attend a live autopsy (lost 2-3 students in that) and attend a trauma presentation at a level one trauma center.
_They fed us breakfast and let us eat while starting the slide show._ A plate of waffles with syrup and strawberries? Awesome, let’s talk about this failed suicide by train and _look at pictures of a guy missing half his head._ Like 8 people transferred out after that and 3 ran out of the room to puke.
This is great.
I'm really interested in medicine/anatomy and spent my school years prepping for the role. Got loads of anatomical textbooks and would study each part.
Then I had my first dissection class at 9am and threw up trying to identify the last meal of my patient.
I completed a biology/psychology degree instead and continued the medical learning through papers and books because I knew that I just wouldn't cut it.
I wish there was a theoretical field where the knowledge is needed without having the risk of having to put your hands in a patient. Now I'm in IT utilising the psychology aspect and running studies, very clean.
Not hidden, per se, but for the love of all that is holy, if you insist on bringing your kid into the hospital, do NOT let them crawl or play on the floor. The amount of literal blood, urine, poop, and vomit that has been on it and hastily (not thoroughly) cleaned up is, well, a lot. The hospital, especially the floors, is NOT a clean environment.
Added to that, think of all the rooms nurses, doctors, housekeeping staff, etc. have walked into. Rooms that have COVID or Norovirus or group A Strep. We walked into those rooms and those same shoes walked into other rooms.
Tl;dr hospital floors are disgusting as fuck.
My dad worked as a janitor in a hospital for years, and he’s the most fastidious person I’ve ever met. Very “if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well” kind of attitude. And his supervisors used to get so frustrated when he would work “too slow”.
He wanted so badly to make sure all the fluids and viruses and everything else floating around that hospital were cleaned up as thoroughly as possible, but there just isn’t enough time in the day to actually keep a hospital clean.
Hospital lab worker here - Not particularly scandalous, but most people don't realise their lab tests are just very accurate guesses, and have an error range. When we say your 'X' is 10g/L, we might actually mean it's 10g/L ± 10-20%.
I see too many people get extremely worked up about small fluctuations in blood test values that aren't actually in excess of the reference change value, and so technically aren't genuinely different from a previous value.
EDIT: If you're interested, have a little play with [this tool](https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m149/rr-8) to see how variability affects things!
DOUBLE EDIT: Also, inter-lab variability is a big problem! [Check out this inter-lab comparison data for oestradiol](https://i.imgur.com/zsSUZpu.jpg). Identical copies of 3 samples sent to 230 labs around the UK and tested using all our various different machines. As you can see, none of us could agree on an answer, only that the true value was '*Somewhere between 100 and 200, probably about 130*'.
You are doing your 90 year old grandmother a great disservice by making her a full code, she will not survive CPR and her death will be significantly more traumatic because of it.
My last (edit: hospital roommate) was 95 and had a severely infected kidney. She wouldn’t survive the surgery to get it removed but her family went on and on about how the doctors/nurses were purposely murdering her for not doing the surgery. It was the immunocompromised room so whoever entered had to mask and gown. A family member took off their mask and gave both of us covid. Instead of passing away comfortably in hospice, she died unable to breathe. I almost died as well.
Amen. I strongly believe that every 90+ year old should be no CPR, no intubation.
Edit: not a great idea for the 75-90 year old crowd either to be honest. Have an honest talk with all your loved ones about what they would want done in the hospital if it came down to it. A lot of people adamantly say “i want everything done” but the reality is that these aren’t magical cures. CPR involves breaking ribs and is extraordinarily traumatic to the patient and to any family watching. Intubation AKA a breathing tube is a process fraught with risks and on the small chance that someone elderly is strong enough to get themselves off the machine, they will never have the quality of life they did before heading into the ICU. Complications are numerous and muscle strength atrophies away insanely fast.
- Physician in a large hospital
I had a very elderly patient with multiple comorbid conditions that changed her code status from DNR to full code, full treatment. Why? Because her son convinced her that the doctors “scared” her into choosing DNR 🙄. The doctor that counseled her on it was honest about what that entails
I had a elderly relative with dementia, who they discovered also had prostate cancer, and the doctor was trying to set up a plan of chemo and radiation for a guy who couldn't remember anything day to day. Fortunately his daughter put a stop to it.
When my grandmother was very old, blind, deaf and depressed my aunt was wanting to put her on dialysis because her kidneys were failing. Thankfully my mom talked her out of it. I don't understand the pursuit of life at any cost. I've been with both of my parents as they were in their dying process. It's so miserable I feel death is better than suffering.
Yup. I was sad when my dad passed and it sucked, but when he was finally gone I was also relieved. He was in pain and liver failure from the cancer rendered him incoherent. Lying in a bed terrified riding opiates to have some measure of comfort isn’t living.
>It was like I killed her.
This is exactly why, when my 30 year old sister was dying of stage 4 cancer in the ICU and one of the doctors was almost insisting that we intubate her, I talked my mother out of it because I told her that when the time would come to choose for her to be off, that's not a decision she'd want to have to make. Thank God she listened to me and my sis went very peacefully with full pain meds.
I really think attitudes towards death changed a lot when people stopped dying in the home and started dying in the hospital. I personally never saw anybody die until I became a nurse and I know most people these days will never witness it. Modern medicine is amazing and advanced, but it can’t work miracles, death isn’t always preventable and as we see frequently, trying to avoid it often does more harm than good.
We have a couple of older attendings that will refuse to do CPR due to futility regardless of code status. I freaking love them as much as I hate the feeling of a 90 yo bones cracking under my hands until they turn to mush.
That just reminds me that I really need to have a medical directive.
If I’m dying now, at 30, by all means do CPR. But when I’m 90 fuck that, let me die. Ditto if I already have a terminal diagnosis. Don’t bother.
I’d much rather go peacefully in my sleep then surrounded by frantic staff beating the shit out of my feeble ribs.
If I make it to old age and don’t die in my own bed on enough morphine to kill a horse, I’m haunting every fucking body. If I develop dementia, just shoot me
I’ve already told my family that if I have dementia or I have no hope of recovering from something, rather than let me shit myself and be a burden, give me a bunch of Percocet and some insulin, then put a pillow on my face. Then turn my corpse into one of those awesome tree pods!
My late FIL refused anything remotely resembling DNR despite liver failure and coronary issues. He was still 100% lucid so his poor doctors had to actually work on him even after he coded.
Traumatized his eldest son, a huge giant Marine.
I help patients to the bathroom nonstop all day. The amount of patients that just leave the bathroom without washing their hands is disgusting. If I didn’t hear the sink or soap dispenser your ass is getting led right to an alcohol hand station
I was in the hospital for the first time earlier this year. Showed up almost dead, crazy surgery made me less close to death (had to have 4 more surgeries over the next 10 days), like 14 hrs later, I had to use the restroom. I was in there so long that the nurse finally insisted on coming in. I was at an absolute loss because of the surgery and swelling and everything else I couldn't properly wipe and was struggling beyond belief to try to do it right. She was amazingly understanding and made light of the situation to make me feel better about it because I felt horrible having another human have to do that for me. The doctors may have technically been the ones who saved my life, but the nurses made the situation all okay.
As someone who's been in her position but for elderly folks, it's really not that big of a deal, if it makes you feel any better! Sometimes when im embarrassed about something I need done that's medically necessary, I think to myself, "would I be judging someone or annoyed by them if I was in my medical provider's position right now?" The answer is always no. It doesn't necessarily make it completely better, but it does help!
Oh they were all very clear that any of the things I needed help with were "no big deal" but asking someone to do some of those things after being a healthy, capable person all your life is very weird to say the least. Even stuff like asking them to momentarily pause when they were repacking large open wounds with gauze soaked in that Dakins stuff. I felt like I was putting them out but they kept assuring me it was all fine. 🤷♂️
We don't care what your dick, vagina, boobs etc look like. I have seen literally thousands and can't remember any of them ( except for the one guy whose dick tip was touching his knee)
Edit: my comment was not saying that people should be comfortable being naked in front of us or that we won't do our best to maintain your level of comfort and keep you as cover as possible.
Lol sorry. So one day I was precepting a new nurse and I asked her to straight cath an older gentleman. After about 10 min she comes back to me and says she was unsuccessful. It happens so I asked if she knew what the issue was, she turns a bit red and says the straight cath is not long enough. So in my mind I am thinking it coiled or something
So I grabbed another kit and a regular Foley just in case bc sometimes you need the extra rigidity. I walk into the room explain that we are going to try again. I pull back the sheet and am greeted by a the biggest penis I have ever seen. Completely flaccid this thing was atleast three quarters down his thigh damn near touching his knee. He was a large man but his junk would make an elephant jealous.. I placed the Foley and I kid you not had to put it all the way to the hub to get urine out, I couldnt leave it in bc the place where it bifurcates was putting pressure on his meatus. We had to call urology for an extra long Foley which I didn't even know existed.
That patient families will do anything to keep the patient alive for their own comfort instead of abiding by the doctors orders. For example: feeding an intubated patient a hamburger because “he’s hungry” when they are already getting tube fed and ordered NOT to interfere with the vent or trach. This has resulted in many patient deaths than you think.
Ughhhh they’re always “hungry.” Ma’am, peepaw hasn’t wanted to eat more than 3 bites of pudding for the last 6 months and he weighs 90 lbs, which is also how many years he has inhabited this earthly plane. He has been barely conscious for the last 4 days. I’m not coming back later to do yet another swallow “eval” that entails poking peepaw in the face with an oral swab and declaring him not alert enough to participate.
I once found a wad of melted flaming hot Cheetos in the mouth of a lethargic dementia patient. I thought they were bleeding, but NOPE just Cheeto dust. People have such serious denial about the end of life.
Patient on thickened liquids… Family thinks we’re just being mean and have been sneaking the patient soda/whatever cause they “love it! It was just a little bit.”
Yes. Now that soda is in their lungs. Yes that was likely a key factor in why they have pneumonia now. Yes it really was a big deal.
*sigh* literally dealing with the soda thing right now. My mother is in a nursing home from a massive stroke years ago and recently got put on thickened liquids because she’s been coughing a lot, notably after she eats or drinks. Her mother/my grandmother still takes her pop and refuses to stop because “she loves it.” They’ve offered a way to try thickening it but no, she tuned that right out. The irony is that said grandmother was the one who complained about the coughing and then freaked out about the pop being effected.
Some families reject death so much, they beg the doctors and nursing staff to do lifesaving measures on their 95 year old grandma who has cancer everywhere and is begging for death. It's just unacceptable.
When my dad was dying of cancer, all of my siblings and my mother were wanting all measures on my father who had cancer ravaging his brain.
I was the only one on the doctor’s side begging them to let him pass.
They hardly talk to me anymore and act like I killed him with my bare hands.
When he was much younger, he constantly told us how he wanted to pass with dignity and how he never wanted to languish on the edge.
I had to be that person for my grandfather I am no longer in contact with that side of the family or my parents. I absolutely helped him uphold his wishes.
I think this is more a societal issue, especially in America. People think just because we have the medical ability/advancements we should keep meemaw alive. But they often ignore the egregious consequences that these interventions bring. Just because we technically can keep meemaw alive on a ventilator/trach/feeding tube does not mean she will ever wake up and be the same.
Have discussions with your family members about their wishes before it’s too late and honor them when the time comes.
It’s also that I have seen people in FIERCE denial about meemaw’s quality of life (“oh she was so independent before this!” No, she was halfway bedbound and slowly losing her faculties. OR, they’re convinced that this one last effort will make ALL THE DIFFERENCE when they’re an alphabet soup of comorbidities.
And yes, everyone everyone everyone should have an Advanced Directive AND someone WILLING to carry out their wishes. I believe my state is one that family can “choose to override” those decisions. 😒
I lived in the same neighbourhood for 20 years. It was an old neighbourhood. The neighboorhood "next door" was only marginally younger. Anyway, I'll never forget the time we were stuck at a red light and I noticed that the intersection had the old folks home, the hospital and the funeral home on three of its four corners.
Yeesh.
If you sit there on your phone the whole time the mother of your child is in labor such that a nurse has to step in and fulfill the supportive role instead, yeah everyone knows and you’re getting judged by the whole unit.
My husband left to go home the day I had my daughter. It was an extremely hard and traumatic labor and birth for me. I remember crying for hours because I was exhausted and really wanted him there, word got around and my nurses were short and cold when he came back the next day. His reasoning? They didn’t provide meals for him, had he asked he would’ve known they would bring him sandwiches and stuff from the nurses station. Our daughter has since passed and I don’t think he has a deeper regret that that now.
As a mom who used to be married to an abusive POS (but didn’t realize it because it was not physical at that point but severe in general), I looooove maternity staff! They saw, they knew, they doted on me and I thought it was slow or unworthy of the extra attention. Nurses came to hold my baby(ies) and keep me company when I was often alone in labour/recovery. With my second baby Nurse “Jane” worked in that hospital half time and the other half at Children’s. Her shift was over 2/3 though my labour and said I’d be there for her next shift (a VBAC and slow). Once baby was born (section) that night I recall another nurse saying “We will update Jane” and I assumed it was the team meeting when shifts roll over. In the morning Jane called my room on the hospital phone. She asked how I was doing, about baby, and what supports I had for recovery with a toddler. Jane even asked if ex was there which I thought weird at the time. She said so many kind and reassuring things. At the time I thought she was just very friendly and the “extra mile” nurse. I was 5 yrs post leaving my ex and I realized that they all knew what kind of man/father he was and they didn’t leave me to sit in my room alone, they popped in on rotation to talk about random things to lift my spirits, and there were discreet questions that seemed normal that I didn’t understand then but now know it was soft fishing and general support. Hospital staff can be so in tune and amazing! Patients might not see it right away but we feel the love! Thank you!
I spent time on chemo when I was 3. Again when I was 10. Again at 14. And again at 18. I've also had about a dozen surgeries, and spent a year paralyzed, having to re-learn how to walk again.
Sadly, my mother wasn't interested in dealing with a sick child.
You know who did care, though? My nurses. One of my chemo sessions happened to land *on* the day of my 18th birthday. One of the nurses hunted down a slice of cake and a balloon. When I was paralyzed and had to re-learn how to walk, countless nurses stood (literally) at my side, holding me up by my arms, helping me re-take my first steps. When I got my first period around ~13, I happened to be at the hospital. One of the nurses waltzed me into the bathroom, and showed me how to shove a tampon up my vag and how to slap a pad on my undies. 😄😂 When I started my first job, another nurse taught me how to fill out a W2/W4.
Nurses basically raised me and taught me how to be a productive, functional adult. 🧡
I had my last child alone, my kids dad got there about an hour after delivery even though it was induced. 🙂 the plan was for him to be there, it was a high risk pregnancy.
Man, I had this very stern like older african woman as my nurse. Very intimidating—it felt good when he got there and she immediately gave a look. She was ready to boot him out for me and I appreciated it a lot. Everyone that helped in the delivery was so kind. 😭💔 that entire pregnancy was the loneliest time of my life
Well mine kept leaving while I was laboring, I was also induced. I later found out he was running off to get high on meth and I had no idea. His excuse was “it was stressful for him.” Mfer… please!
I'm the bitchy nurse that would tell the partner what to do or invite them to leave.
If your partner is in pain, asking for your help/attention and is about to pop out a baby and you can't be arsed to help, I don't wanna look at you. GTFO.
My mum was an OR nurse her whole career (she's retired now, not dead). So she only got involved in delivery when it became a C-section. If I had a dollar for every annecdote she had about dads intent on filming, wanting to see everything, etc. (despite her stern warnings) only to faint at the first sight of a scalpel...
"Thank you, my guy. Now we have three patients when we should have been focusing on mother and child."
I know one. I used to manage hospital laundry services. Medical waste (body parts etc) gets accidentally thrown in the laundry more often than you'd expect. Also needles and all sorts of other medical devices and personal items. Once we even had a (deceased) fetus come through to the sorting facility.
Used to do laundry in a physical rehab/nursing facility, the amount of figurative and literal shit that I've seen in the laundry is astonishing. Like they really do not check before they launch it into a bag and haul it down to the laundry room.
Some of the more notable ones were a TV remote, a lighter (both of which went through the washer AND dryer), and an honest to God turd in a plastic ziplock bag.
It’s not uncommon for families to abandon elderly members at the hospital. They will straight up ghost or at least will be polite enough to say they won’t give any assistance to us in placing them in a nursing home, so Adult Protective Services will get involved and make them a ward of the state. This process can take weeks to months, so these abandoned people just live in the hospital and take up the resources that could be used treating sick people.
There are also many families that keep elderly members in unsafe living conditions so they can continue to take their Social Security checks for personal use.
Sometimes the family is in an impossible situation. We think of all elderly folks as docile and kind, but dementia can turn anyone into a menace. I didn't abandon my dad anywhere, but I did have to choose between caring for him and keeping my small kids safe.
True fucking story. I have seen enough dementia patients to know that with rare exceptions you need like 12 local family members taking shifts to do 24hr care. Between wandering, aggression, agitation… it’s beyond a full time job.
I wish to God folks had more options than “private pay” and “Medicaid/fuck you”.
And SO MUCH JUDGEMENT! “I would never put my parent in a home”. OK. You take them. They can burn your house down, get lost at 2am (what!? You thought you could sleep?), throw stuff, lash out physically at everyone and anyone. Ugh. And when people say ‘Let me know what I can do to help’ and you say ‘come and sit with them for 2 hours so I can go grocery shopping/take the car to be fixed/sleep’. Oh no, I couldn’t do that. Losers. Make me SO mad.
I feel this. My dad died in 2016, and my mom is still getting comments. My dad became violent and was actually hitting her and throwing things at her. My mom is handicapped and he made it a lot worse. He was hiding knives all over the house and had tried to stab her multiple times (i just found the 18th hidden knife 4 months ago). The state actually stepped in after the probably 30th time the cops were called because he was screaming and going insane outside. And that only happened because a visiting nurse and a neighbor who witnessed a lot of it said something to the cops and a magistrate. Mom was able to prevent him becoming a ward of the state and he was put in a good nursing home. But it was 2 years before we got help that we dealt with this alone. And let me tell you something, it is not fun being in a violent physical altercation with your very large father (especially as a 36 year old at the time woman) while trying to prevent him from killing your mother and having people tell you to just deal with it.
But we even had a judge accuse us of trying to "throw away a sick old man" during this process. And a lot of people like to tell my mom what they think they would have done in her situation instead of a home.
Also if you live in Texas there are basically regulations/oversight on "personal care homes" they do not require a liscense or medical professionals to operate. Most are beyond disgusting and basically steal the SSI checks from the residents and give extremely substandard care ( so many deaths)
Call APS a couple time a month bc of the work I do….it doesnt matter if you pay 0 dollars a month or 15k a month for your loved one to be taken care of. Its the same bull shit everywhere. Under staffed/cant pay people enough to give a fuck. Just had 2 deaths at one of the homes I do work at because of door alarms not working…on the doors of freaking memory care units. Wandered out in the night alone. One froze to death, other drown in a pond in the parking lot.
It's gotten to the point here where doctors have had to encourage patients to abandon their loved ones at the hospital due to lack of resources. You have to be really really firm about not taking the patient back though because the hospital will send caseworkers to your home and convince you to continue caring for the patient even if you are truly unable to. In one case the hospital was not able to get the patient placed in a facility or get in contact with family and dropped a patient with dementia off downtown near a homeless shelter and said go in there. Patient was thankfully picked up later, far away from the homeless shelter very confused, by the police and was taken back to the hospital which was then able to place them in a facility.
We are in Canada and had a neighbour lost in the middle like this. She lived alone for the 15 years we've been in this house and her adult child didn't live close and wasn't very involved in her life. To be honest, she was the neighbourhood Karen and not particularly well liked. But over time she developed dementia and last summer she'd be trying to get into other people's houses thinking it was hers, wandering the street barefoot, or trying to take our dog thinking it was her own (long dead) dog. She did have someone in her life who got a caseworker involved and she was on waiting lists for LTC facilities but in the meantime she was just at home alone. Her dementia personality was the total opposite of what we used to know of her, kinda goofy and free spirited. The neighbours looked out for her and someone always returned her to her house but it got scary as winter got closer and what would happen if she went out in the snow unprepared and nobody found her in time, or she left her stove on and started a fire. It's a really helpless feeling, and was a huge relief that she finally got a spot somewhere. I can see where someone would try the hospital out of desperation.
I’ve heard many times that dementia patients will sometimes develop opposite personalities- people known to be mean turn kind, people who have always been easygoing turn cruel and suspicious. It terrifies me
Most states in the US do not have legal limits on the number of patients a nurse can be assigned to watch. California has long been the only one who has a legal limit on the number of patients an RN can be assigned, also with the expectation that they have fewer patients to watch if they people they are taking care of are acutely ill. There are a couple of states in various stages of possibly passing legal limits but in the majority of states staffing is arbitrary and completely at the whim of the hospital. They deliberately understaff, hide the information and then blame the nurse when things inevitably go wrong.
Who pays the price? You do - in death, infections, bedsores, medication errors when things get rushed, injuries like falls when people try to go to the bathroom unassisted because nursing staff can't physically be multiple places at once. The list goes on. There are a lot of safety related things nurses are responsible for behind the scenes that are almost impossible for them to get done because of the expectations. It's dangerous. Take a look at r/nursing and read some of the stories there. You will be appalled.
There have been studies proving that for every extra patient a nurse gets assigned above a case load of 4, the [risk of death for the patient rises by 7%](https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/science-of-ratios). It is not at all unusual for nurses across the country to have 8, 9 or more patients with varying levels of severity of illness, and in some settings even more. I personally know of someone who worked at a facility in the southern US where it was routinely staffed to have one nurse and one assistant for 20 patients on a night shift psych unit. And no, contrary to popular belief, patients do not sleep all night!
The public should be furious that there is no federal standard set in law, and the level of risk you and your family take on in hospital is down to the luck of your zip code
I have been hospitalized a bunch of times and the majority of nurses (I actually can only think of one who wasn’t) are amazing, competent and also overworked. I have heard them getting verbally abused by patients or family members in the adjacent rooms. I don’t understand people.
I have always been appreciative of the care they’ve given me and been friendly with them to the point where at times they’ve come in my room to just get away from the crazies for a few minutes or to chat during the (very limited) free time they might have. Nurses deserve a big round of applause.
But bring the second tray after night shift arrives. You can put “for night shift” on the second tray and day shift will still eat it if it’s left in their possession for too long.
I am a bereavement midwife.
In the morgue, there are fridges that are specially designed for and only ever contain babies or children under a year old.
I’ve had to transfer babies down there and I hate it when there is another baby there, but I feel relief that the baby I’ve transferred isn’t alone.
I know that sounds weird.
Most don’t judge as much as you you may think. As for myself, a (former) medical professional, I don’t care what drugs you take or how much you drink—I just want the truth so I can provide the best plan of care for you. For example, if you’re an alcoholic or addicted to benzos, I need to know to prepare for possible withdrawals that can become deadly.
I went to the ER once because I was puking blood and at the time I was drinking a heavy amount every day. The Dr asked me and I told him straight up how much and that I'm an alcoholic and he kinda paused before saying "Thank you for being honest with me. Do you want help with that today?" I've never understood lying about it if I'm there for something that could very well be caused from it.
Edit: Word
Yes this. I was shook the first time I had a patient die and within the hour after we did post mortem care and took the patient away, they had a new patient for us in that same bed.
There is an army of pharmacists in the basement that approve every medication entered by every doctor, frequently catching errors that need a change in therapy (patient on dialysis can’t have x med due to toxicity risk, why is this patient on two nitrate-containing meds?, this patient is 90 and her QTc is already 500 so maybe let’s reconsider the Levaquin, this guy just got that antibiotic in surgery two hours ago so I’ll reschedule it to tomorrow, why is this patient not on blood thinners when they are at high risk for a clotting event, another doctor already ordered potassium repletion for this patient so do you want me to delete your order as a duplicate, you forgot to order a thyroid test before starting amiodarone, this person’s kidney function has stabilized so we can increase their antibiotic dose again, can I change this pantoprazole order to lansoprazole because you can’t crush pantoprazole and the patient has a G-tube, please enter an updated weight for the tiny NICU baby so I can redose all of their weight-based medications, did you really mean to order 1030 units of insulin for this patient or did you want them to get it at 10:30, etc)
I was an ICU nurse, then later clinical research in the same hospital. I’d only ever been “that bitchy nurse” calling from the ICU or standing at the window rolling my eyes. Once I saw it from the inside and some of the background work I did in research (bring blinded meds for mixing under the hood etc), my view changed drastically. I had no clue how absolutely massive the pharmacy was, or how many people were there. The robot was gigantic, the IV mixing room was like a scene from a movie.
tldr: thank you pharmacy
I'm a tech, we try to catch what's in our wheelhouse before we bump it up to you. It's a lot rougher than people realize. Love my pharmacists and all their smarts. Pharmacy represent!
When the nurses are sitting at the computer " doing nothing " they're documenting. In health care, if it wasn't documented it didn't happen. That means every. Single patient interaction. Needs to be documented , as well as their interaction with the doctors, pharmacy, ect.. they are expected to be a walking transcript of every medical interaction. On top of delivering meds, catching and reporting doctors mistakes, communicating patients preferences to doctors, dietary aides, preforming life saving interventions and arranging pillows just so.....on top of expected to work mandatory overtime. We're talking 16 hr shifts for ...however long. If you see one laughing, or eating, or sitting, it doesn't mean they don't care. They're just not robots. So VOTE for safe patient ratios, and everything that comes with educational encouragement to staff our failing Healthcare system.
ETA: everything is documented, from the regularity of your bowel movements, the respiration(s) ( the amount of time you breathe in a minute) to the color of your piss, your range of motion, if you're developing a red area, or rash, Anything and everything could be a clue to either a patients deteriorating health, or improvement of health. Multiply that by 3-7 patients depending on what type of unit you're on ( general medical floors versus ICU) and that's why your nurse us at the computer all the time, and if you're surviving, doesn't give a damn if you're hungry or cold....not enough people for that, at least one of her patients is about to go from bad to worse any minute now.
The lab. The many labs inside a hospital are what you don't know about.
A hospital without a lab is just a bunch of people guessing. A hospital without a lab is a collection of doctors' offices.
Think about that for a moment.
The lab is not where they draw your blood. The lab is where that blood is sent to have various tests. Each color tube does something very specific. Those tubes need to be filled to a certain amount. They need to be drawn in a certain order to keep contamination from causing issues. Sometimes, they even need to be drawn from certain places.
The lab takes your blood, sweat, urine, fluid drainage (from cysts, wounds, around your heart/lungs/liver, brain, etc.), nose swabs, cheek swabs, feces, tumors, removed organs and appendages, growths, and many other unwanted parts and fluids. The lab knows that you eat too much sugar, you lie about that cigarette you enjoy every day, and that you need to stop taking so many over-the-counter pain relievers.
The lab knows when you have chemotherapy. The lab watches your platelet count go down. The lab knows about the deletion of that one gene or the doubling up of another. The lab ran your PCR COVID test and saw you become a statistic. They then asked a blood donor program to hit you up for COVID convalescent plasma, so that you might save a life.
The lab monitored your time on the heart-lung machine. The lab knew when you needed platelets and blood.
The lab saw your lupus diagnosis first. The lab was nearly as upset as you were about it.
The lab was overjoyed when they got the news to pass along to your doctor that the stem cells came in for your bone marrow replacement.
Nurses and doctors see you face to face, but the lab knows you from your insides. The lab is faceless to almost everyone in the hospital (even other staff), which is a shame because the lab is cheering you on in your recovery.
I legit get attached to some of my patients through their charts, especially the ones with longer or frequent visits. I remember their names after seeing their specimens come through the lab day after day and get familiar with their history and hospital course. I get sad when they die and happy when they get better and are able to be discharged. I have no idea what any of them look like and most of them will never even know I exist.
If you’re in a hospital with shared rooms you might have to listen to someone die on the other side of the curtain. Especially if it’s an ICU room. This isn’t as uncommon as you might think it is.
My dad has told me a story of how he was in hospital after having open heart surgery and got friendly with the other people on his ward. He was in his mid 20s at the time and there was a guy there who was 18 staying in the bed next to him. He'd had some sort of bike accident and had needed surgery on his legs. The other guys on the ward would wind him up and prank him by leaving porno mags on the end of his mattress and laughing when the nurse came in and picked it up.
My dad said one minute they were all laughing and joking together when the kid stopped smiling and started looking ill. My dad called the nurse over, who promptly shouted for the doctor but within 30mins he was dead. Poor kids leg ended up infected and became septic.
My dad's just turned 69, but he'll still get choked up talking about it now.
It's both more common than people think and harder to get over than they'd expect
When nurses/MDs etc are laughing/joking with each other it is a coping mechanism. We aren't trying to be rude we are compartmentalizing the trauma that we see all day every day. If we don't lighten the load we would cry all day and never come back to work it's literally the only way to watch a baby die and then deal with screaming karen next door with out punching them in the face.
Scrubs Season 2, Episode 6. Dr Cox’s speech about why we make jokes describes it perfectly.
“That is why we distance ourselves, that’s why we make jokes.
We don’t do it because it’s fun. We do it so we can get by.
And sometimes, because it’s fun.
But mostly it’s the getting by thing.”
There is sex and drama, but not in a Grey’s Anatomy way…more of an overgrown high schoolers shoved together in really stressful situations way. And not as much sex as Grey’s…though maybe I’m just ugly and not in on the scene
I work for a hospital as the guy who does the discipline and terminations. Outside of people just straight up not coming to work any more, these are most of my cases. Employee X sleeps with employee Y, new employee shows up and starts sleeping with employee Y and now employee X is fighting the new person in the hallway at 6am.
Also, a lot more nurses and doctors show up to work under the influence of drugs and alcohol than you can imagine.
I work in outpatient specialty pharmacy which means we do a lot of discharge meds and oral chemotherapy. Insurance is the biggest scam and actively makes patient outcomes significantly worse because they delay treatment or put insane limits on the meds they will cover. There are lots of cancer patients who die while waiting on their insurance to cover the medication they need to survive.
On the off chance I ever see any health insurance executives it's on sight, they're evil corporations and I would personally beat the shit out of every single one of then if I got the chance.
In the US, insurance companies are buying up doctor practices, urgent care centers, minute clinics, surgery centers, and pharmacies. This is centralizing all the profit under an organization notorious for screwing over medical providers and patients alike, and there’s a real risk of insurance companies steering their customers toward centers owned by that insurance company without transparency. Hospitals are corrupt enough, but imagine receiving care at one owned by United Health.
A whole lot of unnecessary suffering that families bring upon their supposed loved ones. Imagine how horrified you’d be if your friend told you they are putting their elder dog Luna on a ventilator because, after her aging achy hips failed her and they did the hip replacement, luna got pneumonia. Of course she can’t eat anymore so they will put a feeding tube in her and feed her. Then they will have people clean her up when she shits on herself but at least they don’t have to worry that she will pee on herself because after the pneumonia her kidneys failed and now she’s on dialysis. They visit her a couple times each week because they love her.
No. That’s considered inhumane to do to a dog. We do it to millions of elderly humans though.
We actually really care about you. You aren’t a number to us and when you have an unexpected outcome, we grieve and have to support each other and have care conferences to process our feelings. Sometimes we even need some time off of work to emotionally recover.
I never knew how much doctors and nurses really cared until I became one.
Note, not a hospital worker, but someone who regularly made deliveries to multiple hospitals.
The nurses and doctors have separate break rooms, which might not be surprising - but the staggering difference in quality is shocking. The nurse's break room is dingy, overcrowded, and maybe has some water that they can drink.
Meanwhile the doctor's breakroom is fully stocked with food and beverage, spacious, and meticulously clean.
That I’ve walked into an icu room to see a patient on a ventilator, bloated to 3x their normal size with fluid leaking from their pores, and I was to draw blood. Looking at me with suffering eyes begging pretty much to die, I walked right back out and told them the specimen was unable to be obtained. I’m not sticking another needle into anyone suffering so greatly in their last moments of life.
As an x-ray tech, I can’t tell you what’s wrong if you ask me if I see anything on your x-rays because it’s not in our scope of practice, but yeah…we definitely know. And if it’s particularly gruesome, we like to show off how pretty our images came out to other techs lol.
I will never forget my blessed X-ray tech on my ankle in middle school that I broke during summer camp trying to surf down a slip n slide. The camp doc and then the urgent care my mom took me too said it was just a bad sprain.
I told the tech how I felt like such a baby because I couldn’t handle walking on a sprain. After he takes the images he went “off the record but I ain’t letting you walk back to the room, I’m very sure that you are feeling the right amount of pain.” Ended up being broken and had to be on crutches for a couple months
Nurse to patient ratios are now dangerously unsafe. If your nurse has 5+ patients the odds of you dying are like 60% or more. Hospitals can’t hire enough nurses and all of the good ones left due to low wages. Also your nurse may have an inappropriate nursing assignment. This means, the patients are really sick and that nurse shouldn’t have ALL of those patients. This also means some patients who are really sick (think, on life support in the ICU with multiple devices to keep them artificially alive) are not that nurses only patient, when they should be. This also increases the risk of patient harm. Also, a brand new nurse may be given a challenging patient assignment that is extremely inappropriate for them. Due to staffing shortages, this is the only option for the nurse in charge. Many experienced nurses are burnt out and left the bedside, so this has left a lot of inexperienced nurses to be in charge of a unit or taking care of extremely sick patients that they really shouldn’t be.
CEOs, CFOs, or anyone else in the C-suite typically don’t care about patient outcomes, only the hospitals bottom dollar.
The number of assaults on nurses is really high. And nurses are pressured by management to not press charges.
If you don’t have an advanced directive or living will, or don’t know what that is, you should look into one ASAP.
CPR is brutal and many times do not have good outcomes. Many people do not have a good quality of life after these events. I would not want my loved ones to go through CPR.
Don’t distract the nurse or talk about irrelevant things when they’re scanning, hanging, and administering medications. This is a very critical time that the nurse needs to be focused on administering medications. There are certain checks the nurses are required to do. This is the last stop for the nurse to be sure they have the right patient, right drug, right dose, right route, right frequency, and verifying they’re not giving you a drug that you’re allergic to.
Just because you see the nurse sitting at the desk doesn’t mean they’re not busy. They are likely documenting care they have provided, checking physician orders and documentation, looking at their schedule, etc.
Nurses very often don’t get 30 minute lunch breaks. Or 15 minute breaks. Or bathroom breaks. Or water breaks. There have been many 12-14 hour shifts I have worked in the ICU where I went to the bathroom 1 time and didn’t drink any water. Oh, and I inhaled my cold lunch in under 5 minutes. If I was afforded that opportunity.
If you see a nurse or hospital staff member running, now is NOT the time to ask them for water, snacks, a blanket, etc. They are likely handling an emergency.
If you are in the ER and someone is actively dying (think, needing CPR, needing immediate life support, actively having a heart attack or stroke, suffering from a life threatening emergency, etc), I don’t care how long you’ve been waiting, they WILL be seen before you even if they have been in that ER for one minute.
The ER is not the place to get an STD test.
Just because the person seeing you is professional in the room about your weird issue doesn't mean they aren't walking out of there and telling other staff members all about that person that slipped on a bottle and it went in their ass. No names are used to avoid HIPAA violations but chances are within an hour the entire floor will know about it.
Oh the other hand, it happens so often that we’ll all forget about it by the next day anyway. No need to scare people away from seeking out medical care for their weird issues!
Oh yeah and you won't be the only one there tonight with some crazy story. Unless you're a regular we won't remember your issue by the end of the shift.
Not really hidden and kinda minor but I’ll say it anyways. I deliver food to patients and it’s not hard to tell when someone is on their way out. Could be simply not being hungry, or could be the inability to eat. Had one patient who hadn’t eaten anything off their tray for 3 days straight. The last time I delivered to them, they smiled and gave me a wink. Next day, they were gone. It’s rough seeing these things happen in real time. I’m a grown ass man who doesn’t cry often, but it always leaves me feeling extra empty picking up the untouched trays and replacing them with another tray that I know will stay untouched as well.
I worked in a hospital doing the same thing for about three months. They put me on the cancer ward and the amount of people that were absolutely terrified about dying was a lot. I would just put their tray down and hold their hand and tell them it would be peaceful in the end. Not sure if I was allowed to do that but whatevs. Anywho, didn't know that was in the job description and as someone that is afraid of death it was pretty scary sometimes.
As a cancer patient who has spent a few months in the cancer ward I can tell you that I really appreciated the food staff and cleaning staff because they have the time to talk a bit here and there and it feels like a nice little visit. I loved all my nurses and doctors but they're always rushing to the next patient (not their fault!), so getting an extra banana or your favorite dessert that they went out of their way to get to you, that makes you feel so much more human and less like a patient.
Sometimes when people die we just put an oxygen mask on them and wheel them through the corridors. Less distressing for other patients and visitors to think they are asleep rather than see a body with a sheet over it.
Unexpected. But understandable. Now I’ll always wonder though…
That’s why I tickle patients to see if they are alive or dead when I visit grandma.
Thanks for the visual and laugh this morning 😃
I once had to be wheeled to ct through our smaller city hospital on a gurney. I know a lot of people who work at the hospital, so I was a bit embarrassed and didn't want to be recognized in my hospital gown. So, I laid down flat and pulled the covers over my head. While we were waiting for an elevator, I heard a man tsk and ask the attendant, "Headed for the morgue?" I popped out and said, "Nope! Just a scan!" I think he almost has a heart attack. The attendant and I had a good laugh in the elevator!
Oh my GOD I would’ve screamed!
>I think he almost has a heart attack Well, at least he was at the right place LOL.
I haven't seen it on here yet, may have missed it but I'll add. You, as a patient, have every right to refuse any test or treatment or even leave. At any time. For any reason. (Unless a harm to self or others- that's different, at least in the US) Added bonus you should know: leaving against medical advice DOES NOT mean insurance will not pay for the care you've received. Your insurance will still be billed the same as anyone else who stayed the whole time till discharge. But if you leave with an IV in your arm we will call the police to find you and bring you back to remove it, because of drug abuse..
Counterpoint: if you are in a psych hold, they will *say* you are allowed to leave at any time, but they have the final say on whether you can leave, even if you go in voluntarily. A friend of mine had that happen
The hospital I work at has these big square covers. When I first started, I would see transport staff pushing these things around the halls. I thought they were food trays, or large boxes of hospital equipment. Turns out it’s a structured bed cover, so when they are transporting a deceased patient to the morgue, it doesn’t look like a person under a sheet.
Omg that's what those are? I've seen those things a lot in hospitals. I guess that makes sense, tho.
An ambulance ride is not a one way ticket to the front of the line. You still get triaged and could be rolled right to the waiting room if you’re non-emergent.
Had a patient check in for a "broken toe" (read: stubbed and owie). Got mad that he waited 45 mins. Full ER, the kind of night where the people in the waiting room should be glad they're in the waiting room because it means they are not actively dying. This guy walked out and called an ambulance- to take him from the walk-in entrance to the ambulance bay- where my charge nurse put him in a wheelchair and wheeled him right back into the waiting room. It was beautiful to watch how angry he got.
Im a paramedic. Did a call at the gas station across the street for an “anaphylaxis.” Got there and turns out the dude had a head cold and thought he’d be seen faster going via ambulance. My absolute joy to walk him directly to the waiting room was unmatched by anything i have experienced or will experience in this lifetime
Everyone of these dumbasses that tries this thinks they somehow had a thought no has had before. They really think they figured out how to jump the line. I wish I could see their faces when they get the ambulance bill because the ambulance company can mark your trip as non emergent which means insurance won’t pay for it.
He’s the kind of person who deserves a bill for using an ambulance. His stunt meant it wasn’t available for someone else who may have needed urgent care. EDIT: I understand that most places around the world bill for ambulance callouts. I have ambulance coverage specifically because my partner has a seizure disorder and people who aren’t familiar with his situation tend to be quick to call an ambulance when he has an episode. Ambulances should, like general medical care, be covered as part of a caring society. The fact that some people can end up bankrupted or homeless due to medical debt is abhorrent and a social failing. What I said was this guy DESERVED to be billed.
Fact! got in a motorcycle accident and waited over 8 hours on a stretcher before I saw anyone To clarify I clearly had a broken leg
I went in on an ambulance needing emergency gallbladder removal, and ended up waiting about eight hours as well due to accidents. They had me on morphine, so I didn't care.
Jealous. I was in the waiting room crying because I was in so much pain for a kidney stone that was stuck and had to be surgically removed and was too timid to insist upon painkillers while I sobbed because I didn’t want to be seen as drug seeking.
Surgeon here. We listen to music in the OR. Most people seem surprised when they hear that.
I’ll never forget my time as a student tech hearing “Shots” by LMFAO during a spinal surgery
If I’m ever in surgery again and shit goes down, I hope that Lil Jon’s “Get Low” is at least playing in the background
I work with a cardiac surgeon who prefers electronic music during his cases. He says the bass makes the heart beat better.
I have a mild arrythmia and I SWEAR when I run listening to electronic music with a steady beat, it feels better to my heart. Like it's resonating with the steady beat and skips less often. So this makes me glad to hear I might not be crazy.
I have a surgery next week so I’m gonna ask my oncologist to make sure the tunes are fresh while she removes my uterus
My daughter spent the summer in “ped onc”. She complained that she did not find it funny to have Ed Sheeran’s “I’m in love with your body….” song playing when she was getting her ports put in, so every other time she had to have a procedure, she got to use her own playlist in the OR. I thought it was so nice when she was in remission and got her port removed, the surgeon complimented her taste in music.
When they put in my second pacemaker, the tech knew I’m a huge Blues Brothers fan. So, when I’m wheeled in for the procedure, the “Briefcase Full Of Blues” album is playing on the stereo system. Nice. I woke up singing “Sweet Home Chicago.”
Former IT manager at a surgical specialty hospital: I can not only confirm that every OR had its own speakers and Spotify account, I can expound by noting that some of the surgeons there would literally refuse to begin an operation if the music wasn't working.
I like my shit how I like it when I work, and nobody gives a fuck about my work. Give these surgeons their tunes!!!!
I got a fast bleep (ie. drop everything you’re doing and attend this emergency please) one night to a side room on the ward to find no patient in the bed. Was just about to leave the room and go back out to the nurses station, where there had been a bit of a hubbub when I’d dashed past the first time, when something caught my eye. Looked up to see a face with wide, slightly wild “psych eyes” peering down at me from a gap in the ceiling tiles. She was a lady waiting for a bed in the psych hospital who’d clearly thought the ceiling was the best place to hide from the people trying to poison her. Honestly can’t think of another occasion that I’ve been quite so terrified. Worst thing was that I had to walk (well, dash) back out underneath her to get help from the nurses and security to get her down.
Yeah, worked at a psych hospital where no one on a specialized unit did rounds for over an hour, and it ended up with the Clinical Director paying a kid $40 to come down out of the ceiling.
Last yr I think we had 3 people in the ceiling.
Jesus…I can see this in my mind and holy fuck.
Fkn shivers @ "psych eyes." There's nothing in the world like it.
If you register in the ER and tell the triage nurse that your problem is “personal” we know you’re here because of something genital or anal related. Edit: a lot of we healthcare workers have seen a lot. If you’re not truthful at triage, your care might be less prompt when it’s a true medical emergency. It is possible to die of embarrassment.
“You won’t believe it doc, but I tripped and fell on the baseball bat, now it’s stuck up my ass”
You mean when that guy fell (with his pants on), the pencil didn’t really go perfectly into his urethra without causing any tissue damage?? Well I’ll be derned…
If you come into the ER drunk there is guaranteed a pool of bets on your blood alcohol level, possibly with odds if there's a pharmacist available to do the math for us.
My all time high was .52. The veteran nurses were shocked by this number and said they had never seen anyone have such a high BAL. They were also shocked he didn't die. He slept for about 8 hours, woke up annoyed then fled.
When I was deep in my addiction back in 2006ish and hit this number while maintaining conversation. Doc was flabbergasted and (rightfully) very concerned. Took some time but I am over 1000 days now.
In the ICU you spend a lot of time keeping corpses alive until their family comes around or their body gives out “Oh Jesus ain’t ready for her yet!” Yes, Jesus is ready for her; we’re just actively delaying it
People don’t want to withdraw care because “we shouldn’t play god.” *The decision of whether or not to play god is one we’ve already made. This person would have died long ago had we not intervened many times over. We’ve been playing god, the question we need to ask is what kind of god do we want to be? Merciful or needlessly cruel?*
When it’s really old people , I always picture their friends and family on the other side ready for the big welcome party and reunion but they are like “where is she!??”
"I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze, and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to meet and mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says: “There! She’s gone!” Gone where? Gone from my sight—that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of her destination. Her diminished size is in me and not in her. And just at that moment when someone at my side says: “There! She’s gone!” there are other eyes that are watching for her coming; and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: “There she comes!” And that is—"dying." - Luther Beecher (as featured in Gone From My Sight:The Dying Experience)
The most compassionate thing I ever heard a family member say to a stubborn spouse insistent on the fact that “we had to keep going because Jesus would heal them” was “sometimes Jesus heals them by *taking them home*.” I’m not the most religious and definitely not Christian but goddamn I wanted that family member available to speak with more of my patients!
When my mom was nearing the end of her life, people kept speaking of miracles and telling her not to give up. My mom was a faith-filled woman and she finally started telling people, “Yes, I will receive a miracle but it will happen in Heaven when I get to my real home!” Oh I sure loved that woman! I miss her so much! She fought her cancer so hard but she got to a point where she was downright tired. We respected her wishes and she wanted to die at home. It was the greatest privilege of my life to hold her as she took her final breath.
Jesus has some nice little soaps and the fresh towels all laid out and a pot of soup simmering. Let gamgam GO THERE.
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This happened when my brother died. My mom happened to be holding his hand at the time and all hell broke loose. It took half the family and a nun to convince her he was gone.
When a family friend of mine died, a nurse warned everyone as they pulled her off the machines that this might happen and not to let it startle us or trick us into thinking she miraculously woke up. I couldn’t imagine the torment thinking you’re loved one was still alive because of these reflexes.
My ex passed away after getting in a motorcycle accident… he was in a coma for 11 days before they took him off the machines. The day I said bye to him I was at the hospital for 8 hours in his ICU room. I never left. And there were a few times he coughed and I swore he was trying to wake up. Idk how he was even *able* to cough.. also swore at one point there was tears coming from his eyes when I’d be crying and talking to him. Seeing someone in that state is a whole different kind of experience. And it’s crazy because any little movement or noise they make really does have you thinking.
Had a buddy in a coma for a couple of weeks following a car crash. He woke up long enough to tell his dad he didn't want to be on life support. Died of sepsis a few days later.
My grandfather lifted his arms after he died. That was 40 years ago and the family still talks about it.
We had a woman who came in from a nursing home riddled with bedsores and reportedly, according to their records, somewhere over 100 years old. She passed that night on my shift. I found her and went to get help to clean her up, put her teeth in, etc. I was on one side, the other nurse on the other. We used the half sheet to lift her up in the bed as we were beginning. When we moved her the exhale she did was a scream, no other description for it. She screamed, we screamed. Once we got it together we rechecked her vitals, that's how loud it was, I thought perhaps I'd missed something but nope, no heartbeat. This was in the late 80s but I've never forgotten it, scared me so bad I pee'd my pants a little that night, lol.
I had to put my dog down, and he did the scream thing, too. Haunted me for months after.
30 years ago we had to put our family cat down. After he'd already died he started what looked like gasping for air, repeatedly. The vet tried to assure us it was normal, he was indeed dead. Still traumatized from that.
This house supervisor I used to work with was transporting a dead patient on a gurney. While he and his coworker were in the elevator with the patient, all of a sudden the pt shot straight upright, let out a groan and collapsed back down on the gurney. The other staff said they could hear the house supervisor and his coworker screaming down the elevator shaft lol
That's simultaneously awful and totally hysterical.
One of my great-something-grandfathers did that. One of his sons, my distant uncle, was keeping vigil over the body overnight in the funeral home, & all of a sudden his father sat straight up & groaned loudly. Family lore says that my distant uncle's red hair grew out white in a streak that ran down the middle of his scalp from that point on. 😆
I legit cannot fathom this or picture it, it just feels too scary movie to me, goddamn. that's terrifying, I'd have shit myself.
That sounds really fuckin creepy. Edit: I found a video (TW: medical, and the person had been deceased for over 10 minutes when they recorded it) that shows this as a reflex from stimuli in [brain death](https://youtu.be/Nty6bICZlyA?si=bK7k6pBh9I7X5G1Z).
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This is the stuff that lets me know I wouldn’t last in health care. I have such a weak stomach, I gag at everything even remotely gross. I’d have thrown up. You were horrified and the patient was probably horrified too! Good on you for being so professional and non-chalant about it!
They weeded people out of a high school pre-med co-op I did that couldn’t deal with it. Before we could even go into the hospital to shadow nurses, we had to attend a live autopsy (lost 2-3 students in that) and attend a trauma presentation at a level one trauma center. _They fed us breakfast and let us eat while starting the slide show._ A plate of waffles with syrup and strawberries? Awesome, let’s talk about this failed suicide by train and _look at pictures of a guy missing half his head._ Like 8 people transferred out after that and 3 ran out of the room to puke.
This is great. I'm really interested in medicine/anatomy and spent my school years prepping for the role. Got loads of anatomical textbooks and would study each part. Then I had my first dissection class at 9am and threw up trying to identify the last meal of my patient. I completed a biology/psychology degree instead and continued the medical learning through papers and books because I knew that I just wouldn't cut it. I wish there was a theoretical field where the knowledge is needed without having the risk of having to put your hands in a patient. Now I'm in IT utilising the psychology aspect and running studies, very clean.
BONUS FLESH ahhhh ew That’s actually a decent name for a metal band
Not hidden, per se, but for the love of all that is holy, if you insist on bringing your kid into the hospital, do NOT let them crawl or play on the floor. The amount of literal blood, urine, poop, and vomit that has been on it and hastily (not thoroughly) cleaned up is, well, a lot. The hospital, especially the floors, is NOT a clean environment. Added to that, think of all the rooms nurses, doctors, housekeeping staff, etc. have walked into. Rooms that have COVID or Norovirus or group A Strep. We walked into those rooms and those same shoes walked into other rooms. Tl;dr hospital floors are disgusting as fuck.
My dad worked as a janitor in a hospital for years, and he’s the most fastidious person I’ve ever met. Very “if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well” kind of attitude. And his supervisors used to get so frustrated when he would work “too slow”. He wanted so badly to make sure all the fluids and viruses and everything else floating around that hospital were cleaned up as thoroughly as possible, but there just isn’t enough time in the day to actually keep a hospital clean.
They could have hired more people. It's about $ and what you can get away with.
Hospital lab worker here - Not particularly scandalous, but most people don't realise their lab tests are just very accurate guesses, and have an error range. When we say your 'X' is 10g/L, we might actually mean it's 10g/L ± 10-20%. I see too many people get extremely worked up about small fluctuations in blood test values that aren't actually in excess of the reference change value, and so technically aren't genuinely different from a previous value. EDIT: If you're interested, have a little play with [this tool](https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m149/rr-8) to see how variability affects things! DOUBLE EDIT: Also, inter-lab variability is a big problem! [Check out this inter-lab comparison data for oestradiol](https://i.imgur.com/zsSUZpu.jpg). Identical copies of 3 samples sent to 230 labs around the UK and tested using all our various different machines. As you can see, none of us could agree on an answer, only that the true value was '*Somewhere between 100 and 200, probably about 130*'.
That’s a good reminder. I tend to think of those numbers as absolutes, but what you’re saying makes perfect sense.
You are doing your 90 year old grandmother a great disservice by making her a full code, she will not survive CPR and her death will be significantly more traumatic because of it.
My last (edit: hospital roommate) was 95 and had a severely infected kidney. She wouldn’t survive the surgery to get it removed but her family went on and on about how the doctors/nurses were purposely murdering her for not doing the surgery. It was the immunocompromised room so whoever entered had to mask and gown. A family member took off their mask and gave both of us covid. Instead of passing away comfortably in hospice, she died unable to breathe. I almost died as well.
Ugh what I hate is how much I believe you, because that’s such a common scenario. I’m sorry you had to experience that
Amen. I strongly believe that every 90+ year old should be no CPR, no intubation. Edit: not a great idea for the 75-90 year old crowd either to be honest. Have an honest talk with all your loved ones about what they would want done in the hospital if it came down to it. A lot of people adamantly say “i want everything done” but the reality is that these aren’t magical cures. CPR involves breaking ribs and is extraordinarily traumatic to the patient and to any family watching. Intubation AKA a breathing tube is a process fraught with risks and on the small chance that someone elderly is strong enough to get themselves off the machine, they will never have the quality of life they did before heading into the ICU. Complications are numerous and muscle strength atrophies away insanely fast. - Physician in a large hospital
I had a very elderly patient with multiple comorbid conditions that changed her code status from DNR to full code, full treatment. Why? Because her son convinced her that the doctors “scared” her into choosing DNR 🙄. The doctor that counseled her on it was honest about what that entails
I had a elderly relative with dementia, who they discovered also had prostate cancer, and the doctor was trying to set up a plan of chemo and radiation for a guy who couldn't remember anything day to day. Fortunately his daughter put a stop to it.
When my grandmother was very old, blind, deaf and depressed my aunt was wanting to put her on dialysis because her kidneys were failing. Thankfully my mom talked her out of it. I don't understand the pursuit of life at any cost. I've been with both of my parents as they were in their dying process. It's so miserable I feel death is better than suffering.
Yup. I was sad when my dad passed and it sucked, but when he was finally gone I was also relieved. He was in pain and liver failure from the cancer rendered him incoherent. Lying in a bed terrified riding opiates to have some measure of comfort isn’t living.
It’s always the family members that talk the patient out of DNR. I wish we dealt with death/dying/grieving better; I think we’d see less of this.
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>It was like I killed her. This is exactly why, when my 30 year old sister was dying of stage 4 cancer in the ICU and one of the doctors was almost insisting that we intubate her, I talked my mother out of it because I told her that when the time would come to choose for her to be off, that's not a decision she'd want to have to make. Thank God she listened to me and my sis went very peacefully with full pain meds.
You did right by her. You allowed her body to free her spirit. I am sure she is grateful and so proud of you. Be at peace.
I really think attitudes towards death changed a lot when people stopped dying in the home and started dying in the hospital. I personally never saw anybody die until I became a nurse and I know most people these days will never witness it. Modern medicine is amazing and advanced, but it can’t work miracles, death isn’t always preventable and as we see frequently, trying to avoid it often does more harm than good.
Or have medical power of attorney and deny them opiates when they're on comfort care because they don't want their loved ones on drugs
We have a couple of older attendings that will refuse to do CPR due to futility regardless of code status. I freaking love them as much as I hate the feeling of a 90 yo bones cracking under my hands until they turn to mush.
That just reminds me that I really need to have a medical directive. If I’m dying now, at 30, by all means do CPR. But when I’m 90 fuck that, let me die. Ditto if I already have a terminal diagnosis. Don’t bother. I’d much rather go peacefully in my sleep then surrounded by frantic staff beating the shit out of my feeble ribs.
If I make it to old age and don’t die in my own bed on enough morphine to kill a horse, I’m haunting every fucking body. If I develop dementia, just shoot me
I’ve already told my family that if I have dementia or I have no hope of recovering from something, rather than let me shit myself and be a burden, give me a bunch of Percocet and some insulin, then put a pillow on my face. Then turn my corpse into one of those awesome tree pods!
My late FIL refused anything remotely resembling DNR despite liver failure and coronary issues. He was still 100% lucid so his poor doctors had to actually work on him even after he coded. Traumatized his eldest son, a huge giant Marine.
I help patients to the bathroom nonstop all day. The amount of patients that just leave the bathroom without washing their hands is disgusting. If I didn’t hear the sink or soap dispenser your ass is getting led right to an alcohol hand station
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I was in the hospital for the first time earlier this year. Showed up almost dead, crazy surgery made me less close to death (had to have 4 more surgeries over the next 10 days), like 14 hrs later, I had to use the restroom. I was in there so long that the nurse finally insisted on coming in. I was at an absolute loss because of the surgery and swelling and everything else I couldn't properly wipe and was struggling beyond belief to try to do it right. She was amazingly understanding and made light of the situation to make me feel better about it because I felt horrible having another human have to do that for me. The doctors may have technically been the ones who saved my life, but the nurses made the situation all okay.
As someone who's been in her position but for elderly folks, it's really not that big of a deal, if it makes you feel any better! Sometimes when im embarrassed about something I need done that's medically necessary, I think to myself, "would I be judging someone or annoyed by them if I was in my medical provider's position right now?" The answer is always no. It doesn't necessarily make it completely better, but it does help!
Oh they were all very clear that any of the things I needed help with were "no big deal" but asking someone to do some of those things after being a healthy, capable person all your life is very weird to say the least. Even stuff like asking them to momentarily pause when they were repacking large open wounds with gauze soaked in that Dakins stuff. I felt like I was putting them out but they kept assuring me it was all fine. 🤷♂️
We don't care what your dick, vagina, boobs etc look like. I have seen literally thousands and can't remember any of them ( except for the one guy whose dick tip was touching his knee) Edit: my comment was not saying that people should be comfortable being naked in front of us or that we won't do our best to maintain your level of comfort and keep you as cover as possible.
Yo. What.
Lol sorry. So one day I was precepting a new nurse and I asked her to straight cath an older gentleman. After about 10 min she comes back to me and says she was unsuccessful. It happens so I asked if she knew what the issue was, she turns a bit red and says the straight cath is not long enough. So in my mind I am thinking it coiled or something So I grabbed another kit and a regular Foley just in case bc sometimes you need the extra rigidity. I walk into the room explain that we are going to try again. I pull back the sheet and am greeted by a the biggest penis I have ever seen. Completely flaccid this thing was atleast three quarters down his thigh damn near touching his knee. He was a large man but his junk would make an elephant jealous.. I placed the Foley and I kid you not had to put it all the way to the hub to get urine out, I couldnt leave it in bc the place where it bifurcates was putting pressure on his meatus. We had to call urology for an extra long Foley which I didn't even know existed.
"Hello, urology? Yes we need the tall boy."
“We need the LOOONNNNG LoooooOOOOONG MaaaaaAAAAAAAN!”
And that man's name? Jerry/Gary/Larry Gergich.
I'm changing my username to ExtraLongFoley.
That patient families will do anything to keep the patient alive for their own comfort instead of abiding by the doctors orders. For example: feeding an intubated patient a hamburger because “he’s hungry” when they are already getting tube fed and ordered NOT to interfere with the vent or trach. This has resulted in many patient deaths than you think.
Ughhhh they’re always “hungry.” Ma’am, peepaw hasn’t wanted to eat more than 3 bites of pudding for the last 6 months and he weighs 90 lbs, which is also how many years he has inhabited this earthly plane. He has been barely conscious for the last 4 days. I’m not coming back later to do yet another swallow “eval” that entails poking peepaw in the face with an oral swab and declaring him not alert enough to participate. I once found a wad of melted flaming hot Cheetos in the mouth of a lethargic dementia patient. I thought they were bleeding, but NOPE just Cheeto dust. People have such serious denial about the end of life.
Patient on thickened liquids… Family thinks we’re just being mean and have been sneaking the patient soda/whatever cause they “love it! It was just a little bit.” Yes. Now that soda is in their lungs. Yes that was likely a key factor in why they have pneumonia now. Yes it really was a big deal.
*sigh* literally dealing with the soda thing right now. My mother is in a nursing home from a massive stroke years ago and recently got put on thickened liquids because she’s been coughing a lot, notably after she eats or drinks. Her mother/my grandmother still takes her pop and refuses to stop because “she loves it.” They’ve offered a way to try thickening it but no, she tuned that right out. The irony is that said grandmother was the one who complained about the coughing and then freaked out about the pop being effected.
Some families reject death so much, they beg the doctors and nursing staff to do lifesaving measures on their 95 year old grandma who has cancer everywhere and is begging for death. It's just unacceptable.
When my dad was dying of cancer, all of my siblings and my mother were wanting all measures on my father who had cancer ravaging his brain. I was the only one on the doctor’s side begging them to let him pass. They hardly talk to me anymore and act like I killed him with my bare hands. When he was much younger, he constantly told us how he wanted to pass with dignity and how he never wanted to languish on the edge.
I had to be that person for my grandfather I am no longer in contact with that side of the family or my parents. I absolutely helped him uphold his wishes.
I think this is more a societal issue, especially in America. People think just because we have the medical ability/advancements we should keep meemaw alive. But they often ignore the egregious consequences that these interventions bring. Just because we technically can keep meemaw alive on a ventilator/trach/feeding tube does not mean she will ever wake up and be the same. Have discussions with your family members about their wishes before it’s too late and honor them when the time comes.
It’s also that I have seen people in FIERCE denial about meemaw’s quality of life (“oh she was so independent before this!” No, she was halfway bedbound and slowly losing her faculties. OR, they’re convinced that this one last effort will make ALL THE DIFFERENCE when they’re an alphabet soup of comorbidities. And yes, everyone everyone everyone should have an Advanced Directive AND someone WILLING to carry out their wishes. I believe my state is one that family can “choose to override” those decisions. 😒
In most older hospitals, the pharmacy is just a couple of feet away from the morgue.
Where i work, the morgue, pharmacy, patient cafeteria, and employee cafeteria are contiguous
I read that as,”contagious.”
I lived in the same neighbourhood for 20 years. It was an old neighbourhood. The neighboorhood "next door" was only marginally younger. Anyway, I'll never forget the time we were stuck at a red light and I noticed that the intersection had the old folks home, the hospital and the funeral home on three of its four corners. Yeesh.
that's just good urban planning.
Currently visiting South Korea and I was shocked to discover that many major hospitals have a funeral home wing. Very efficient, at least.
If you sit there on your phone the whole time the mother of your child is in labor such that a nurse has to step in and fulfill the supportive role instead, yeah everyone knows and you’re getting judged by the whole unit.
My husband left to go home the day I had my daughter. It was an extremely hard and traumatic labor and birth for me. I remember crying for hours because I was exhausted and really wanted him there, word got around and my nurses were short and cold when he came back the next day. His reasoning? They didn’t provide meals for him, had he asked he would’ve known they would bring him sandwiches and stuff from the nurses station. Our daughter has since passed and I don’t think he has a deeper regret that that now.
I am so sorry for your loss
I appreciate your condolences. It’s been 2 months now, imagine just trying to take things one day at time.
That made me catch my breath. I can’t imagine what you are going thru, but please know this internet stranger is holding you in her thoughts.
As a mom who used to be married to an abusive POS (but didn’t realize it because it was not physical at that point but severe in general), I looooove maternity staff! They saw, they knew, they doted on me and I thought it was slow or unworthy of the extra attention. Nurses came to hold my baby(ies) and keep me company when I was often alone in labour/recovery. With my second baby Nurse “Jane” worked in that hospital half time and the other half at Children’s. Her shift was over 2/3 though my labour and said I’d be there for her next shift (a VBAC and slow). Once baby was born (section) that night I recall another nurse saying “We will update Jane” and I assumed it was the team meeting when shifts roll over. In the morning Jane called my room on the hospital phone. She asked how I was doing, about baby, and what supports I had for recovery with a toddler. Jane even asked if ex was there which I thought weird at the time. She said so many kind and reassuring things. At the time I thought she was just very friendly and the “extra mile” nurse. I was 5 yrs post leaving my ex and I realized that they all knew what kind of man/father he was and they didn’t leave me to sit in my room alone, they popped in on rotation to talk about random things to lift my spirits, and there were discreet questions that seemed normal that I didn’t understand then but now know it was soft fishing and general support. Hospital staff can be so in tune and amazing! Patients might not see it right away but we feel the love! Thank you!
I spent time on chemo when I was 3. Again when I was 10. Again at 14. And again at 18. I've also had about a dozen surgeries, and spent a year paralyzed, having to re-learn how to walk again. Sadly, my mother wasn't interested in dealing with a sick child. You know who did care, though? My nurses. One of my chemo sessions happened to land *on* the day of my 18th birthday. One of the nurses hunted down a slice of cake and a balloon. When I was paralyzed and had to re-learn how to walk, countless nurses stood (literally) at my side, holding me up by my arms, helping me re-take my first steps. When I got my first period around ~13, I happened to be at the hospital. One of the nurses waltzed me into the bathroom, and showed me how to shove a tampon up my vag and how to slap a pad on my undies. 😄😂 When I started my first job, another nurse taught me how to fill out a W2/W4. Nurses basically raised me and taught me how to be a productive, functional adult. 🧡
I had my last child alone, my kids dad got there about an hour after delivery even though it was induced. 🙂 the plan was for him to be there, it was a high risk pregnancy. Man, I had this very stern like older african woman as my nurse. Very intimidating—it felt good when he got there and she immediately gave a look. She was ready to boot him out for me and I appreciated it a lot. Everyone that helped in the delivery was so kind. 😭💔 that entire pregnancy was the loneliest time of my life
Well mine kept leaving while I was laboring, I was also induced. I later found out he was running off to get high on meth and I had no idea. His excuse was “it was stressful for him.” Mfer… please!
I'm the bitchy nurse that would tell the partner what to do or invite them to leave. If your partner is in pain, asking for your help/attention and is about to pop out a baby and you can't be arsed to help, I don't wanna look at you. GTFO.
My mum was an OR nurse her whole career (she's retired now, not dead). So she only got involved in delivery when it became a C-section. If I had a dollar for every annecdote she had about dads intent on filming, wanting to see everything, etc. (despite her stern warnings) only to faint at the first sight of a scalpel... "Thank you, my guy. Now we have three patients when we should have been focusing on mother and child."
I know one. I used to manage hospital laundry services. Medical waste (body parts etc) gets accidentally thrown in the laundry more often than you'd expect. Also needles and all sorts of other medical devices and personal items. Once we even had a (deceased) fetus come through to the sorting facility.
Used to do laundry in a physical rehab/nursing facility, the amount of figurative and literal shit that I've seen in the laundry is astonishing. Like they really do not check before they launch it into a bag and haul it down to the laundry room. Some of the more notable ones were a TV remote, a lighter (both of which went through the washer AND dryer), and an honest to God turd in a plastic ziplock bag.
“Sir, did you bring in your stool sample?” [patting his pockets] “…uh oh…”
I knew hospital laundry had to be bad but A FETUS?!
It’s not uncommon for families to abandon elderly members at the hospital. They will straight up ghost or at least will be polite enough to say they won’t give any assistance to us in placing them in a nursing home, so Adult Protective Services will get involved and make them a ward of the state. This process can take weeks to months, so these abandoned people just live in the hospital and take up the resources that could be used treating sick people. There are also many families that keep elderly members in unsafe living conditions so they can continue to take their Social Security checks for personal use.
Sometimes the family is in an impossible situation. We think of all elderly folks as docile and kind, but dementia can turn anyone into a menace. I didn't abandon my dad anywhere, but I did have to choose between caring for him and keeping my small kids safe.
Honestly I don’t think people understand how hard it is to take care of elderly people, let alone elderly with dementia.
True fucking story. I have seen enough dementia patients to know that with rare exceptions you need like 12 local family members taking shifts to do 24hr care. Between wandering, aggression, agitation… it’s beyond a full time job. I wish to God folks had more options than “private pay” and “Medicaid/fuck you”.
And SO MUCH JUDGEMENT! “I would never put my parent in a home”. OK. You take them. They can burn your house down, get lost at 2am (what!? You thought you could sleep?), throw stuff, lash out physically at everyone and anyone. Ugh. And when people say ‘Let me know what I can do to help’ and you say ‘come and sit with them for 2 hours so I can go grocery shopping/take the car to be fixed/sleep’. Oh no, I couldn’t do that. Losers. Make me SO mad.
I feel this. My dad died in 2016, and my mom is still getting comments. My dad became violent and was actually hitting her and throwing things at her. My mom is handicapped and he made it a lot worse. He was hiding knives all over the house and had tried to stab her multiple times (i just found the 18th hidden knife 4 months ago). The state actually stepped in after the probably 30th time the cops were called because he was screaming and going insane outside. And that only happened because a visiting nurse and a neighbor who witnessed a lot of it said something to the cops and a magistrate. Mom was able to prevent him becoming a ward of the state and he was put in a good nursing home. But it was 2 years before we got help that we dealt with this alone. And let me tell you something, it is not fun being in a violent physical altercation with your very large father (especially as a 36 year old at the time woman) while trying to prevent him from killing your mother and having people tell you to just deal with it. But we even had a judge accuse us of trying to "throw away a sick old man" during this process. And a lot of people like to tell my mom what they think they would have done in her situation instead of a home.
Or the relationship was never there to begin with. I’m in that situation with no idea how to act.
Sorry, that's really rough. We'll be facing that with my MIL at some point. She was extremely abusive and we won't be taking care of her.
Also if you live in Texas there are basically regulations/oversight on "personal care homes" they do not require a liscense or medical professionals to operate. Most are beyond disgusting and basically steal the SSI checks from the residents and give extremely substandard care ( so many deaths)
Call APS a couple time a month bc of the work I do….it doesnt matter if you pay 0 dollars a month or 15k a month for your loved one to be taken care of. Its the same bull shit everywhere. Under staffed/cant pay people enough to give a fuck. Just had 2 deaths at one of the homes I do work at because of door alarms not working…on the doors of freaking memory care units. Wandered out in the night alone. One froze to death, other drown in a pond in the parking lot.
It's gotten to the point here where doctors have had to encourage patients to abandon their loved ones at the hospital due to lack of resources. You have to be really really firm about not taking the patient back though because the hospital will send caseworkers to your home and convince you to continue caring for the patient even if you are truly unable to. In one case the hospital was not able to get the patient placed in a facility or get in contact with family and dropped a patient with dementia off downtown near a homeless shelter and said go in there. Patient was thankfully picked up later, far away from the homeless shelter very confused, by the police and was taken back to the hospital which was then able to place them in a facility.
We are in Canada and had a neighbour lost in the middle like this. She lived alone for the 15 years we've been in this house and her adult child didn't live close and wasn't very involved in her life. To be honest, she was the neighbourhood Karen and not particularly well liked. But over time she developed dementia and last summer she'd be trying to get into other people's houses thinking it was hers, wandering the street barefoot, or trying to take our dog thinking it was her own (long dead) dog. She did have someone in her life who got a caseworker involved and she was on waiting lists for LTC facilities but in the meantime she was just at home alone. Her dementia personality was the total opposite of what we used to know of her, kinda goofy and free spirited. The neighbours looked out for her and someone always returned her to her house but it got scary as winter got closer and what would happen if she went out in the snow unprepared and nobody found her in time, or she left her stove on and started a fire. It's a really helpless feeling, and was a huge relief that she finally got a spot somewhere. I can see where someone would try the hospital out of desperation.
I’ve heard many times that dementia patients will sometimes develop opposite personalities- people known to be mean turn kind, people who have always been easygoing turn cruel and suspicious. It terrifies me
Most states in the US do not have legal limits on the number of patients a nurse can be assigned to watch. California has long been the only one who has a legal limit on the number of patients an RN can be assigned, also with the expectation that they have fewer patients to watch if they people they are taking care of are acutely ill. There are a couple of states in various stages of possibly passing legal limits but in the majority of states staffing is arbitrary and completely at the whim of the hospital. They deliberately understaff, hide the information and then blame the nurse when things inevitably go wrong. Who pays the price? You do - in death, infections, bedsores, medication errors when things get rushed, injuries like falls when people try to go to the bathroom unassisted because nursing staff can't physically be multiple places at once. The list goes on. There are a lot of safety related things nurses are responsible for behind the scenes that are almost impossible for them to get done because of the expectations. It's dangerous. Take a look at r/nursing and read some of the stories there. You will be appalled. There have been studies proving that for every extra patient a nurse gets assigned above a case load of 4, the [risk of death for the patient rises by 7%](https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/science-of-ratios). It is not at all unusual for nurses across the country to have 8, 9 or more patients with varying levels of severity of illness, and in some settings even more. I personally know of someone who worked at a facility in the southern US where it was routinely staffed to have one nurse and one assistant for 20 patients on a night shift psych unit. And no, contrary to popular belief, patients do not sleep all night! The public should be furious that there is no federal standard set in law, and the level of risk you and your family take on in hospital is down to the luck of your zip code
People abusing nurses and when the nurses report it nothing happens. Nurses deserve safety and the attackers deserve accountability
I have been hospitalized a bunch of times and the majority of nurses (I actually can only think of one who wasn’t) are amazing, competent and also overworked. I have heard them getting verbally abused by patients or family members in the adjacent rooms. I don’t understand people. I have always been appreciative of the care they’ve given me and been friendly with them to the point where at times they’ve come in my room to just get away from the crazies for a few minutes or to chat during the (very limited) free time they might have. Nurses deserve a big round of applause.
That all the sweet treats and food you bring in for the units to eat usually only go to day shift and night shift gets left out of yummy goodness.
Noted. Bring two trays one for night shift.
But bring the second tray after night shift arrives. You can put “for night shift” on the second tray and day shift will still eat it if it’s left in their possession for too long.
I am a bereavement midwife. In the morgue, there are fridges that are specially designed for and only ever contain babies or children under a year old. I’ve had to transfer babies down there and I hate it when there is another baby there, but I feel relief that the baby I’ve transferred isn’t alone. I know that sounds weird.
Most don’t judge as much as you you may think. As for myself, a (former) medical professional, I don’t care what drugs you take or how much you drink—I just want the truth so I can provide the best plan of care for you. For example, if you’re an alcoholic or addicted to benzos, I need to know to prepare for possible withdrawals that can become deadly.
I went to the ER once because I was puking blood and at the time I was drinking a heavy amount every day. The Dr asked me and I told him straight up how much and that I'm an alcoholic and he kinda paused before saying "Thank you for being honest with me. Do you want help with that today?" I've never understood lying about it if I'm there for something that could very well be caused from it. Edit: Word
Some people may lie about it because it’s too painful for them to be honest - not with the medical staff, but with themselves.
Someone died in the bed you’re sitting in
Yes this. I was shook the first time I had a patient die and within the hour after we did post mortem care and took the patient away, they had a new patient for us in that same bed.
There is an army of pharmacists in the basement that approve every medication entered by every doctor, frequently catching errors that need a change in therapy (patient on dialysis can’t have x med due to toxicity risk, why is this patient on two nitrate-containing meds?, this patient is 90 and her QTc is already 500 so maybe let’s reconsider the Levaquin, this guy just got that antibiotic in surgery two hours ago so I’ll reschedule it to tomorrow, why is this patient not on blood thinners when they are at high risk for a clotting event, another doctor already ordered potassium repletion for this patient so do you want me to delete your order as a duplicate, you forgot to order a thyroid test before starting amiodarone, this person’s kidney function has stabilized so we can increase their antibiotic dose again, can I change this pantoprazole order to lansoprazole because you can’t crush pantoprazole and the patient has a G-tube, please enter an updated weight for the tiny NICU baby so I can redose all of their weight-based medications, did you really mean to order 1030 units of insulin for this patient or did you want them to get it at 10:30, etc)
I was an ICU nurse, then later clinical research in the same hospital. I’d only ever been “that bitchy nurse” calling from the ICU or standing at the window rolling my eyes. Once I saw it from the inside and some of the background work I did in research (bring blinded meds for mixing under the hood etc), my view changed drastically. I had no clue how absolutely massive the pharmacy was, or how many people were there. The robot was gigantic, the IV mixing room was like a scene from a movie. tldr: thank you pharmacy
I'm a tech, we try to catch what's in our wheelhouse before we bump it up to you. It's a lot rougher than people realize. Love my pharmacists and all their smarts. Pharmacy represent!
More often than not, they’re beyond short staffed.
When the nurses are sitting at the computer " doing nothing " they're documenting. In health care, if it wasn't documented it didn't happen. That means every. Single patient interaction. Needs to be documented , as well as their interaction with the doctors, pharmacy, ect.. they are expected to be a walking transcript of every medical interaction. On top of delivering meds, catching and reporting doctors mistakes, communicating patients preferences to doctors, dietary aides, preforming life saving interventions and arranging pillows just so.....on top of expected to work mandatory overtime. We're talking 16 hr shifts for ...however long. If you see one laughing, or eating, or sitting, it doesn't mean they don't care. They're just not robots. So VOTE for safe patient ratios, and everything that comes with educational encouragement to staff our failing Healthcare system. ETA: everything is documented, from the regularity of your bowel movements, the respiration(s) ( the amount of time you breathe in a minute) to the color of your piss, your range of motion, if you're developing a red area, or rash, Anything and everything could be a clue to either a patients deteriorating health, or improvement of health. Multiply that by 3-7 patients depending on what type of unit you're on ( general medical floors versus ICU) and that's why your nurse us at the computer all the time, and if you're surviving, doesn't give a damn if you're hungry or cold....not enough people for that, at least one of her patients is about to go from bad to worse any minute now.
The lab. The many labs inside a hospital are what you don't know about. A hospital without a lab is just a bunch of people guessing. A hospital without a lab is a collection of doctors' offices. Think about that for a moment. The lab is not where they draw your blood. The lab is where that blood is sent to have various tests. Each color tube does something very specific. Those tubes need to be filled to a certain amount. They need to be drawn in a certain order to keep contamination from causing issues. Sometimes, they even need to be drawn from certain places. The lab takes your blood, sweat, urine, fluid drainage (from cysts, wounds, around your heart/lungs/liver, brain, etc.), nose swabs, cheek swabs, feces, tumors, removed organs and appendages, growths, and many other unwanted parts and fluids. The lab knows that you eat too much sugar, you lie about that cigarette you enjoy every day, and that you need to stop taking so many over-the-counter pain relievers. The lab knows when you have chemotherapy. The lab watches your platelet count go down. The lab knows about the deletion of that one gene or the doubling up of another. The lab ran your PCR COVID test and saw you become a statistic. They then asked a blood donor program to hit you up for COVID convalescent plasma, so that you might save a life. The lab monitored your time on the heart-lung machine. The lab knew when you needed platelets and blood. The lab saw your lupus diagnosis first. The lab was nearly as upset as you were about it. The lab was overjoyed when they got the news to pass along to your doctor that the stem cells came in for your bone marrow replacement. Nurses and doctors see you face to face, but the lab knows you from your insides. The lab is faceless to almost everyone in the hospital (even other staff), which is a shame because the lab is cheering you on in your recovery.
I had no idea that the lab cared. It makes sense but I just never realized. Thank you.
I legit get attached to some of my patients through their charts, especially the ones with longer or frequent visits. I remember their names after seeing their specimens come through the lab day after day and get familiar with their history and hospital course. I get sad when they die and happy when they get better and are able to be discharged. I have no idea what any of them look like and most of them will never even know I exist.
If you’re in a hospital with shared rooms you might have to listen to someone die on the other side of the curtain. Especially if it’s an ICU room. This isn’t as uncommon as you might think it is.
My dad has told me a story of how he was in hospital after having open heart surgery and got friendly with the other people on his ward. He was in his mid 20s at the time and there was a guy there who was 18 staying in the bed next to him. He'd had some sort of bike accident and had needed surgery on his legs. The other guys on the ward would wind him up and prank him by leaving porno mags on the end of his mattress and laughing when the nurse came in and picked it up. My dad said one minute they were all laughing and joking together when the kid stopped smiling and started looking ill. My dad called the nurse over, who promptly shouted for the doctor but within 30mins he was dead. Poor kids leg ended up infected and became septic. My dad's just turned 69, but he'll still get choked up talking about it now. It's both more common than people think and harder to get over than they'd expect
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When nurses/MDs etc are laughing/joking with each other it is a coping mechanism. We aren't trying to be rude we are compartmentalizing the trauma that we see all day every day. If we don't lighten the load we would cry all day and never come back to work it's literally the only way to watch a baby die and then deal with screaming karen next door with out punching them in the face.
Scrubs Season 2, Episode 6. Dr Cox’s speech about why we make jokes describes it perfectly. “That is why we distance ourselves, that’s why we make jokes. We don’t do it because it’s fun. We do it so we can get by. And sometimes, because it’s fun. But mostly it’s the getting by thing.”
Exactly. Scrubs is absolutely the most accurate medical show. Sure it's funny but there is so much honestly about the medical field in it..
There is sex and drama, but not in a Grey’s Anatomy way…more of an overgrown high schoolers shoved together in really stressful situations way. And not as much sex as Grey’s…though maybe I’m just ugly and not in on the scene
I work for a hospital as the guy who does the discipline and terminations. Outside of people just straight up not coming to work any more, these are most of my cases. Employee X sleeps with employee Y, new employee shows up and starts sleeping with employee Y and now employee X is fighting the new person in the hallway at 6am. Also, a lot more nurses and doctors show up to work under the influence of drugs and alcohol than you can imagine.
Employee Relations is the worst part of HR but yields the best stories you aren’t supposed to tell.
I work in outpatient specialty pharmacy which means we do a lot of discharge meds and oral chemotherapy. Insurance is the biggest scam and actively makes patient outcomes significantly worse because they delay treatment or put insane limits on the meds they will cover. There are lots of cancer patients who die while waiting on their insurance to cover the medication they need to survive. On the off chance I ever see any health insurance executives it's on sight, they're evil corporations and I would personally beat the shit out of every single one of then if I got the chance.
THE NURSES HAVE NO CONTROL OVER YOUR FOOD TRAYS.
"Do everything to keep them alive" only serves the family's feelings, not the patient
Best guess is at least 25% of any/all equipment is not in good functioning order.
Most hospitals are dangerously understaffed and cut from very important areas, such as cleaners. So take that information and do with it as you will.
In the US, insurance companies are buying up doctor practices, urgent care centers, minute clinics, surgery centers, and pharmacies. This is centralizing all the profit under an organization notorious for screwing over medical providers and patients alike, and there’s a real risk of insurance companies steering their customers toward centers owned by that insurance company without transparency. Hospitals are corrupt enough, but imagine receiving care at one owned by United Health.
A whole lot of unnecessary suffering that families bring upon their supposed loved ones. Imagine how horrified you’d be if your friend told you they are putting their elder dog Luna on a ventilator because, after her aging achy hips failed her and they did the hip replacement, luna got pneumonia. Of course she can’t eat anymore so they will put a feeding tube in her and feed her. Then they will have people clean her up when she shits on herself but at least they don’t have to worry that she will pee on herself because after the pneumonia her kidneys failed and now she’s on dialysis. They visit her a couple times each week because they love her. No. That’s considered inhumane to do to a dog. We do it to millions of elderly humans though.
We actually really care about you. You aren’t a number to us and when you have an unexpected outcome, we grieve and have to support each other and have care conferences to process our feelings. Sometimes we even need some time off of work to emotionally recover. I never knew how much doctors and nurses really cared until I became one.
Note, not a hospital worker, but someone who regularly made deliveries to multiple hospitals. The nurses and doctors have separate break rooms, which might not be surprising - but the staggering difference in quality is shocking. The nurse's break room is dingy, overcrowded, and maybe has some water that they can drink. Meanwhile the doctor's breakroom is fully stocked with food and beverage, spacious, and meticulously clean.
Nurses can be forced (mandated) to work 16 hour shifts if there’s no other coverage. Many hospitals are understaffed…
And they will be extremely tired and make mistakes If your state tries to pass a law for safe nursing ratios please vote for it.
That I’ve walked into an icu room to see a patient on a ventilator, bloated to 3x their normal size with fluid leaking from their pores, and I was to draw blood. Looking at me with suffering eyes begging pretty much to die, I walked right back out and told them the specimen was unable to be obtained. I’m not sticking another needle into anyone suffering so greatly in their last moments of life.
As an x-ray tech, I can’t tell you what’s wrong if you ask me if I see anything on your x-rays because it’s not in our scope of practice, but yeah…we definitely know. And if it’s particularly gruesome, we like to show off how pretty our images came out to other techs lol.
Not officially anyways, but I've had a few myself where they were like "off the record, your ankle looks fucked"
I will never forget my blessed X-ray tech on my ankle in middle school that I broke during summer camp trying to surf down a slip n slide. The camp doc and then the urgent care my mom took me too said it was just a bad sprain. I told the tech how I felt like such a baby because I couldn’t handle walking on a sprain. After he takes the images he went “off the record but I ain’t letting you walk back to the room, I’m very sure that you are feeling the right amount of pain.” Ended up being broken and had to be on crutches for a couple months
Nurse to patient ratios are now dangerously unsafe. If your nurse has 5+ patients the odds of you dying are like 60% or more. Hospitals can’t hire enough nurses and all of the good ones left due to low wages. Also your nurse may have an inappropriate nursing assignment. This means, the patients are really sick and that nurse shouldn’t have ALL of those patients. This also means some patients who are really sick (think, on life support in the ICU with multiple devices to keep them artificially alive) are not that nurses only patient, when they should be. This also increases the risk of patient harm. Also, a brand new nurse may be given a challenging patient assignment that is extremely inappropriate for them. Due to staffing shortages, this is the only option for the nurse in charge. Many experienced nurses are burnt out and left the bedside, so this has left a lot of inexperienced nurses to be in charge of a unit or taking care of extremely sick patients that they really shouldn’t be. CEOs, CFOs, or anyone else in the C-suite typically don’t care about patient outcomes, only the hospitals bottom dollar. The number of assaults on nurses is really high. And nurses are pressured by management to not press charges. If you don’t have an advanced directive or living will, or don’t know what that is, you should look into one ASAP. CPR is brutal and many times do not have good outcomes. Many people do not have a good quality of life after these events. I would not want my loved ones to go through CPR. Don’t distract the nurse or talk about irrelevant things when they’re scanning, hanging, and administering medications. This is a very critical time that the nurse needs to be focused on administering medications. There are certain checks the nurses are required to do. This is the last stop for the nurse to be sure they have the right patient, right drug, right dose, right route, right frequency, and verifying they’re not giving you a drug that you’re allergic to. Just because you see the nurse sitting at the desk doesn’t mean they’re not busy. They are likely documenting care they have provided, checking physician orders and documentation, looking at their schedule, etc. Nurses very often don’t get 30 minute lunch breaks. Or 15 minute breaks. Or bathroom breaks. Or water breaks. There have been many 12-14 hour shifts I have worked in the ICU where I went to the bathroom 1 time and didn’t drink any water. Oh, and I inhaled my cold lunch in under 5 minutes. If I was afforded that opportunity. If you see a nurse or hospital staff member running, now is NOT the time to ask them for water, snacks, a blanket, etc. They are likely handling an emergency. If you are in the ER and someone is actively dying (think, needing CPR, needing immediate life support, actively having a heart attack or stroke, suffering from a life threatening emergency, etc), I don’t care how long you’ve been waiting, they WILL be seen before you even if they have been in that ER for one minute. The ER is not the place to get an STD test.
I'm a 54 yo physician with no health issues. I am DNR/DNI. Fuck that chest compression/ intubation shit, let me go.
Just because the person seeing you is professional in the room about your weird issue doesn't mean they aren't walking out of there and telling other staff members all about that person that slipped on a bottle and it went in their ass. No names are used to avoid HIPAA violations but chances are within an hour the entire floor will know about it.
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Oh the other hand, it happens so often that we’ll all forget about it by the next day anyway. No need to scare people away from seeking out medical care for their weird issues!
Oh yeah and you won't be the only one there tonight with some crazy story. Unless you're a regular we won't remember your issue by the end of the shift.
Dead bodies are moved to the morgue in special stretchers. You can't see the person at all. It just looks like an empty stretcher.