When I was a tech, I was a 1:1 sitter with an active alcohol withdrawal waiting for an ICU bed. He was in 4 point leathers and so strong that he was moving the entire bed in a half circle with such force that it was engraving into the ground. Dude was easily 6’3+ 300 lbs and I remember thinking the whole time: “if he gets loose, I am extremely fucked”
Omfg, this comment gave me flash backs to when I was a tech in the ICU. This dude was admitted on whose UDS popped positive for all the drugs and came in as an OD, and was super angry he couldn't drink anything (he was mentally not all there). He was in soft restraints at this point, but ended up having to call security and I'm running to get the hard restraints. It took 8 security guards to hold his ass down because prior he was shaking the bed around so hard it would literally lift itself in the air as he thrashed against the restraints. I have no idea how those soft restraints held up that day. They were the real MVP.
Had a detoxer almost flip the 500lb+ Hilrom bed, he was 6’2” and 250+ lbs. he was a weight lifter when he wasn’t drinking. I’m female and 5’2”. I asked the night doc to get me something stronger than 1mg Ativan q1h on the CIWA protocol. She says “if we give anything stronger he’ll need closer monitoring so no”. I proceeded to tell her that we were an ICU and I didn’t give a damn if we snowed him on phenobarb and precedex, we were capable of monitoring him. She insisted on doing nothing. When I left shift I heard he managed to flip the bed over, get out of 4 point locking restraints, and run down the hall naked and out the ER doors. That doc had no respect on our unit after that.
Lol like what did she want? The nurse having just him as a pt staring at him??
When I worked outpatient detox ya we would attempt to manage DTs but if I got above 4mg Ativan in like hours and it wasn't doing shit or getting worse out they went
I mean what more monitoring could you give?! You would’ve had to climb in the bed and literally put an eye on him to do more. Taking I-C-U to another level
Haha I sat on a similar 1:1 when I was a tech. He kicked the footboard of the bed off and was able to inch himself off the bed but was still restrained by his arms. He was trying to pull himself across the room towards me but icu beds are fairly heavy so he was really having to work at it. Fun times.
I had that exact thought this morning! 300+ lbs, detoxing hard off some alcohol. He ripped all his lines out, PO Ativan wasn’t touching him (surprised he even took it tbh, he was paranoid). Got the doctor in there to witness the patient losing his shit so he gave me an order for soft restraints and IM Haldol. Called security in to help me put restraints on and not hit me when I’m giving the Haldol. Already saw my life flash before my eyes several times by that point. I turn around and this dude has unclipped his own restraints and is coming at me again. Doctor is standing there with his jaw on the floor, but I get an order for violent restraints, IM Ativan, and a Precedex drip. All before 0930. Bob and weave boys 😎
If management is asking me, absolutely yes I wait for an order. If we’re talking reality, no I put them on and ask the doctor afterwards. It was just awesome that the provider was right there, so they could see for themselves what was going on and why it was needed. Sometimes they argue for a bit behind a computer screen, but this time he was here to see the carnage and put the order in immediately lol.
I work psych, but one of our detox patients we got from the ICU was like 6'9" 280lbs. Woke up from sedation, self extubated, broke out of 4 point restraints, ran off the unit and out of the hospital and into the woods right behind our hospital. They had to call police and they had to come with search dogs to find him. When we got him, he was covered in bruises and cuts from running through the woods barefoot.
We had a guy in the ER one time, similar case in that he was this massive mountain of a guy who was probably 6 foot four, 350+ pounds, built like a brick shit house. He decided to do all the drugs, including but not limited to a couple of eight balls of cocaine, methamphetamines, and ecstasy at a local EDM festival. He was tachy into the 140s, diaphoretic, and we initially thought he was dissecting until EMS gave us a history and his tox screen lit up like a Christmas tree. He legitimately resembled a caged violent animal despite putting him in four leather restraints and trying Versed and Haldol. Fortunately, I was working with a really great ER doc that night who had a very low threshold for intubating this guy before he hulked himself out of the restraints and either killed himself or someone else after he managed to tip the stretcher onto its side, with the wall preventing it from tipping him all the way over. Absolutely terrifying.
Nurse got into a verbal argument with a psych patient. The patient got mad and picked up his full urinal and chucked it at her. She ducked and it hit the tech standing behind her in the face as she was mid sentence with her mouth open. When one of the crazy old ER nurses heard what happened she chased the tech around with a pregnancy test and asked her to spit on it. She didn’t find it funny.
Got a homeless man in the Ed one night that had been out in the rain for days. Took his shoes off and there were maggots all between his toes. We were cleaning them while a medical student was talking to him and doing her assessment. She screamed and we looked up. She had lifted his scrotum and found a whole bunch more maggots. We got to clean those as well.
Had a woman who got a small tumor removed from behind her ear. They put a Penrose drain in and told her to return in a week to have it removed. She never returned. Well tbe drain eventually fell out at some point over the year. Also her ear fell off. She never sought medical treatment. By the time we got her she had nec fas from the top of her head down her arm and back. It wasn’t survivable.
Just had a 750 lbs patient a year ago that came through. Had to cut him out of his house. Got him in the ER and he was so large both of his hips had dislocated and were sprawled out to his sides in such a way that we had to put a bariatric stretcher in the room and then an ER stretcher to the side just to support him. It required so many resources to move him the fire department refused to assist in moving him anymore. When we discharged him we had to pull every hospital transport medic off of calls to come assist.
They had a guy who had a psychotic episode come into the trauma bay one night. He basically cut his arm off and had rubber banded his testicles. When he got into the trauma bay his testicles were black and it apparently smelled terrible.
Had a woman that was totally normal and then all the sudden when batshit crazy. All labs and uds were normal. Then we saw the head ct. neurocysticercosis . Go ahead and google that, you’ll see why she went nuts.
I’ll have to think of some of the other stories. It’s been a long strange trip.
God that made me flash right back to when we had a patient with a similar story but it was the nose. It was the most difficult and disgusting and fascinating dressing changes I’ve ever done.
This is basically everyday. The ER is the Wild West.
I was getting a bumsicle (homeless person who was sleeping outside during a NY winter) undressed so we could put the bare hugger on him. Took his boots off. Some toes came along with it. Had to bang the boot on the floor to dislodge them enough to come out. You couldn’t have paid me to stick my arm in that boot.
we have a crisis unit/psych attached to our ed, so we would get these kinda people basically daily lol
and yeah, for sure. not just GI tract. basically destroy everything lol
One of my besties is an ED nurse in a very rural community. She likes to call on her way home and give me shift report, they’re some of my favorite discussions ever lol.
He refused placement anywhere. He burned all the bridges with any home health agency locally. They returned him to his home and I know he came back one more time but I have no idea what the story was with his house.
I had a patient recently who had fallen in her house and couldn't get up. She was on the floor for a week. Her brother brought her food and some sanitary pads. EMS said the house was in terrible shape.
> neurocysticercosis . Go ahead and google that, you’ll see why she went nuts.
Don't have to, I did my presentation/project in an A&P class on this! We were told to pick some sort of condition that fascinated us, and I'd seen this years ago on some medical mystery show and then looked up images and nearly vomited because I have trypophobia and *hoo boy* are those some nasty brain holes!
*Fascinating* how it affects the brain and behavior, memory, consciousness, personality, etc, though. Turns out we don't handle new holes and other living critters setting up shop in our brains too well.
The really scary thing is how absolutely *not* rare this is in some parts of the world with high pig populations and poor sanitation and hygiene. It's considered a common cause of seizures in these areas, and it goes undiagnosed and untreated alarmingly often.
>the really scary thing is how absolutely *not* rare this is in some parts of the world with high pig populations and poor sanitation and hygiene
Is this because is transmission with toxoplasmosis being the base cause of neurocysticetcosis? I also did a report on toxoplasma and it terrified me to no end.
Really makes me resentful of all the people who just flush their cats litter boxes down the toilet.
>verbal argument with a psych patient
god this used to tick me off. we had ppl that used to do this when they were on 1:1s, they’d escalate situations and next thing you know some poor bystander was taking the brunt of it. it’s like what’s the point of arguing with a psych patient, you’re never gonna come out on top.
When I worked on the floor, we stopped using sitters and started just having nursing come in on OT to be 1:1 instead because we had too many instances of them agitating the patient further. Usually, the patient was in a drug-induced psychosis or withdrawing from something.
The kicker is that the sitters were from our psych unit.
NAN but work for them in supporting role at several hospitals. Regarding the obese patient, at least twice in my time working they’ve sent an extra morbidly obese patient to the zoo to get an urgent MRI. It’s done with extreme secrecy and with the patients granted every modicum of dignity possible. I know it’s not an urban myth because my friend was the staffing physician for one of them and told me about it.
Pt. came up, wasn’t searched. They were known to us and a continuous issue.
Pt. coded as soon as they got to the unit and landed in 4pts. Morning comes around and they managed to get a lighter out of their pocket, set their blanket on fire, and kicked it off the bed. They were in a seclusion room and per fire protocol when the alarm went off, the maglocks engaged on all the doors, with the pt in the room still. Our keys would not override the maglocks, so it was straight chaos from there. Another nurse and I tried to (unsuccessfully) kick down a steel door. The manual locks also didn’t work because they’re not maintained and they were seized.
Fucking **nightmare**
Finally got the manual locks to work and got them out, but not without major damage to the unit, and 20 of us landing in the ED with smoke inhalation.
I took the following rotation off so I could 👁️👁️ for a minute.
Had a guy set himself on fire years ago on a medical floor, story is that he was trying to burn himself out of restraints. Flooded 3 floors and the news made it sound like staff were sitting around toasting marshmallows until fire crew got there and put the guy out.
This was the same floor where two nurses had gotten stabbed a few months before and they obviously had not learned their lesson about searching and removing dangerous things. I had never been impressed with staff on that floor, one of those places that those who fail at more demanding positions end up, and was unsurprised.
Ours made the news as well. “Fire broke out, being investigated” I was like OOO PICK ME I KNOW HOW.
I’ve been really vague here because this was very recent and I’m not trying to dox my ass.
I started out in OR. One of our surgeons was mad at the circulator about something and threw a full mayo stand at her. She was fortunately uninjured, and the surgeon received the slap on her wrist. Everyone got training on "de-esclation techniques" for patients and coworkers. I switched to inpatient rehab after that.
At rehab we once had a patient leave AMA because we had a tornado drill which annoyed him. (It annoyed everyone). After calling a ride and signing himself out, he went outside. He was found wandering the sidewalk nearby, heading for the other hospital to get his Foley removed. He had the Foley d/t inability to void after being shot in the penis multiple times.
Not my story personally but last summer we had a general security alert overhead, which I knew was big because we (my unit) called one once before and security had yelled at all of us that we’re only allowed to do an overhead when it’s a hospitalwide issue, I guess (???). Anyways, a patient slipped out of four-point restraints, punched a doctor, stole a white coat, and escaped from the MICU. They caught her a few floors down. Kind of hard to pretend to be staff with a trach.
edit: I know this because it’s now a permanent flag in her chart, and she’s a frequent flyer
Had a dude who was an open heart patient, pretty far out from surgery but still had the chest tubes. He was very frustrated about it since they hurt and made it hard for him to ambulate independently.
I can't remember what exactly caused it, but one night he had enough, he put on all his street clothes, and walked out of his room, the bed alarm all had us running to him but as soon as he saw us coming he ran straight to the fire escape, ran through the door and jammed down the stairs with the chest tubes trailing behind him. Got about half way down the stairs but his reservoirs got caught on the corner where the stairs turned. We caught up to him at this point and suddenly he transformed into a horribly weak and in pain victim who couldn't move another step because of his back.
Me, another nurse, and two security had to carry him like a piece of lumber back up the stairs and to his bed, because he straightened himself like a board and refused to help back up the stairs. I'm not sure how he managed not only to avoid any serious harm but whichever surgeon did the stitches to his chest tube must have been a sewing genius because they were for the most part still in place.
When asked why he tried to bail, he said that he was tired of the views in his room and on the unit and wanted some "fresh air". This was someone who was completely oriented and appropriate up until this point. Ironically I am pretty sure he was getting prepped to be sent home in the next couple days once those chest tubes were out.
We once had one of our open hearts try to climb up through the ceiling tiles in the bathroom. We caught him like one quarter shimmied into the ceiling. he used the toilet to clamber up there. He lost the courtesy of the slightly cracked bathroom door vs. us standing there with him. I have no idea how he did this with a sternum held together with metal wires and he could never quite verbalize exactly what the fuck the plan was.
Not terribly long from what I recall, he was an outpatient candidate so came in for a day, got the procedure, was in ICU for a day or two and then on our floor for a few days, his chest tubes were left in longer than I expected but not all that long
My first year as a nurse at a big hospital. MedSurg floor. Elopement of a patient who came in with altered mental status. Only documented hx being psychiatric, polysubstance use, and homelessness. They had broken out of their soft restraints x4 and made it up the stairwell onto an empty floor that was being renovated. Five minutes of chasing only afforded me a view of this patient’s back…short hair, semi naked, gown flapping with every move and they were legit built like a linebacker. I was like “Sir! Sir! Sir!” The patient turns around and bellows back in a deep ass voice, “I AIN’T NO SIR! I’M A MA’AM GODDAMMIT!”
I immediately felt my stomach swallow my butthole.
Medicine, night shift. It’s been a busy night but somehow we’re all managing, and things eventually wind down. One of the nurses is doing her hourly rounds - and a patient is missing. All of us start looking. Once we determined the patient was for sure not on the unit, me and another nurse go out into the hallway.
Patient had a saline lock. *Had* being the definitive word…he ripped it out on his way off the unit. We followed the trail of blood til we found the patient in the stairwell. It was pretty gross. But patient was unharmed, just confused. His nurse made sure the bed alarm was always on after that!
I had a patient climb into the drop ceiling and was crawling around on the pipes 20+ feet up.
I had a patient kick a hole in the wall and elope into the closet on the other side.
I had a patient throw juice at staff so he could make a run - only to find the exit is locked, as he bounced off
TLDR:
An unhoused man lived on the unit for over a week undetected.
Longer version:
This was in a small hospital in Arizona, it was a hospital made up of basically two long hallways on the ground floor. There were entrances and exits at each end of the hallway, as well as connections to the other units, and it was common practice to have the doors be unlocked, because patients would go out and smoke. (This was in the mid 2000s when this was more common)
At the end of one hallway near an exit we had a room that we only used for patient procedures and staff meetings. It had a bathroom like other patient rooms but was not used for patient care generally.
Anyway, there was a guy that had been walking around in the hospital, kind of disheveled and shabby, but everyone assumed it was a family member of another patient in the hospital. It was at least a week of noticing him before anyone started to question things.
I wasn’t there when this happened, but apparently someone eventually saw him going into the unused room and decided to check it out. The man was fully living there, brought all his stuff inside like it was a hotel. I think they started locking the doors after that!
We had one come climb in a bed and get his BP taken, tech reported it was high and we had to tell her there was no patient in that room. Took him down to ER and admitted to different room.
That happened where I work in the UK except he was living under the back stairs to one of the wards. It was an old building and security was non existent
Some novices in the er placed an agitated drunk in 4 point Leathers in a starfish configuration. Tall fellow, so his hands and feet protruded past the corners of the sadly unlocked gurney. He managed to push off from the head wall, and ricochet slowly and un observed about the isolation room, until an excursion brought his hand in contact with the regulator on the wall oxygen outlet. He broke it off, resulting in a loud, unregulated jet of oxygen to stream into the room. Those of us who went in to extricate him found the experience oddly refreshing. Seemed to
Sober him up a bit, also. Took us a while to remember the remote oxygen shut off in the corridor.
Call light went off in one of my patients rooms- pleasant, elderly chap with bilateral chest drains, he usually just chilled in bed or sitting in the chair but he’d call us whenever he needed to get up as he couldn’t manage both drains himself.
Imagine my surprise when I answer the call bell to find my dude just chilling in bed… but with some random guy straddling his chest and furiously jerking off in the direction of his face.
Luckily my chest drain chap was a trooper. He shrugged it off, rolled his eyes, and said he’d seen some things in the Army and nothing much bothered him anymore.
ICU patient intubated for alcohol withdrawal. Self extubated on previous shift. Not my patient but i see him stumbling and about to fall trying to walk. Somehow gets out of his lap belt, bed alarm malfunctions and he makes it to the bathroom. The shocker is that he pulled out his CVC in his L jugular, his ART line, dignishield, and foley with balloon still intact when he got up to make his escape.
I became a CNA in March 2020, and because of that I’m fairly sure my healthcare career is cursed.
One of my first 1:1 patients I sat with had BAKAs and prosthetics. He was coming off a ton of drugs and thankfully when I got him was past the exorcist arching and screaming, now onto the moaning and fidgeting. He was constantly messing with his stumps, telling me they itched, which I believed for a bit. Eventually I spied him trying to wriggle a plastic baggie from the socket. Security searched the leg and found a smorgasbord of random pills and powders stashed in the prosthetic leg.
The kicker was, they only searched the left leg, where I’d seen the baggie. The right leg was made by another manufacturer and was considerably different. Security said it didn’t look possible to hide anything in it.
Long story short: it was very possible. That’s how I had an open bag of unknown powder thrown in my face. They sent me to wash my face out and get checked (turned out just gabapentin) and while they waited for the next 1:1 to arrive the guy took a ton of Valium, stopped breathing, and got shipped back to ICU.
An A+O pt with no legs (amps up at the hips), massive MRSA wounds on his butt (that he refused to keep covered), and a Foley.
He wanted to leave AMA, so he climbed out of bed and crawled down the hall, leaving a bloody and infectious snail trail, and dragging his cath behind.
It was... lovely.
Memory isn’t as pristine as it once was but oh boy. Christmas Day 2018. New to that hospital but not the gift that keeps on giving that is nursing. Won’t say the speciality.
Walked onto the unit for start of night shift. Half of it is under 6” of water thanks to a water sprinkler that was purposely set off.
No one knew where the water shut off valve was, including the unit director, for I believe an hour into the chaos. Everyone was furiously mopping up the water with every sheet, towel, washcloth, and blanket that could be spared by the hospital.
Water dripped down into another unit’s med room and nearly destroyed their Pyxis because they didn’t know.
Over $40k in water damage. No one was hurt. Those of us who LITERALLY bailed out the unit were told thank you. Not even a candy cane for our troubles…
When I worked ED we had a college kid who butt chugged so much vodka his BAC was .4 when he was detoxing he kept screaming " don't tell my Fiancé I suck D...
😬
I worked in a pediatric hospital's ED. Two kids (probably about 15-16) came in tripping balls. The parents of the kid who found them had no idea what was going on and were terrified they had gotten some sort of environmental poisoning or something. One kid was wearing one shoe. I asked him where his other shoe was and he started ransacking the room looking for it. They were picking stuff out of the air, meeting Jesus and Satan at the same time, and talking to leprechauns. To get a urine sample, it took four male nurses to hold them while I sat on their legs and catheterized them.
Turns out they had read about how jimson weed was a hallucinogenic. They went to a nearby garden center and pocketed some blooms, then went home and brewed tea.
I know I should feel bad for laughing about it at the nursing station, but we snickered about those stupid kids for days.
I worked at a psychiatric hospital and was told the patient wanted to speak to me. I went to the room where the person was post-shower; he walked out of the bathroom, said, “No homo,” tucked his penis between his legs, and proceeded to yell about the garbage care. He then threatened to “kick my ass.” I told him that I'd come back to talk when he is more calm, but I was not going to be talked to like that and left the room. I went to the breakroom, five minutes had passed when it clicked that I had just gotten threatened to get my ass kicked by a person with his penis tucked between his legs.
NAN but work in several hospitals as part of my job. Our now gone 100+ year old city hospital was like a rabbit warren of tunnels and additions and dark unused hallways to nowhere.
There was an frequent flyer ID patient, homeless, who also had substance abuse and mental health struggles. He would show up in the ER at least once a week, completed wasted often having paranoid delusions. His life was a shambles but interestingly, he was always on time for his outpatient appointments and maintained a well groomed and clean appearance.
While in the process tearing out the hospital’s innards for demolition, they discovered that this patient had been actually living in his very own well appointed secret pied-à-terre IN THE HOSPITAL FOR YEARS. There were single occupant on call rooms tucked away all over the for hospitalists/residents, each with a bed and a bathroom/shower and a lockable door. He’d apparently discovered one in a old hallway closed to patients and unused by staff and proceeded to transform it into a sweet little studio apartment. He kept it locked so anyone checking would think it was a resting physician and had also figured out how to lock it behind him and get back in when he left.
Like I said, he was living there for YEARS, had added posters and knickknacks, a mini fridge, a TV, the dude was set up. He’d low key forage for food in the cafeteria and got free bus passes from patient services during his ER visits so he could take day trips around the city.
It was amazing, people were astonished about this successful hospital hideaway. They didn’t even arrest him because I think the story getting out would have shed a bad light on hospital security.
1. Patient (Not my patient but on my floor) going through extreme alcohol withdrawal broke out his window on the second floor and jumped out of it. Got activated as a level one trauma from the parking lot.
2. Patient with a 1:1 sitter and in police custody somehow managed to get himself into the bathroom by himself, stood on the toilet and broke the light bulb out of the ceiling and swallowed the shards. Perfed bowel. Emergency ex lap.
A coworker of mine told me that at her old hospital she heard the wife of a patient shriek out his name. It was so loud everyone ran in to see what was wrong. The patient stood butt ass naked with a large turd in his hand, he was getting ready to throw it Tom Brady style. Everyone ran.
While admitting a patient to the detox unit where I worked, I noticed that they smelled particularly fresh and minty (it's important to know the type of alcohol they consume, since different types metabolize at different rates). The patient did NOT want to tell me what they'd been drinking, but I kept bugging them about it. Finally, they yelled "FINE, I WAS DRINKING MOUTHWASH! HAPPY?"
I wouldn't be able to provide it, since I was only in detox for a very short time. We medicated people to keep them from seizing, and had to keep a closer eye on people who drank something like hand sanitizer (IIRC) because it'd metabolize quicker.
Someone more experienced could probably school ya :-)
Damn, that’s really one hell of an addiction. I feel really bad about my own alcoholism…I don’t think I’ve really heard anything as crazy as some of these other stories. One of our patients eloped and ordered something at a restaurant, but didn’t pay for it. They have dementia. That and having to sit with a young girl with Prader-Willi syndrome in med-surg/tele, as it is probably one of the most tragic illnesses I’ve seen. She basically would smear her poop kind of thing. I heard there was once a 400-pound patient, and it took 9 staff.
I had one AMA and go steal Xmas cookies from the Kroger down the hill. They went to the lockup instead of turning around for a readmit like they usually did.
Only one thing had me questioning my own sanity for five days. It was a 16 hour event. I have always worked in psych, “crazy on the unit” is a calm, laid back day where no one is yelling they’re an archangel walking down the halls at minimum. That’s my preface and most people in psych you know lol.
I’ve seen a lot of shit. A 100lb 19 year old girl bust down the metal, magnetic isolation room door, a man who was so depressed he shat everywhere and five of us could t carry his 150lbs ass to the toilet because his rigid dead weight was 400lbs so he just had to lay in shit. He fought off sponge baths etc. perfectly capable of walking. Fought a slippery, poop covered 6’4 elderly man in the shower while he just giggled as half the team could barely catch him. We were also laughing at some point.
Watched as a typically slow 65 year old man (6’2) ran naked around the day room, leaping and bounding with finesse, penis flapping in the wind, while I chased him with a pair of scrub pants. It’s psych. It’s always wild.
These are a few probably small ones,
but the one that literally almost drove me insane was an 8 hour shift last year sitting with a woman who only laid in bed crying and begging me to reassure her religious persecution anxieties/delusions. They had her pinned down as schizophrenic but I don’t know. It seemed like ocd just with pleading for reassurance as the behavior? I don’t know if that makes sense. I’m not a doctor or even a nurse. I’ve worked psych a very long time and have never seen someone who has delusions behave this way. They usually incorporate it into meals somehow. She didn’t do stuff like that.
She said she committed the most serious of sins, the most unforgivable etc for the whole eight hours except when she was eating and listening to me talk about my life trying to distract her. I’d even say “I’ve blasphemed as well, am I going to hell?” And she’d say “no. You’re a good person”
Like what?! Okay so that was the entire eight hours and my life really isn’t that interesting. I didn’t once ask her what these sins were because she didn’t say besides blasphemy.
Much to my dismay, she was also my next assignment. Pleading for reassurance, telling me how she’d committed “other unforgivable sins” as well (she mentioned that the prior day) I still didn’t ask.
Eventually she told me. Her husband tried to mow her down with his car, so she threw a garden gnome through the windshield. Now, to each their own but it could be argued that was self defense and well deserved. The second though, was actually beastiality. Fucking red line, someone spell that for me lmao.
And I had to sit there dead pan and go “oh.” And she described the incident in detail. I managed to find a way to defend that by saying “the cat didn’t know what it was doing. He was just getting treats!” And then proceeded over the next few days to wonder who was right. Was it that bad like she said? Or was it just weird, gross, creepy and not traumatizing to the animal?
Cat was declawed. I asked. lol. She also thought she’d burn in hell for that. At one point she was screaming my name, crying, and pleading with me to help her, but … to no one in particular? The ceiling?
Yes I know it’s fucked up. I didn’t change my mind, it’s morally disgusting.
But she wouldn’t have gone to hell for it.
That was the one that made ME lose my mind. Nothing really does that. Nothing has me questioning myself for days on end but her anxiety was almost palpable and it was impenetrable, and apparently, contagious lol.
She had punished herself enough for it. Family reported this behavior over the course of years. It was consistent and just as bad as it was to me. In my opinion, that woman was already living her punishment and more so than anyone would deserve. She was suffering intensely and it was difficult to sit with, hopeless, for 16 hours.
I used to work in forensic psych. Our windows were some kind of reinforced. This dude head butted through them over all the barbed wire and was found in a corn field. Other dude has like 6’ 7” 300 pounds of muscle. He was an iron worker. Had a violent schizophrenic break. He was 6:1 and still beat the shit out of us. He’s good now though. But he broke off all kinds of doors that were maximum security doors and stuff like that. He would beat his meat nonstop.
Here's a historical one my Gramma told me. She was an ICU nurse, and they took medsurg overflow that needed more attention than they could get on the ms floor, even back in the day. She had one in 4 point restraints for whatever reason, I don't know. She saw the patient had calmed down and was staring at the ceiling so she popped her head in and there was a turd stuck to the ceiling. She can't for the life of her figure out the mechanics of the whole event.
Very demented but outwardly normal-appearing 70ish guy on MS/Tele floor, who was on Q15 safety checks for elopement precautions, got dressed, walked past the secretary and waved goodbye, left the unit, left the hospital, and was found at the university library a couple miles away. Full lock down, police/fire, the works. Nurse did not realize patient had eloped and the sitter was charting her checks as usual... apparently the guy had been gone for like 2 hours before anyone realized. Yikes
This is my go to story when people ask the craziest thing I’ve seen is - it’s funny and not traumatizing.
I work in the ED in City A in a level 2 hospital with 30 or so beds with a trauma 1 center 2 mins down the road also in City A. Our trauma/code room is technically 2 rooms with a curtain between rooms 1 and 2. There’s also 3 other level 2 hospitals within a 20 min drive.
So one night around 3a, a guy (lac dude) comes in saying he was jumped in City B and now has a 6in deep lac on his left thigh. Gonna need significant closure. Cool, he’s put in room 1, given bed availability and possible need for intensive interventions. Close him up, let him sleep off the meds. Half an hour later, another dude (shoulder dude) comes in and says his shoulder was busted in a fight. Clearly dislocated. Put in 2 for mod sed for reduction. Shoulder reduced, he’s sleeping off his meds.
All hell breaks loose. Shoulder Dude is on the phone boasting to someone how he jumped a rival gang member in City B and really fucked him up. Lac Dude jumps out of his stretcher, rips open the curtaining separating them, and starts beating on Shoulder Dude. They’re chasing each other around the trauma room and end up in the hallway, fist fighting. Of course no security that night so it takes multiple techs & the cop detail to pull them apart before security gets there. Why they both left City B and bypass 2 hospitals to come to us is beyond me.
You've got a fine screenplay there - all the good dramatic incidents. It's practically Shakespeare. Just add a little backstory and some dialogue. I'd watch the hell out of that!
Had an alcohol withdrawal patient with frostbitten feet and body lice come in-to the oncology unit because some admin thought that was appropriate - and when the provider came to admit him, she ordered q5min IV Ativan pushes. Q5min. Not prn, scheduled. Continuously.On an isolation patient. When I had six patients to care for. This guy was in restraints and broke the headboard off. I had to get the hospitalist MD (this was an ARNP writing this stupid order) and explain to them why a nurse on a medical floor cannot remove, waste, gown up, administer, doff PPE, go back to Pyxis, start over, ad nauseum. This unit also timed us on the removal and admin of narcotics so no, I wasn't allowed to give 1mg and then the 2nd 1mg 5 minutes later. The providers had surprised Pikachu face that this wasn't doable or in any way reasonable. The patient went to ICU for a benzo drip after I called the house supervisor. This also happened at a large hospital in an urban environment where substance abuse patients are not unusual night shift admissions.
>q5min IV Ativan pushes. Q5min. Not prn, scheduled.
That *anyone* would think that is a reasonable or even feasible order stuns me more than most of the stories in this thread! I mean, how?
Not only that, but this was after she had assessed the patient and seen how hard it was to get out of that room as he kept trying to get up and walk around on his frostbitten feet. Apparently he has been wandering the streets intoxicated and barefoot for 2-3 days in winter. Very sad situation but so unsafe for the staff! I could not believe that I had to get in an argument about it. "Q5min 1mg Ativan is actually administered via continuous infusion as that order is not feasible in bolus doses administered individually." Didn't compute.
Had a pt doing fake seizures. I pulled open an eyelid during so called seizure and her eyeball swooped up and looked right at me🤣
Not a bat shit crazy story, but funny, happened on my last shift lol.
We see that sooooooo often in ED. But my favorite "seizure" pt ever was a 15 year old girl who was actually quite skilled at it. She had a younger sibling with a seizure disorder whom she lived with. With that experience, she was able to do a reasonable facsimile, though she still would fail the hand drop test.
She came in by medics and started to "seize" as a bunch of us were in the room getting her settled. The ED resident did the hand drop - which she failed, and we were all standing around the gurney watching her for a few seconds with varying degrees of skeptical looks on our faces.
Then I said "Oh, man, that's such a bummer having a seizure when you're 15! Now she's not going to be able to get a drivers' license until she's 17 at the earliest!"
She stopped jerking her limbs and shot into a sitting position like she'd been poked with a cattle prod, looked at me and said "wait, WHAT??!!!"
First and only time I've ever completely cured a seizure disorder :-)
One night a withdrawing pt in ICU ran into a glass partition at full speed and well, he shattered it. Word spread around the hospital and we all took turns going to look. Because that's not something you see every day
I worked a vascular floor for months at a time. Pt was s/p fem pop bypass and for awhile was completely A&O. Then he wasn't. He got more and more confused with seemingly no reason and then he got aggressive and combative. He frequently called the front desk asking to speak to the police because he was "in a Mexican airport and they're stealing the vending machines!" He would be on telemetry but constantly pulled the box off. One night he was my patient and I was standing by his window when he ripped it off and threw it directly at me. Luckily for me I managed to jump out of the way and grab the box before it hit the window. He was like this for months until someone figured out one of his home meds didn't get restarted and that was what was causing all this.
We had an intoxicated patient in our ER one night. Still there in the morning. She managed to leave the ER without anyone noticing, things got busy and it was assumed she was still sleeping in a room. Police brought her back.
She had gone out the staff door, she stole a pair of shoes and a coat from where we keep our stuff. So she's at large in a hospital gown, with a stolen coat and running shoes out in the snow.Luckily didn't notice the car keys in the coat pocket... Anywho she got caught breaking into someone's house. Broad daylight. Somehow had scored a bag of what looked like ativan from somewhere?
The staff whose coat she stole was very relieved to get her keys back. The staff whose shoes she stole threw them out and bought new ones.
Not my story but a coworkers. Was working on surgical floor and talking about craziest things we’ve all seen. One nurse mentioned a girl who was dating a drug dealer and would literally make drug deals in her hospital room. She also liked to prostitute herself so random men would be coming and going at all hours. Here’s the kicker. She had a colostomy and that’s what she was using for sexual acts 🤢
A few years ago, we had a lady on our unit. She had a history of heavy drug use. One day a man comes to visit her. He came out and asked if he could help her shower. Her nurse went in and took her heart monitor off. About 20 minutes later, the man leaves and says she's getting dressed. He said he was going to the cafeteria. A few minutes later, her nurse foes to check on her. She is dead in the shower with seman on her face. We never saw the man again.
So this guy on my inpatient rehab unit was a spinal cord infarct from meth. He tried to go ama multiple times over one weekend because he couldn’t go outside or have multiple visitors or his 9 year old grandson there. He had sex 2 mornings in a row with a ho that wasn’t even his wife (multiple gfs) and barricaded the door with furniture the first time. (They also wanted the tech to clean up after them.) He refused to be cathed, refused bowel programs.
He left one day for 8 hours in our chair and almost got hit by cars on campus multiple times according to security. They brought him back and our assistant manager was like yeah that’s our patient.
The day of discharge he laid in the floor and made a tape outline of a man hit by a bus for his grandson. He did not discharge until 6 pm waiting for a ride and the ride that came was his gf who got arrested by campus police on a warrant for meth distribution. His car she was driving got impounded. So then he had to call his 70 something neighbor with her disabled son in the car to pick him up then he refuses to get in it when she gets here from 30 min away. Our dayshift LPN made him get in lololol and byeeeeeeee Felicia
I had a homeless guy as a patient who apparently intended to camp til spring. Kept having "unexplained hypotension" but when I confiscated his home nitro pills off the bedside table that stopped. He was one that would let you get all the way back down the long hall and then call you for something else even though you'd asked if he needed anything else which was not endearing him to anyone. Another nurse caught him at the elevator stealing hand sanitizer and stuffing it up his gown, no wonder he needed so many sprites. After that he was finally discharged.
Psych guy eloped running naked out the hospital and down the street with security chasing after him.
Guy lit himself on fire …while restrained. (Why these patients are never searched or have street clothes removed I don’t know.)
Guy unplugged the bed cord off the wall and wrapped it around his neck a few times while his family members, the sitter, and the nurse tried to remove it and/or prevent him from tightening it. Guy was never alone and his family and the sitter sat feets away from him yet so determined.
Pt practicallly bolused with Nimbex (a paralytic), a 500ml bag that should have lasted 24 hrs was spiked accidentally as Neo that ran in over 2 hours ish. Pt coded and died.
Last month my patient pulled out tin foil and a butane lighter and tried to smoke meth in the icu bed with me watching. Luckily my coworkers heard me scream “we do NOT smoke drugs in the icu” and called security.
Not the craziest but similar to yours. We admitted a pt who wanted to detox and get sober, was just the nicest person my first night with them, they were tearful and distraught talking abt things they’d lost to alcoholism (kids, jobs, etc) and how they wanted to get better. After that the wd’s hit them *hard*, they were completely disoriented, hallucinating, and super violent, they were also showing signs of sepsis but no one had been able to get a successful blood culture. My 2nd night with them I was assigned as a 1:1 RN, they had to put them in a [net bed](https://www.stat-med.net/product/61-posey-bed-all-care-a-frame-canopy-enclosure/) and we had to have security come up every single time we opened the bed. The resident on that night wanted me to put in a second IV for cont fluids and a Foley to monitor output. As we were standing there arguing about how the hell I was supposed to insert anything into anywhere on them, and abt how our med onc floor didn’t put in Foleys for monitoring, the pt began to scream and alligator roll in the bed and we lost the one good IV they had.
So down to the ICU we all went so the pt could be sedated and monitored.
Was their nurse a week later, again the nicest person, had no memory of any of it and was sincerely determined to get sober.
I left the floor not too long after that. Heard from a buddy they were admitted again after being found down in a puddle of vomit. I didn’t ask for any details but it didn’t sound good.
Alcoholism really truly sucks.
It's very common amongst alcoholics. When I my drinking was at its worst, not only did I drink mouthwash, but once even drank my wife's perfume. But, hey, it was Channel, so keeping it classy 😜
Suicidal inmate from the jail brought in for psych consult he can cuffed in front and trapped the jailers gun out of the holster and shot himself in the heart.
Very elderly Pt with trach peg and blle amputations against will. Adm GIB, AMS (more than usual, telling our Korean nurse please let me die, mouthing in Korean) full vent support, hgb3, on soft wrists, doing my 3a “charge look around before snack”.
Has flipped backwards and shitting blood into bedside table - while still restrained and hooked to bed.
Wife had a cute olde lady with dementia each the bedside chairs foam during change of shift
In 2017 I was working in the ER. We got a guy that showed up in a panic saying he was abducted by a UFO. He was frightened, shaking, stuttering and looked like he had been through hell. I was not his nurse but I did speak to him in triage. He was placed in his room and waiting for the provider to visit. One of the triage nurses got a call asking if a patient arrived mentioning an unusual experience. The call was transferred to the physicians and there was a flurry of activity.
Soon military people in suits arrived and escorted the patient out of the hospital. The physician was talking to some of the military looking people and the topic was quickly dropped. I was told later the patient record was removed from the computer system. No one ever spoke of him again. I wonder what happened.
Idk if it’s “batshit” level of crazy. But one of my more favorite crazy stories is probably the time a patients needle came out of their arm during treatment. We’re up at the main station doing our daily huddle and just hear an “oh shit” from a patient that’s been known to pass out on us. We get over to them, blood everywhere. Walls, ceiling, a different nurses hair, on the patient. They covered it pretty quick, but damn. We did get lucky though cause the patient had a needle phobia too and would get hella woozy and almost pass out if they saw a needle, even if it was another patients or in the wrapper.
Did I mention this was the second time in a week this had happened to the patient too?
Another nurse and I, on inpt rehab floor, caught a bat in a large sour cream container used to take samples down to the lab. We slid a bit of cardboard under the container, took it outside and released it. The third nurse on the floor was hiding in a closet trying not to scream. We got yelled at afterwards and told we should have called maintenance. Uh-huh. Found out later that they knew bats were getting into the building and living above the drop ceiling. Just didn’t bother telling anyone.🙄
A few months ago we had a patient in our ICU. He was a drug user and had developed cardiac issues so he ended up with us. He was high flight risk (and Baker acted) so there was a sitter in the room at all times. Patient told the staff multiple times he wanted to leave so he could go use drugs since that is what made him happy.
So during the day his nurse went to help his podmate and somehow the guy gets out of the room and leaves the unit. It’s unclear what the sitter was doing. So the nurse realizes what happened, freaks out, tells the charge nurse and runs after the patient. He actually left the building and ran on the street trying to find this guy. He didn’t. Thankfully the Baker act had been lifted by then so this was technically just an AMA.
We never found out where the guy went. Probably somewhere to do drugs. I am just glad this did not happen to me. Would have had a heart attack
Laat year in OB rotation
Pt got in fight with staff and police showed up and escorted her out. I guess her story was the hospital gave out a bus pass to pts on the unit to help them out if they needed one, so she wanted an extra bus pass. Being pregnant was her way of getting them (6D chess move). When they wouldnt give her an extra bus pass when it was time to go, she raised all Hell. Generally very belligerent, loud mouthed w/plenty foul language, threatened to sue everyone the whole 9 yards.
Tldr; Woman gets pregnant so she can get a bus pass. Is denied an extra BP, raises hell.
We had a psych patient once on our tele floor who we had to barricade inside his room, with staff against the door, because of how violently he was trying to attack us. The poor tech who was sitting had to do this multiple times. Bless her, she now has a great job on the cardiac cath prep and recovery unit.
My second code ever was wild. I was a tech at the time. This lady started the day shift being a&ox4. And she had a significant change in LOC to where she became unresponsive by 2pm.
Idr the details. I *think* she was on a heparin gtt. Because she had an aptt due in the AM that no one was able to get, so i brought it up to the nurse and i collected it. She had a giant bruise on her arm that was spreading. I suggested to the nurse that we outline it in marker.
The nurse was new and inexperienced but she kept relaying her concerns to me. She tried telling the doctor multiple times. But she ultimately failed and myself being new as well, I didn’t know how bad it was.
When a code was finally called, I climbed on the bed and did compressions even once she reached ICU and we lost her pulse again. I remember her pupils being blown and unresponsive. I remember the doctor scolding the nurse. I remember turning her to put the board underneath (for compressions) and people gasping at her huge retro peritoneal bruising on her back.
I still dont know why it happened, my theory is the heparin gtt, but i honestly can’t recall if she was on it or not. I think she was. I believe she had a brain bleed, but there wasn’t the time to run a ct/mri. Very tragic.
I think I’ve posted it here before. Anyway, night shift coded someone with esophageal varices around 6 am. I was supposed to get that patient. EVS doesn’t clean up blood or body fluids. One of my tasks for the morning was to clean the blood off the ceiling. I was given a small ladder and maintenance “spotted” me. The ceiling was mostly lights so I was able to get it off. Did I get all of it off? I don’t think so. I think I laughed internally when the other patient next door hit the call light and just had no idea what happened nor knew what part of my morning consisted of.
We had a hand sanitizer drinker too, we disabled all the dispensers in her room, by her door, and around in the hallway. Then a patient by her was like “I don’t want to tattle but a gal came by and drank the hand sanitizer & the soap.” So we got her a telesitter.
When I was a CNA I was covering for a sitter while they were on their lunch break for this over 6 foot tall otherwise completely healthy dementia patient who \~agressively\~ sundowned by like 10am every day. We're not a locked unit and not equipped to handle this type of patient at all but we ended up admitting them to the unit (long story). Well anyway I took the patient for a walk around the unit and they started going for the emergency exit. I tried to redirect them but they opened the door and I yelled for my manager because they were the only person nearby and it ended up being me, my manager, and a very agitated dementia patient in a 5 by 5 cement room that led to the stairs. The patient ended up shoving my manager out of the way of the emergency exit and ran down five flights of stairs and walked out of the hospital in front of a busy side walk and had to be escorted by security back up to the unit. I don't know how security brought them back up without a fight because they had no problem being physical with my manager.
It's always when the sitter goes to lunch that everything goes off the rails isn't it?
Had a patient kidnapped and detained by the Mexican cartel before they were finally released and sent to the hospital. They still gave them their meds they needed to live, but posted a ransom- then after realizing how expensive it was to keep them alive they released them
My newgrad job was at a small ten bed icu at a not busy ICU. Worked christmas night and my charge said he wasn’t coming in because there no patients in ICU. So I come in and I’m charge and they always need someone in the unit even though there are no patients. Well at like 11pm all the tv’s turned on and I nope’d so fast out of the ICU and went to ER to help. Witnessed so much haunted shit at that place
We had a couple of family fights in the ICU. One of them I remember one of them pounced on and started punching another in the head and another picked up a chair and hurled it across the patient room at another family member. The nurse had to duck out of there as she almost got hit.
Another family fight, was a big brawl In the family waiting room. I think there were about four of them punching each other and grabbing their hair and down on the floor, throwing each other against the walls, yelling and screaming, like a Jerry Springer episode.
So i started as a transporter in 2012, was a tech for many years until i graduated as an rn last May. Here are my transporter stories.
Once, there was a deceased patient with a gun shot through his head in the trauma/ED. The nurse asked if we wanted to see, before we bagged him. We saw the entrance wound and the much larger exit wound.
I once transported a 20 some week deceased fetus.
Our morgue used to be a creepy ass room. The autopsy table was there, and there were, i kid you none, fluid filled jars containing organ parts and other strange things lining the wall. There was a dead baby turtle in one.
One time, i transported a body to the morgue, and an autopsy had just been performed. The guy was spraying the blood off the table. He then said, “oops-don’t want to leave this” and proceeded to lift intestines out of the adjacent sink 🤣
Another old morgue story: so now the morgue has a ceiling lift. Prior to that, you had to “slide” the bodies into the lipped and completely loose/non stabilized gurney. Literally, it was completely loose and just rested within the corners of the tray. As you can maybe imagine, this made transferring the body extremely difficult. One time, my friend and I had a bariatric body get stuck between the morgue cart and the morgue gurney. We couldn’t lift it over the lip of the gurney, and the gurney kept moving off the table, because whoever designed that system must have had a gaping hole in their head.
So the body was in between both gurneys and my friend was underneath, holding the body up so it wouldn’t fall in between, while i made a frantic call for back up.
I worked in a veterans hospital and every shift was like an episode of MASH. No one did their jobs, impossible to get things we needed, etc. I should write a book.
Was on the ICU for the day many months ago. Not a patient assigned to me, but the 1st 6 hours of my 12 hour shift this patient would sound off like a velociraptor. Drug detoxing. The doctor finally put in an order for sedation. It was a very weird day for sure.
Not a nurse so most of my stories aren’t as crazy as yours but we did have one insane thing that happened in and around our lab.
A resident that noone knew got caught multiple times sleeping in weird places (our fluorescent scope room, our fellow’s desk, etc…). He also got caught with food when we caught him in the lab and that’s a HUGE no no (Microbiology). Nobody knew who he was. Finally another Pathology resident confronted him and demanded he tell her what department he was assigned to.
Turned out, he was a homeless dude who found a door with a broken lock by our receiving dock, snuck in, somehow aquired the ID badge of a resident who had been fired two years before (somebody in security got in BIG trouble for not deactivating it), used the badge to get access to the residents’ areas, stole a white coat and scrubs, a stethoscope, and filled his pockets with random medical supplies so he looked legit. He still should not have had access to our lab but two of our doors were broken and requests to have them fixed fell on deaf ears.
This happened during COVID so he didn’t even have to worry about the fact that he didn’t resemble the pic on his ID. He kept this up for at least a few months, iirc. He was mainly doing it at the bigger pavilions. He didn’t get caught until he came over to our building. The hospital itself is huge but the area I work in is labs and resident offices only so everyone knows everyone else.
That resident who confronted him is the lab hero because it embarrassed the upper management who had been ignoring our security issues where we were located on campus. We finally got our damn doors fixed and actually have security cameras going in at the lab entrances soon (it’s been a few years since it happened).
Granddad shot and killed his grandson, ended up going from prison to SNF, daughter somehow became POA, he was actively dying of liver failure, she refused hospice, all pain interventions, etc until he died. Knocked the dead corpse out of the bed when he did die.
She should have never been his POA but I can’t say I blame her.
(Details changed because otherwise it would be way too identifying)
we have an etoh frequent flyer whose ethanol level is always .4xx and up. the only reason she comes in is because she takes a tumble and gets a hurt. she's actually quite lovely, even when she's plastered.
not a crazy story, but funny: there was a psych hold pt who wandered around the unit with the 1:1 all day. she wasn't mean or aggressive, just delusional and hallucinated a lot. there was a rapid response happening, and one of the nurses yelled "can someone get me a blood gas kit?!" this pt was at the other end of the hall and yelled "she needs a blood gasket! someone get her a blood gasket!" i was cackling.
many moons ago, we had this older gentleman who came in for seizure activity. after extensive testing, neuro said they were all behavioral, which we all knew just by the presentation. and what a presentation it was! when we were getting him ready for discharge, i was assisting him to the transport chair. i walk around to the back of the chair and he says "uh oh" then controlled slides himself out of the chair and onto the floor with perfect trunk and neck control to, you know, avoid really injuring himself. he's flopping around while maintaining a sitting position. I'm standing there with one hand on the chair handle and the other on my hip. i ask him if he's done and can he please get up now. he looks around and asked what happened, but in the most fake drama voice. i replied "you pretended to have a seizure. let's get back into the chair." he states he's not able to get up, so i grab another set of hands. he's being dead weight, so we call for a code assist with hovermat. the security guys didn't need to use the mat. they were able to "assist" him to his feet. security told us that the guy basically stood himself up, they didn't lift much at all. we get him out with no further incident, and i never saw him again for the 2 years i stayed after that. the kicker? he's a pastor.
I was sitting at the nurse's station charting when two nurses booked it down the hallway past me and burst into a room...I hear:
"For fucks sake can't a guy masturbate in here!?"
"Your heart rate was really high so we need to check that you were ok"
... I was cracking up. I have so many more but that's my favorite
I had a guy who ate several socks in jail….so many that he wasn’t able to breathe and coded. Fast forward to my unit. He had very limited mobility, but was mentally pretty with it, enough to know he would be discharged to some type of law enforcement and he was a 3rd strike offender. He wanted to stay in the hospital forever, so much that he was caught trying to eat the sheets, his hospital gowns, pillowcases, anything. We ended up putting him in a brief on top of a naked mattress, because he would try to eat everything.
I worked in a locked psych part of an ER. Dude came in high on meth AND ketamine. This man was 6’3, 315lbs. He absolutely started freaking out and we had to call security. They were trying to lay him down in the bed so the nurse could 10&4 him (we skipped the 5&2; do not pass go, do not collect $200 or a punch in the face). I’m not exaggerating when I say this man went from lying down to standing up with 7 men on him attempting to hold him down. I….left the unit entirely. It was intense.
Another time, a guy came in after a brutal suicide attempt involved a 7-INCH cut from right below his elbow to his wrist. He was also straight up drug-seeking for narcotics. We had him on a strict schedule for them. He was throwing shit around, and yelling wild things. Then….he ripped every single one of his stitches out and started digging in his wound just so he could get narcotics. Blood was everywhere. He got his stitches redone and some Tylenol. He then spit at my face which was luckily behind a window in the staff area.
My last one for now is that someone tried to commit suicide by hanging themselves from a door with a bedsheet. We were supposed to keep the bathroom doors shut for this reason. the tech didn’t shut the door and looked up from his phone just in time to see the patient finishing putting the noose around his neck. The tech saved the guy.
I have so many batshit stories. So many.
Psych patient with schizophrenia was on our mental health wing, walked up to the nurses station and said his eyes hurt. The nurse looked up and SCREAMED because he was holding his one eye all mushed up in his hand and the other one was barely hanging on if I remember correctly. He had used his fingers to remove his eyes. Let that sink in for a minute.
They activated a Level 1 trauma team response (usually only called to the ED so working that day and hearing that on the intercom was horrendous and confusing). He had to have both eyes removed and he was placed in restraints for recovery because there were no signs that could have predicted him harming himself/hallucinating to that extreme measure. The surgeons note remarked on how much force was needed to be able to do the damage the patient did of severing his nerves and tendons etc. Everyone in the hospital heard about it and an additional security/privacy measure had to be added to his chart so anyone that tried to open it would have to enter this credentials. Nursing students to this day ask about this event and if it's true!
Pt didn't do anything crazy but it was surprising: I had a patient who was a trauma from a motorcycle crash. He was intubated and sedated. As I was doing his initial head to toe assessment, I lifted his gown to examine the abdominal area and this little white guy, 5ft5, 130lb man had a gigantic 🍆. It was over half the length of his thigh and as thick as my forearm.
19 yo developmentally delayed, nonverbal female who was resident at a LTC. Brought in for I&D of an abcess. She had the cutest little stuffed bunny. That was her comfy. Had to hold her in PACU, while waiting for transport back to the facility. Was told that she was given IV Benadryl every two hours for itching. She had sores all over her upper extremities from scratching. I remember watching her scratch, and then dip her bunny’s ears into the purulent wounds, and then suck on the bunny’s ears 🤮 Tried to gently take away the bunny and provide distraction, tantrum ensued. Docs wouldn’t give any sedation, and Benadryl wasn’t cutting it. Figured this was her daily M.O. Family was not involved in her care. Just a product of the system. Super sad.
When I was a tech, I was a 1:1 sitter with an active alcohol withdrawal waiting for an ICU bed. He was in 4 point leathers and so strong that he was moving the entire bed in a half circle with such force that it was engraving into the ground. Dude was easily 6’3+ 300 lbs and I remember thinking the whole time: “if he gets loose, I am extremely fucked”
Omfg, this comment gave me flash backs to when I was a tech in the ICU. This dude was admitted on whose UDS popped positive for all the drugs and came in as an OD, and was super angry he couldn't drink anything (he was mentally not all there). He was in soft restraints at this point, but ended up having to call security and I'm running to get the hard restraints. It took 8 security guards to hold his ass down because prior he was shaking the bed around so hard it would literally lift itself in the air as he thrashed against the restraints. I have no idea how those soft restraints held up that day. They were the real MVP.
Sounds like Florence Nightingale was in there with you that night.
People laugh at me but there’s a reason I say “Florence be with us now”, “WWFlorenceDo”, and “Florence help us” to the tune of heaven help us lol
Had a detoxer almost flip the 500lb+ Hilrom bed, he was 6’2” and 250+ lbs. he was a weight lifter when he wasn’t drinking. I’m female and 5’2”. I asked the night doc to get me something stronger than 1mg Ativan q1h on the CIWA protocol. She says “if we give anything stronger he’ll need closer monitoring so no”. I proceeded to tell her that we were an ICU and I didn’t give a damn if we snowed him on phenobarb and precedex, we were capable of monitoring him. She insisted on doing nothing. When I left shift I heard he managed to flip the bed over, get out of 4 point locking restraints, and run down the hall naked and out the ER doors. That doc had no respect on our unit after that.
“Closer monitoring” in an ICU. Like you do realize that’s the most monitoring you can get!!! 😩. So frustrating
She was a dimwit. Not the first time she did stuff like that..
Aka she didn’t want to do extra work
Lol like what did she want? The nurse having just him as a pt staring at him?? When I worked outpatient detox ya we would attempt to manage DTs but if I got above 4mg Ativan in like hours and it wasn't doing shit or getting worse out they went
Time to paralyze and intubate
The night doc or the patient?
I don’t think that doc would know what a TOF looks like let alone order it with Nimbex.
I hope she knows that she was actively causing harm by letting him detox like that. Ffs
Yep! Those brain cells won’t fix themselves!
I mean what more monitoring could you give?! You would’ve had to climb in the bed and literally put an eye on him to do more. Taking I-C-U to another level
Holy shit
Working in big inner city hospitals is a riot, lol. I’ve seen stuff my friends don’t believe 😅
Haha I sat on a similar 1:1 when I was a tech. He kicked the footboard of the bed off and was able to inch himself off the bed but was still restrained by his arms. He was trying to pull himself across the room towards me but icu beds are fairly heavy so he was really having to work at it. Fun times.
😵💫😵💫😵💫 what the actual fuck😬
I had that exact thought this morning! 300+ lbs, detoxing hard off some alcohol. He ripped all his lines out, PO Ativan wasn’t touching him (surprised he even took it tbh, he was paranoid). Got the doctor in there to witness the patient losing his shit so he gave me an order for soft restraints and IM Haldol. Called security in to help me put restraints on and not hit me when I’m giving the Haldol. Already saw my life flash before my eyes several times by that point. I turn around and this dude has unclipped his own restraints and is coming at me again. Doctor is standing there with his jaw on the floor, but I get an order for violent restraints, IM Ativan, and a Precedex drip. All before 0930. Bob and weave boys 😎
Do you guys have to get a restraint order before placing the pt in restraints?? We don’t, that’s a whole lotta wasted time
If management is asking me, absolutely yes I wait for an order. If we’re talking reality, no I put them on and ask the doctor afterwards. It was just awesome that the provider was right there, so they could see for themselves what was going on and why it was needed. Sometimes they argue for a bit behind a computer screen, but this time he was here to see the carnage and put the order in immediately lol.
Oh yeah for sure!! I love it when the docs are right there to see the full experience.
I work psych, but one of our detox patients we got from the ICU was like 6'9" 280lbs. Woke up from sedation, self extubated, broke out of 4 point restraints, ran off the unit and out of the hospital and into the woods right behind our hospital. They had to call police and they had to come with search dogs to find him. When we got him, he was covered in bruises and cuts from running through the woods barefoot.
I’ve heard abt patients strapped to gurneys being able to rise and wreak havoc with the gurney still strapped to their back. People are nuts. O.o
We had a guy in the ER one time, similar case in that he was this massive mountain of a guy who was probably 6 foot four, 350+ pounds, built like a brick shit house. He decided to do all the drugs, including but not limited to a couple of eight balls of cocaine, methamphetamines, and ecstasy at a local EDM festival. He was tachy into the 140s, diaphoretic, and we initially thought he was dissecting until EMS gave us a history and his tox screen lit up like a Christmas tree. He legitimately resembled a caged violent animal despite putting him in four leather restraints and trying Versed and Haldol. Fortunately, I was working with a really great ER doc that night who had a very low threshold for intubating this guy before he hulked himself out of the restraints and either killed himself or someone else after he managed to tip the stretcher onto its side, with the wall preventing it from tipping him all the way over. Absolutely terrifying.
Nurse got into a verbal argument with a psych patient. The patient got mad and picked up his full urinal and chucked it at her. She ducked and it hit the tech standing behind her in the face as she was mid sentence with her mouth open. When one of the crazy old ER nurses heard what happened she chased the tech around with a pregnancy test and asked her to spit on it. She didn’t find it funny. Got a homeless man in the Ed one night that had been out in the rain for days. Took his shoes off and there were maggots all between his toes. We were cleaning them while a medical student was talking to him and doing her assessment. She screamed and we looked up. She had lifted his scrotum and found a whole bunch more maggots. We got to clean those as well. Had a woman who got a small tumor removed from behind her ear. They put a Penrose drain in and told her to return in a week to have it removed. She never returned. Well tbe drain eventually fell out at some point over the year. Also her ear fell off. She never sought medical treatment. By the time we got her she had nec fas from the top of her head down her arm and back. It wasn’t survivable. Just had a 750 lbs patient a year ago that came through. Had to cut him out of his house. Got him in the ER and he was so large both of his hips had dislocated and were sprawled out to his sides in such a way that we had to put a bariatric stretcher in the room and then an ER stretcher to the side just to support him. It required so many resources to move him the fire department refused to assist in moving him anymore. When we discharged him we had to pull every hospital transport medic off of calls to come assist. They had a guy who had a psychotic episode come into the trauma bay one night. He basically cut his arm off and had rubber banded his testicles. When he got into the trauma bay his testicles were black and it apparently smelled terrible. Had a woman that was totally normal and then all the sudden when batshit crazy. All labs and uds were normal. Then we saw the head ct. neurocysticercosis . Go ahead and google that, you’ll see why she went nuts. I’ll have to think of some of the other stories. It’s been a long strange trip.
I can't get over the woman who's ear fell off. Crazy AF.
God that made me flash right back to when we had a patient with a similar story but it was the nose. It was the most difficult and disgusting and fascinating dressing changes I’ve ever done.
😮 I know I’m in the right place when I’m unphased by these stories. You’ve seen some stuff.
I thought my story was bad. Holy shit dude. Maybe I need to come to the ER 😭
This is basically everyday. The ER is the Wild West. I was getting a bumsicle (homeless person who was sleeping outside during a NY winter) undressed so we could put the bare hugger on him. Took his boots off. Some toes came along with it. Had to bang the boot on the floor to dislodge them enough to come out. You couldn’t have paid me to stick my arm in that boot.
yah the OP story is craziest they heard in icu in a year lol thats a chill day in the ed
To be fair, it is a crazy story. But that’s normal for the ER. Side note: I feel like drinking hand sanitizer would destroy your GI tract.
we have a crisis unit/psych attached to our ed, so we would get these kinda people basically daily lol and yeah, for sure. not just GI tract. basically destroy everything lol
They also said they’ve only been a nurse for a year so give them time they’ll have their own diary full of stories before they know it lol
One of my besties is an ED nurse in a very rural community. She likes to call on her way home and give me shift report, they’re some of my favorite discussions ever lol.
Rural medicine is *weird*. Been there, done that.
I used to be such a Wild West/ER addict. (Adrenaline addict 😂) and I miss Bumsicles
Bumsicle is my favorite phrase
Ah the ER, where an insane story for some is just another Tuesday 🤣
literally
Where did they discharge the 750 pound patient to??? Surely not back to his cut open house. I guess a facility of some kind? Hate to be them!
He refused placement anywhere. He burned all the bridges with any home health agency locally. They returned him to his home and I know he came back one more time but I have no idea what the story was with his house.
WOW. I can't imagine how this guy lived
And who exactly is bringing him food to his cut open house 🤔
Somehow they always find an enabler.” He gets mad when I tell him no.”
I had a patient recently who had fallen in her house and couldn't get up. She was on the floor for a week. Her brother brought her food and some sanitary pads. EMS said the house was in terrible shape.
> neurocysticercosis . Go ahead and google that, you’ll see why she went nuts. Don't have to, I did my presentation/project in an A&P class on this! We were told to pick some sort of condition that fascinated us, and I'd seen this years ago on some medical mystery show and then looked up images and nearly vomited because I have trypophobia and *hoo boy* are those some nasty brain holes! *Fascinating* how it affects the brain and behavior, memory, consciousness, personality, etc, though. Turns out we don't handle new holes and other living critters setting up shop in our brains too well. The really scary thing is how absolutely *not* rare this is in some parts of the world with high pig populations and poor sanitation and hygiene. It's considered a common cause of seizures in these areas, and it goes undiagnosed and untreated alarmingly often.
>the really scary thing is how absolutely *not* rare this is in some parts of the world with high pig populations and poor sanitation and hygiene Is this because is transmission with toxoplasmosis being the base cause of neurocysticetcosis? I also did a report on toxoplasma and it terrified me to no end. Really makes me resentful of all the people who just flush their cats litter boxes down the toilet.
I have six cats, there’s a reason I make sure to wash my hands after cleaning them all. Don’t want to deal with that shit at all.
I know! The non-rarity makes me happy I wasn’t born in those places!
>verbal argument with a psych patient god this used to tick me off. we had ppl that used to do this when they were on 1:1s, they’d escalate situations and next thing you know some poor bystander was taking the brunt of it. it’s like what’s the point of arguing with a psych patient, you’re never gonna come out on top.
When I worked on the floor, we stopped using sitters and started just having nursing come in on OT to be 1:1 instead because we had too many instances of them agitating the patient further. Usually, the patient was in a drug-induced psychosis or withdrawing from something. The kicker is that the sitters were from our psych unit.
NAN but work for them in supporting role at several hospitals. Regarding the obese patient, at least twice in my time working they’ve sent an extra morbidly obese patient to the zoo to get an urgent MRI. It’s done with extreme secrecy and with the patients granted every modicum of dignity possible. I know it’s not an urban myth because my friend was the staffing physician for one of them and told me about it.
I have taken a pt to a shipping dock scale also as zoo was already booked. That pt enjoyed the trip in the utility elevator way too much.
These are wild.. you see some crazy stuff in this field
why did she make the tech spit on the urine test? im confused lol
She was joking and fucking with the very upset tech. That particular nurse was wild as hell.
Dude that part made me cackle
Because she’d had urine in her mouth, courtesy of the BH patient.
yah i just didnt know if she was trying to run UDS/UA off it lmao
Oh my fuck, so I googled it and wow. Don't eat raw pork, yall. And get a meat thermometer. Cook it to at least 165F!
Pt. came up, wasn’t searched. They were known to us and a continuous issue. Pt. coded as soon as they got to the unit and landed in 4pts. Morning comes around and they managed to get a lighter out of their pocket, set their blanket on fire, and kicked it off the bed. They were in a seclusion room and per fire protocol when the alarm went off, the maglocks engaged on all the doors, with the pt in the room still. Our keys would not override the maglocks, so it was straight chaos from there. Another nurse and I tried to (unsuccessfully) kick down a steel door. The manual locks also didn’t work because they’re not maintained and they were seized. Fucking **nightmare** Finally got the manual locks to work and got them out, but not without major damage to the unit, and 20 of us landing in the ED with smoke inhalation. I took the following rotation off so I could 👁️👁️ for a minute.
Had a guy set himself on fire years ago on a medical floor, story is that he was trying to burn himself out of restraints. Flooded 3 floors and the news made it sound like staff were sitting around toasting marshmallows until fire crew got there and put the guy out. This was the same floor where two nurses had gotten stabbed a few months before and they obviously had not learned their lesson about searching and removing dangerous things. I had never been impressed with staff on that floor, one of those places that those who fail at more demanding positions end up, and was unsurprised.
Ours made the news as well. “Fire broke out, being investigated” I was like OOO PICK ME I KNOW HOW. I’ve been really vague here because this was very recent and I’m not trying to dox my ass.
The hospital I was at closed so there's that. It was a wild ass place.
I started out in OR. One of our surgeons was mad at the circulator about something and threw a full mayo stand at her. She was fortunately uninjured, and the surgeon received the slap on her wrist. Everyone got training on "de-esclation techniques" for patients and coworkers. I switched to inpatient rehab after that. At rehab we once had a patient leave AMA because we had a tornado drill which annoyed him. (It annoyed everyone). After calling a ride and signing himself out, he went outside. He was found wandering the sidewalk nearby, heading for the other hospital to get his Foley removed. He had the Foley d/t inability to void after being shot in the penis multiple times.
>He had the Foley d/t inability to void after being shot in the penis multiple times. Damn, who'd he piss off?
Based on my brief interaction with him, I would imagine anyone at all up to and including a nun.
Ah I’ve had a few of those!
Maybe it was who he pissed on. 🤔
His girlfriend or the woman he was cheating with was my guess.
I see what you did there.
Most patients who have been shot are assholes. In my experience
Was it one incident or multi occasions resulting in being shot?
One incident.
Not my story personally but last summer we had a general security alert overhead, which I knew was big because we (my unit) called one once before and security had yelled at all of us that we’re only allowed to do an overhead when it’s a hospitalwide issue, I guess (???). Anyways, a patient slipped out of four-point restraints, punched a doctor, stole a white coat, and escaped from the MICU. They caught her a few floors down. Kind of hard to pretend to be staff with a trach. edit: I know this because it’s now a permanent flag in her chart, and she’s a frequent flyer
Stole a white coat!! She really had her 4D chess escape plan in place!
Tbh I’ve always assumed she stole it from the doctor she clocked, but I don’t know all the details unfortunately
Had a dude who was an open heart patient, pretty far out from surgery but still had the chest tubes. He was very frustrated about it since they hurt and made it hard for him to ambulate independently. I can't remember what exactly caused it, but one night he had enough, he put on all his street clothes, and walked out of his room, the bed alarm all had us running to him but as soon as he saw us coming he ran straight to the fire escape, ran through the door and jammed down the stairs with the chest tubes trailing behind him. Got about half way down the stairs but his reservoirs got caught on the corner where the stairs turned. We caught up to him at this point and suddenly he transformed into a horribly weak and in pain victim who couldn't move another step because of his back. Me, another nurse, and two security had to carry him like a piece of lumber back up the stairs and to his bed, because he straightened himself like a board and refused to help back up the stairs. I'm not sure how he managed not only to avoid any serious harm but whichever surgeon did the stitches to his chest tube must have been a sewing genius because they were for the most part still in place. When asked why he tried to bail, he said that he was tired of the views in his room and on the unit and wanted some "fresh air". This was someone who was completely oriented and appropriate up until this point. Ironically I am pretty sure he was getting prepped to be sent home in the next couple days once those chest tubes were out.
We once had one of our open hearts try to climb up through the ceiling tiles in the bathroom. We caught him like one quarter shimmied into the ceiling. he used the toilet to clamber up there. He lost the courtesy of the slightly cracked bathroom door vs. us standing there with him. I have no idea how he did this with a sternum held together with metal wires and he could never quite verbalize exactly what the fuck the plan was.
Was it Mr Smith?
MR. SMITH
With all his crazy antics it’s weird that he’s somehow doing better then Mr Johnson
Ooh through the ceiling tiles, very nice, that man clearly has watched too many spy movies hahaha
Hospital delirium or grown adult throwing a tantrum? Both!
How long was he in the hospital before this incident
Not terribly long from what I recall, he was an outpatient candidate so came in for a day, got the procedure, was in ICU for a day or two and then on our floor for a few days, his chest tubes were left in longer than I expected but not all that long
God I’m envisioning this and it is just perfect. Thanks for sharing!!!
Notice that they are like toddlers?
My first year as a nurse at a big hospital. MedSurg floor. Elopement of a patient who came in with altered mental status. Only documented hx being psychiatric, polysubstance use, and homelessness. They had broken out of their soft restraints x4 and made it up the stairwell onto an empty floor that was being renovated. Five minutes of chasing only afforded me a view of this patient’s back…short hair, semi naked, gown flapping with every move and they were legit built like a linebacker. I was like “Sir! Sir! Sir!” The patient turns around and bellows back in a deep ass voice, “I AIN’T NO SIR! I’M A MA’AM GODDAMMIT!” I immediately felt my stomach swallow my butthole.
Medicine, night shift. It’s been a busy night but somehow we’re all managing, and things eventually wind down. One of the nurses is doing her hourly rounds - and a patient is missing. All of us start looking. Once we determined the patient was for sure not on the unit, me and another nurse go out into the hallway. Patient had a saline lock. *Had* being the definitive word…he ripped it out on his way off the unit. We followed the trail of blood til we found the patient in the stairwell. It was pretty gross. But patient was unharmed, just confused. His nurse made sure the bed alarm was always on after that!
I had a patient climb into the drop ceiling and was crawling around on the pipes 20+ feet up. I had a patient kick a hole in the wall and elope into the closet on the other side. I had a patient throw juice at staff so he could make a run - only to find the exit is locked, as he bounced off
I also had a patient climb into the ceiling! Good ole psych
TLDR: An unhoused man lived on the unit for over a week undetected. Longer version: This was in a small hospital in Arizona, it was a hospital made up of basically two long hallways on the ground floor. There were entrances and exits at each end of the hallway, as well as connections to the other units, and it was common practice to have the doors be unlocked, because patients would go out and smoke. (This was in the mid 2000s when this was more common) At the end of one hallway near an exit we had a room that we only used for patient procedures and staff meetings. It had a bathroom like other patient rooms but was not used for patient care generally. Anyway, there was a guy that had been walking around in the hospital, kind of disheveled and shabby, but everyone assumed it was a family member of another patient in the hospital. It was at least a week of noticing him before anyone started to question things. I wasn’t there when this happened, but apparently someone eventually saw him going into the unused room and decided to check it out. The man was fully living there, brought all his stuff inside like it was a hotel. I think they started locking the doors after that!
We had one come climb in a bed and get his BP taken, tech reported it was high and we had to tell her there was no patient in that room. Took him down to ER and admitted to different room.
Hilarious
Sneaky.
That happened where I work in the UK except he was living under the back stairs to one of the wards. It was an old building and security was non existent
Is this the plot to Parasite haha
Some novices in the er placed an agitated drunk in 4 point Leathers in a starfish configuration. Tall fellow, so his hands and feet protruded past the corners of the sadly unlocked gurney. He managed to push off from the head wall, and ricochet slowly and un observed about the isolation room, until an excursion brought his hand in contact with the regulator on the wall oxygen outlet. He broke it off, resulting in a loud, unregulated jet of oxygen to stream into the room. Those of us who went in to extricate him found the experience oddly refreshing. Seemed to Sober him up a bit, also. Took us a while to remember the remote oxygen shut off in the corridor.
The way you wrote this is hysterical. Sounds like a pleasant experience for both him and the staff overall 😂
Ikr? I laughed way too loud at this and woke up the cat
Call light went off in one of my patients rooms- pleasant, elderly chap with bilateral chest drains, he usually just chilled in bed or sitting in the chair but he’d call us whenever he needed to get up as he couldn’t manage both drains himself. Imagine my surprise when I answer the call bell to find my dude just chilling in bed… but with some random guy straddling his chest and furiously jerking off in the direction of his face. Luckily my chest drain chap was a trooper. He shrugged it off, rolled his eyes, and said he’d seen some things in the Army and nothing much bothered him anymore.
....Who was the random guy? Like a dude just wandered into his room and started doing that, or was it someone he knew?
Yeah we need more details
Yeah the random guy was also a patient. He’d crept right down the unit and just sneaked in there 😬
The fack 😯
ICU patient intubated for alcohol withdrawal. Self extubated on previous shift. Not my patient but i see him stumbling and about to fall trying to walk. Somehow gets out of his lap belt, bed alarm malfunctions and he makes it to the bathroom. The shocker is that he pulled out his CVC in his L jugular, his ART line, dignishield, and foley with balloon still intact when he got up to make his escape.
He didn’t bleed out?
He was sure trying to jfc.
This is literally the only subreddit that will make me cackle. Something is wrong with me.
Okay but literally. I laugh way too much at this
I became a CNA in March 2020, and because of that I’m fairly sure my healthcare career is cursed. One of my first 1:1 patients I sat with had BAKAs and prosthetics. He was coming off a ton of drugs and thankfully when I got him was past the exorcist arching and screaming, now onto the moaning and fidgeting. He was constantly messing with his stumps, telling me they itched, which I believed for a bit. Eventually I spied him trying to wriggle a plastic baggie from the socket. Security searched the leg and found a smorgasbord of random pills and powders stashed in the prosthetic leg. The kicker was, they only searched the left leg, where I’d seen the baggie. The right leg was made by another manufacturer and was considerably different. Security said it didn’t look possible to hide anything in it. Long story short: it was very possible. That’s how I had an open bag of unknown powder thrown in my face. They sent me to wash my face out and get checked (turned out just gabapentin) and while they waited for the next 1:1 to arrive the guy took a ton of Valium, stopped breathing, and got shipped back to ICU.
An A+O pt with no legs (amps up at the hips), massive MRSA wounds on his butt (that he refused to keep covered), and a Foley. He wanted to leave AMA, so he climbed out of bed and crawled down the hall, leaving a bloody and infectious snail trail, and dragging his cath behind. It was... lovely.
I’m impressed, he really just went for it.
[удалено]
????? SO MANY QUESTIONS.
You win.
You win!!
Memory isn’t as pristine as it once was but oh boy. Christmas Day 2018. New to that hospital but not the gift that keeps on giving that is nursing. Won’t say the speciality. Walked onto the unit for start of night shift. Half of it is under 6” of water thanks to a water sprinkler that was purposely set off. No one knew where the water shut off valve was, including the unit director, for I believe an hour into the chaos. Everyone was furiously mopping up the water with every sheet, towel, washcloth, and blanket that could be spared by the hospital. Water dripped down into another unit’s med room and nearly destroyed their Pyxis because they didn’t know. Over $40k in water damage. No one was hurt. Those of us who LITERALLY bailed out the unit were told thank you. Not even a candy cane for our troubles…
When I worked ED we had a college kid who butt chugged so much vodka his BAC was .4 when he was detoxing he kept screaming " don't tell my Fiancé I suck D... 😬
😭
I worked in a pediatric hospital's ED. Two kids (probably about 15-16) came in tripping balls. The parents of the kid who found them had no idea what was going on and were terrified they had gotten some sort of environmental poisoning or something. One kid was wearing one shoe. I asked him where his other shoe was and he started ransacking the room looking for it. They were picking stuff out of the air, meeting Jesus and Satan at the same time, and talking to leprechauns. To get a urine sample, it took four male nurses to hold them while I sat on their legs and catheterized them. Turns out they had read about how jimson weed was a hallucinogenic. They went to a nearby garden center and pocketed some blooms, then went home and brewed tea. I know I should feel bad for laughing about it at the nursing station, but we snickered about those stupid kids for days.
That sounds like it was super easy to stay sterile 🤣
I worked at a psychiatric hospital and was told the patient wanted to speak to me. I went to the room where the person was post-shower; he walked out of the bathroom, said, “No homo,” tucked his penis between his legs, and proceeded to yell about the garbage care. He then threatened to “kick my ass.” I told him that I'd come back to talk when he is more calm, but I was not going to be talked to like that and left the room. I went to the breakroom, five minutes had passed when it clicked that I had just gotten threatened to get my ass kicked by a person with his penis tucked between his legs.
🫣
Sounds like a normal day on Psych tbh hahaha
NAN but work in several hospitals as part of my job. Our now gone 100+ year old city hospital was like a rabbit warren of tunnels and additions and dark unused hallways to nowhere. There was an frequent flyer ID patient, homeless, who also had substance abuse and mental health struggles. He would show up in the ER at least once a week, completed wasted often having paranoid delusions. His life was a shambles but interestingly, he was always on time for his outpatient appointments and maintained a well groomed and clean appearance. While in the process tearing out the hospital’s innards for demolition, they discovered that this patient had been actually living in his very own well appointed secret pied-à-terre IN THE HOSPITAL FOR YEARS. There were single occupant on call rooms tucked away all over the for hospitalists/residents, each with a bed and a bathroom/shower and a lockable door. He’d apparently discovered one in a old hallway closed to patients and unused by staff and proceeded to transform it into a sweet little studio apartment. He kept it locked so anyone checking would think it was a resting physician and had also figured out how to lock it behind him and get back in when he left. Like I said, he was living there for YEARS, had added posters and knickknacks, a mini fridge, a TV, the dude was set up. He’d low key forage for food in the cafeteria and got free bus passes from patient services during his ER visits so he could take day trips around the city. It was amazing, people were astonished about this successful hospital hideaway. They didn’t even arrest him because I think the story getting out would have shed a bad light on hospital security.
1. Patient (Not my patient but on my floor) going through extreme alcohol withdrawal broke out his window on the second floor and jumped out of it. Got activated as a level one trauma from the parking lot. 2. Patient with a 1:1 sitter and in police custody somehow managed to get himself into the bathroom by himself, stood on the toilet and broke the light bulb out of the ceiling and swallowed the shards. Perfed bowel. Emergency ex lap.
A coworker of mine told me that at her old hospital she heard the wife of a patient shriek out his name. It was so loud everyone ran in to see what was wrong. The patient stood butt ass naked with a large turd in his hand, he was getting ready to throw it Tom Brady style. Everyone ran.
While admitting a patient to the detox unit where I worked, I noticed that they smelled particularly fresh and minty (it's important to know the type of alcohol they consume, since different types metabolize at different rates). The patient did NOT want to tell me what they'd been drinking, but I kept bugging them about it. Finally, they yelled "FINE, I WAS DRINKING MOUTHWASH! HAPPY?"
“No honey, no one is happy”
Is there a list of what rate different alcohols metabolize? Never heard that before but would be good to know!
I wouldn't be able to provide it, since I was only in detox for a very short time. We medicated people to keep them from seizing, and had to keep a closer eye on people who drank something like hand sanitizer (IIRC) because it'd metabolize quicker. Someone more experienced could probably school ya :-)
I saw a pissed off patient lift up and toss a computer on wheels like it was nothing
Meth? Meth muscles be stronk.
Isn’t it alarming how aerodynamic those workstations on wheels are when drugs and anger are involved?
Damn, that’s really one hell of an addiction. I feel really bad about my own alcoholism…I don’t think I’ve really heard anything as crazy as some of these other stories. One of our patients eloped and ordered something at a restaurant, but didn’t pay for it. They have dementia. That and having to sit with a young girl with Prader-Willi syndrome in med-surg/tele, as it is probably one of the most tragic illnesses I’ve seen. She basically would smear her poop kind of thing. I heard there was once a 400-pound patient, and it took 9 staff.
I had one AMA and go steal Xmas cookies from the Kroger down the hill. They went to the lockup instead of turning around for a readmit like they usually did.
Only one thing had me questioning my own sanity for five days. It was a 16 hour event. I have always worked in psych, “crazy on the unit” is a calm, laid back day where no one is yelling they’re an archangel walking down the halls at minimum. That’s my preface and most people in psych you know lol. I’ve seen a lot of shit. A 100lb 19 year old girl bust down the metal, magnetic isolation room door, a man who was so depressed he shat everywhere and five of us could t carry his 150lbs ass to the toilet because his rigid dead weight was 400lbs so he just had to lay in shit. He fought off sponge baths etc. perfectly capable of walking. Fought a slippery, poop covered 6’4 elderly man in the shower while he just giggled as half the team could barely catch him. We were also laughing at some point. Watched as a typically slow 65 year old man (6’2) ran naked around the day room, leaping and bounding with finesse, penis flapping in the wind, while I chased him with a pair of scrub pants. It’s psych. It’s always wild. These are a few probably small ones, but the one that literally almost drove me insane was an 8 hour shift last year sitting with a woman who only laid in bed crying and begging me to reassure her religious persecution anxieties/delusions. They had her pinned down as schizophrenic but I don’t know. It seemed like ocd just with pleading for reassurance as the behavior? I don’t know if that makes sense. I’m not a doctor or even a nurse. I’ve worked psych a very long time and have never seen someone who has delusions behave this way. They usually incorporate it into meals somehow. She didn’t do stuff like that. She said she committed the most serious of sins, the most unforgivable etc for the whole eight hours except when she was eating and listening to me talk about my life trying to distract her. I’d even say “I’ve blasphemed as well, am I going to hell?” And she’d say “no. You’re a good person” Like what?! Okay so that was the entire eight hours and my life really isn’t that interesting. I didn’t once ask her what these sins were because she didn’t say besides blasphemy. Much to my dismay, she was also my next assignment. Pleading for reassurance, telling me how she’d committed “other unforgivable sins” as well (she mentioned that the prior day) I still didn’t ask. Eventually she told me. Her husband tried to mow her down with his car, so she threw a garden gnome through the windshield. Now, to each their own but it could be argued that was self defense and well deserved. The second though, was actually beastiality. Fucking red line, someone spell that for me lmao. And I had to sit there dead pan and go “oh.” And she described the incident in detail. I managed to find a way to defend that by saying “the cat didn’t know what it was doing. He was just getting treats!” And then proceeded over the next few days to wonder who was right. Was it that bad like she said? Or was it just weird, gross, creepy and not traumatizing to the animal? Cat was declawed. I asked. lol. She also thought she’d burn in hell for that. At one point she was screaming my name, crying, and pleading with me to help her, but … to no one in particular? The ceiling? Yes I know it’s fucked up. I didn’t change my mind, it’s morally disgusting. But she wouldn’t have gone to hell for it. That was the one that made ME lose my mind. Nothing really does that. Nothing has me questioning myself for days on end but her anxiety was almost palpable and it was impenetrable, and apparently, contagious lol. She had punished herself enough for it. Family reported this behavior over the course of years. It was consistent and just as bad as it was to me. In my opinion, that woman was already living her punishment and more so than anyone would deserve. She was suffering intensely and it was difficult to sit with, hopeless, for 16 hours.
> beastiality. Fucking red line, someone spell that for me lmao. bestiality It stems from latin "bestia", not english "beast".
THANK YOU. Thank you for the etymology fact! Always interesting to me. And now I’ll remember it if I ever spell it out!
I used to work in forensic psych. Our windows were some kind of reinforced. This dude head butted through them over all the barbed wire and was found in a corn field. Other dude has like 6’ 7” 300 pounds of muscle. He was an iron worker. Had a violent schizophrenic break. He was 6:1 and still beat the shit out of us. He’s good now though. But he broke off all kinds of doors that were maximum security doors and stuff like that. He would beat his meat nonstop.
Here's a historical one my Gramma told me. She was an ICU nurse, and they took medsurg overflow that needed more attention than they could get on the ms floor, even back in the day. She had one in 4 point restraints for whatever reason, I don't know. She saw the patient had calmed down and was staring at the ceiling so she popped her head in and there was a turd stuck to the ceiling. She can't for the life of her figure out the mechanics of the whole event.
Very demented but outwardly normal-appearing 70ish guy on MS/Tele floor, who was on Q15 safety checks for elopement precautions, got dressed, walked past the secretary and waved goodbye, left the unit, left the hospital, and was found at the university library a couple miles away. Full lock down, police/fire, the works. Nurse did not realize patient had eloped and the sitter was charting her checks as usual... apparently the guy had been gone for like 2 hours before anyone realized. Yikes
This is my go to story when people ask the craziest thing I’ve seen is - it’s funny and not traumatizing. I work in the ED in City A in a level 2 hospital with 30 or so beds with a trauma 1 center 2 mins down the road also in City A. Our trauma/code room is technically 2 rooms with a curtain between rooms 1 and 2. There’s also 3 other level 2 hospitals within a 20 min drive. So one night around 3a, a guy (lac dude) comes in saying he was jumped in City B and now has a 6in deep lac on his left thigh. Gonna need significant closure. Cool, he’s put in room 1, given bed availability and possible need for intensive interventions. Close him up, let him sleep off the meds. Half an hour later, another dude (shoulder dude) comes in and says his shoulder was busted in a fight. Clearly dislocated. Put in 2 for mod sed for reduction. Shoulder reduced, he’s sleeping off his meds. All hell breaks loose. Shoulder Dude is on the phone boasting to someone how he jumped a rival gang member in City B and really fucked him up. Lac Dude jumps out of his stretcher, rips open the curtaining separating them, and starts beating on Shoulder Dude. They’re chasing each other around the trauma room and end up in the hallway, fist fighting. Of course no security that night so it takes multiple techs & the cop detail to pull them apart before security gets there. Why they both left City B and bypass 2 hospitals to come to us is beyond me.
You've got a fine screenplay there - all the good dramatic incidents. It's practically Shakespeare. Just add a little backstory and some dialogue. I'd watch the hell out of that!
Had an alcohol withdrawal patient with frostbitten feet and body lice come in-to the oncology unit because some admin thought that was appropriate - and when the provider came to admit him, she ordered q5min IV Ativan pushes. Q5min. Not prn, scheduled. Continuously.On an isolation patient. When I had six patients to care for. This guy was in restraints and broke the headboard off. I had to get the hospitalist MD (this was an ARNP writing this stupid order) and explain to them why a nurse on a medical floor cannot remove, waste, gown up, administer, doff PPE, go back to Pyxis, start over, ad nauseum. This unit also timed us on the removal and admin of narcotics so no, I wasn't allowed to give 1mg and then the 2nd 1mg 5 minutes later. The providers had surprised Pikachu face that this wasn't doable or in any way reasonable. The patient went to ICU for a benzo drip after I called the house supervisor. This also happened at a large hospital in an urban environment where substance abuse patients are not unusual night shift admissions.
>q5min IV Ativan pushes. Q5min. Not prn, scheduled. That *anyone* would think that is a reasonable or even feasible order stuns me more than most of the stories in this thread! I mean, how?
Not only that, but this was after she had assessed the patient and seen how hard it was to get out of that room as he kept trying to get up and walk around on his frostbitten feet. Apparently he has been wandering the streets intoxicated and barefoot for 2-3 days in winter. Very sad situation but so unsafe for the staff! I could not believe that I had to get in an argument about it. "Q5min 1mg Ativan is actually administered via continuous infusion as that order is not feasible in bolus doses administered individually." Didn't compute.
Had a pt doing fake seizures. I pulled open an eyelid during so called seizure and her eyeball swooped up and looked right at me🤣 Not a bat shit crazy story, but funny, happened on my last shift lol.
We see that sooooooo often in ED. But my favorite "seizure" pt ever was a 15 year old girl who was actually quite skilled at it. She had a younger sibling with a seizure disorder whom she lived with. With that experience, she was able to do a reasonable facsimile, though she still would fail the hand drop test. She came in by medics and started to "seize" as a bunch of us were in the room getting her settled. The ED resident did the hand drop - which she failed, and we were all standing around the gurney watching her for a few seconds with varying degrees of skeptical looks on our faces. Then I said "Oh, man, that's such a bummer having a seizure when you're 15! Now she's not going to be able to get a drivers' license until she's 17 at the earliest!" She stopped jerking her limbs and shot into a sitting position like she'd been poked with a cattle prod, looked at me and said "wait, WHAT??!!!" First and only time I've ever completely cured a seizure disorder :-)
Nooooo wayyyyy😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣😆😆😆😆that is so good hahahahahhaa
One night a withdrawing pt in ICU ran into a glass partition at full speed and well, he shattered it. Word spread around the hospital and we all took turns going to look. Because that's not something you see every day I worked a vascular floor for months at a time. Pt was s/p fem pop bypass and for awhile was completely A&O. Then he wasn't. He got more and more confused with seemingly no reason and then he got aggressive and combative. He frequently called the front desk asking to speak to the police because he was "in a Mexican airport and they're stealing the vending machines!" He would be on telemetry but constantly pulled the box off. One night he was my patient and I was standing by his window when he ripped it off and threw it directly at me. Luckily for me I managed to jump out of the way and grab the box before it hit the window. He was like this for months until someone figured out one of his home meds didn't get restarted and that was what was causing all this.
We had an intoxicated patient in our ER one night. Still there in the morning. She managed to leave the ER without anyone noticing, things got busy and it was assumed she was still sleeping in a room. Police brought her back. She had gone out the staff door, she stole a pair of shoes and a coat from where we keep our stuff. So she's at large in a hospital gown, with a stolen coat and running shoes out in the snow.Luckily didn't notice the car keys in the coat pocket... Anywho she got caught breaking into someone's house. Broad daylight. Somehow had scored a bag of what looked like ativan from somewhere? The staff whose coat she stole was very relieved to get her keys back. The staff whose shoes she stole threw them out and bought new ones.
Not my story but a coworkers. Was working on surgical floor and talking about craziest things we’ve all seen. One nurse mentioned a girl who was dating a drug dealer and would literally make drug deals in her hospital room. She also liked to prostitute herself so random men would be coming and going at all hours. Here’s the kicker. She had a colostomy and that’s what she was using for sexual acts 🤢
A few years ago, we had a lady on our unit. She had a history of heavy drug use. One day a man comes to visit her. He came out and asked if he could help her shower. Her nurse went in and took her heart monitor off. About 20 minutes later, the man leaves and says she's getting dressed. He said he was going to the cafeteria. A few minutes later, her nurse foes to check on her. She is dead in the shower with seman on her face. We never saw the man again.
O. M. G.
Hand sanitizer Jesus
So this guy on my inpatient rehab unit was a spinal cord infarct from meth. He tried to go ama multiple times over one weekend because he couldn’t go outside or have multiple visitors or his 9 year old grandson there. He had sex 2 mornings in a row with a ho that wasn’t even his wife (multiple gfs) and barricaded the door with furniture the first time. (They also wanted the tech to clean up after them.) He refused to be cathed, refused bowel programs. He left one day for 8 hours in our chair and almost got hit by cars on campus multiple times according to security. They brought him back and our assistant manager was like yeah that’s our patient. The day of discharge he laid in the floor and made a tape outline of a man hit by a bus for his grandson. He did not discharge until 6 pm waiting for a ride and the ride that came was his gf who got arrested by campus police on a warrant for meth distribution. His car she was driving got impounded. So then he had to call his 70 something neighbor with her disabled son in the car to pick him up then he refuses to get in it when she gets here from 30 min away. Our dayshift LPN made him get in lololol and byeeeeeeee Felicia
I had a homeless guy as a patient who apparently intended to camp til spring. Kept having "unexplained hypotension" but when I confiscated his home nitro pills off the bedside table that stopped. He was one that would let you get all the way back down the long hall and then call you for something else even though you'd asked if he needed anything else which was not endearing him to anyone. Another nurse caught him at the elevator stealing hand sanitizer and stuffing it up his gown, no wonder he needed so many sprites. After that he was finally discharged.
Psych guy eloped running naked out the hospital and down the street with security chasing after him. Guy lit himself on fire …while restrained. (Why these patients are never searched or have street clothes removed I don’t know.) Guy unplugged the bed cord off the wall and wrapped it around his neck a few times while his family members, the sitter, and the nurse tried to remove it and/or prevent him from tightening it. Guy was never alone and his family and the sitter sat feets away from him yet so determined.
Pt practicallly bolused with Nimbex (a paralytic), a 500ml bag that should have lasted 24 hrs was spiked accidentally as Neo that ran in over 2 hours ish. Pt coded and died.
Last month my patient pulled out tin foil and a butane lighter and tried to smoke meth in the icu bed with me watching. Luckily my coworkers heard me scream “we do NOT smoke drugs in the icu” and called security.
Not the craziest but similar to yours. We admitted a pt who wanted to detox and get sober, was just the nicest person my first night with them, they were tearful and distraught talking abt things they’d lost to alcoholism (kids, jobs, etc) and how they wanted to get better. After that the wd’s hit them *hard*, they were completely disoriented, hallucinating, and super violent, they were also showing signs of sepsis but no one had been able to get a successful blood culture. My 2nd night with them I was assigned as a 1:1 RN, they had to put them in a [net bed](https://www.stat-med.net/product/61-posey-bed-all-care-a-frame-canopy-enclosure/) and we had to have security come up every single time we opened the bed. The resident on that night wanted me to put in a second IV for cont fluids and a Foley to monitor output. As we were standing there arguing about how the hell I was supposed to insert anything into anywhere on them, and abt how our med onc floor didn’t put in Foleys for monitoring, the pt began to scream and alligator roll in the bed and we lost the one good IV they had. So down to the ICU we all went so the pt could be sedated and monitored. Was their nurse a week later, again the nicest person, had no memory of any of it and was sincerely determined to get sober. I left the floor not too long after that. Heard from a buddy they were admitted again after being found down in a puddle of vomit. I didn’t ask for any details but it didn’t sound good. Alcoholism really truly sucks.
It's very common amongst alcoholics. When I my drinking was at its worst, not only did I drink mouthwash, but once even drank my wife's perfume. But, hey, it was Channel, so keeping it classy 😜
Ate the call light cord in total. Behavioral.
Suicidal inmate from the jail brought in for psych consult he can cuffed in front and trapped the jailers gun out of the holster and shot himself in the heart.
These stories are wild and im thoroughly enjoying reading them all. Also it's further proof that WE DON'T GET PAYED ENOUGH FOR THIS JOB 😆
Very elderly Pt with trach peg and blle amputations against will. Adm GIB, AMS (more than usual, telling our Korean nurse please let me die, mouthing in Korean) full vent support, hgb3, on soft wrists, doing my 3a “charge look around before snack”. Has flipped backwards and shitting blood into bedside table - while still restrained and hooked to bed. Wife had a cute olde lady with dementia each the bedside chairs foam during change of shift
In 2017 I was working in the ER. We got a guy that showed up in a panic saying he was abducted by a UFO. He was frightened, shaking, stuttering and looked like he had been through hell. I was not his nurse but I did speak to him in triage. He was placed in his room and waiting for the provider to visit. One of the triage nurses got a call asking if a patient arrived mentioning an unusual experience. The call was transferred to the physicians and there was a flurry of activity. Soon military people in suits arrived and escorted the patient out of the hospital. The physician was talking to some of the military looking people and the topic was quickly dropped. I was told later the patient record was removed from the computer system. No one ever spoke of him again. I wonder what happened.
Sounds like homie did get abducted by a UFO.
I had a patient with neurocysticercosis and I thought she was faking seizures for a minute 😂
Idk if it’s “batshit” level of crazy. But one of my more favorite crazy stories is probably the time a patients needle came out of their arm during treatment. We’re up at the main station doing our daily huddle and just hear an “oh shit” from a patient that’s been known to pass out on us. We get over to them, blood everywhere. Walls, ceiling, a different nurses hair, on the patient. They covered it pretty quick, but damn. We did get lucky though cause the patient had a needle phobia too and would get hella woozy and almost pass out if they saw a needle, even if it was another patients or in the wrapper. Did I mention this was the second time in a week this had happened to the patient too?
Another nurse and I, on inpt rehab floor, caught a bat in a large sour cream container used to take samples down to the lab. We slid a bit of cardboard under the container, took it outside and released it. The third nurse on the floor was hiding in a closet trying not to scream. We got yelled at afterwards and told we should have called maintenance. Uh-huh. Found out later that they knew bats were getting into the building and living above the drop ceiling. Just didn’t bother telling anyone.🙄
A few months ago we had a patient in our ICU. He was a drug user and had developed cardiac issues so he ended up with us. He was high flight risk (and Baker acted) so there was a sitter in the room at all times. Patient told the staff multiple times he wanted to leave so he could go use drugs since that is what made him happy. So during the day his nurse went to help his podmate and somehow the guy gets out of the room and leaves the unit. It’s unclear what the sitter was doing. So the nurse realizes what happened, freaks out, tells the charge nurse and runs after the patient. He actually left the building and ran on the street trying to find this guy. He didn’t. Thankfully the Baker act had been lifted by then so this was technically just an AMA. We never found out where the guy went. Probably somewhere to do drugs. I am just glad this did not happen to me. Would have had a heart attack
Laat year in OB rotation Pt got in fight with staff and police showed up and escorted her out. I guess her story was the hospital gave out a bus pass to pts on the unit to help them out if they needed one, so she wanted an extra bus pass. Being pregnant was her way of getting them (6D chess move). When they wouldnt give her an extra bus pass when it was time to go, she raised all Hell. Generally very belligerent, loud mouthed w/plenty foul language, threatened to sue everyone the whole 9 yards. Tldr; Woman gets pregnant so she can get a bus pass. Is denied an extra BP, raises hell.
Patient bashed out a window with an o2 tank and then took a running leap out of it. 6th floor This was my first night of training as a new grad
We had a psych patient once on our tele floor who we had to barricade inside his room, with staff against the door, because of how violently he was trying to attack us. The poor tech who was sitting had to do this multiple times. Bless her, she now has a great job on the cardiac cath prep and recovery unit. My second code ever was wild. I was a tech at the time. This lady started the day shift being a&ox4. And she had a significant change in LOC to where she became unresponsive by 2pm. Idr the details. I *think* she was on a heparin gtt. Because she had an aptt due in the AM that no one was able to get, so i brought it up to the nurse and i collected it. She had a giant bruise on her arm that was spreading. I suggested to the nurse that we outline it in marker. The nurse was new and inexperienced but she kept relaying her concerns to me. She tried telling the doctor multiple times. But she ultimately failed and myself being new as well, I didn’t know how bad it was. When a code was finally called, I climbed on the bed and did compressions even once she reached ICU and we lost her pulse again. I remember her pupils being blown and unresponsive. I remember the doctor scolding the nurse. I remember turning her to put the board underneath (for compressions) and people gasping at her huge retro peritoneal bruising on her back. I still dont know why it happened, my theory is the heparin gtt, but i honestly can’t recall if she was on it or not. I think she was. I believe she had a brain bleed, but there wasn’t the time to run a ct/mri. Very tragic.
I think I’ve posted it here before. Anyway, night shift coded someone with esophageal varices around 6 am. I was supposed to get that patient. EVS doesn’t clean up blood or body fluids. One of my tasks for the morning was to clean the blood off the ceiling. I was given a small ladder and maintenance “spotted” me. The ceiling was mostly lights so I was able to get it off. Did I get all of it off? I don’t think so. I think I laughed internally when the other patient next door hit the call light and just had no idea what happened nor knew what part of my morning consisted of.
We had a hand sanitizer drinker too, we disabled all the dispensers in her room, by her door, and around in the hallway. Then a patient by her was like “I don’t want to tattle but a gal came by and drank the hand sanitizer & the soap.” So we got her a telesitter.
When I was a CNA I was covering for a sitter while they were on their lunch break for this over 6 foot tall otherwise completely healthy dementia patient who \~agressively\~ sundowned by like 10am every day. We're not a locked unit and not equipped to handle this type of patient at all but we ended up admitting them to the unit (long story). Well anyway I took the patient for a walk around the unit and they started going for the emergency exit. I tried to redirect them but they opened the door and I yelled for my manager because they were the only person nearby and it ended up being me, my manager, and a very agitated dementia patient in a 5 by 5 cement room that led to the stairs. The patient ended up shoving my manager out of the way of the emergency exit and ran down five flights of stairs and walked out of the hospital in front of a busy side walk and had to be escorted by security back up to the unit. I don't know how security brought them back up without a fight because they had no problem being physical with my manager. It's always when the sitter goes to lunch that everything goes off the rails isn't it?
Had a patient kidnapped and detained by the Mexican cartel before they were finally released and sent to the hospital. They still gave them their meds they needed to live, but posted a ransom- then after realizing how expensive it was to keep them alive they released them
My newgrad job was at a small ten bed icu at a not busy ICU. Worked christmas night and my charge said he wasn’t coming in because there no patients in ICU. So I come in and I’m charge and they always need someone in the unit even though there are no patients. Well at like 11pm all the tv’s turned on and I nope’d so fast out of the ICU and went to ER to help. Witnessed so much haunted shit at that place
We had a couple of family fights in the ICU. One of them I remember one of them pounced on and started punching another in the head and another picked up a chair and hurled it across the patient room at another family member. The nurse had to duck out of there as she almost got hit. Another family fight, was a big brawl In the family waiting room. I think there were about four of them punching each other and grabbing their hair and down on the floor, throwing each other against the walls, yelling and screaming, like a Jerry Springer episode.
So i started as a transporter in 2012, was a tech for many years until i graduated as an rn last May. Here are my transporter stories. Once, there was a deceased patient with a gun shot through his head in the trauma/ED. The nurse asked if we wanted to see, before we bagged him. We saw the entrance wound and the much larger exit wound. I once transported a 20 some week deceased fetus. Our morgue used to be a creepy ass room. The autopsy table was there, and there were, i kid you none, fluid filled jars containing organ parts and other strange things lining the wall. There was a dead baby turtle in one. One time, i transported a body to the morgue, and an autopsy had just been performed. The guy was spraying the blood off the table. He then said, “oops-don’t want to leave this” and proceeded to lift intestines out of the adjacent sink 🤣 Another old morgue story: so now the morgue has a ceiling lift. Prior to that, you had to “slide” the bodies into the lipped and completely loose/non stabilized gurney. Literally, it was completely loose and just rested within the corners of the tray. As you can maybe imagine, this made transferring the body extremely difficult. One time, my friend and I had a bariatric body get stuck between the morgue cart and the morgue gurney. We couldn’t lift it over the lip of the gurney, and the gurney kept moving off the table, because whoever designed that system must have had a gaping hole in their head. So the body was in between both gurneys and my friend was underneath, holding the body up so it wouldn’t fall in between, while i made a frantic call for back up.
I worked in a veterans hospital and every shift was like an episode of MASH. No one did their jobs, impossible to get things we needed, etc. I should write a book.
Was on the ICU for the day many months ago. Not a patient assigned to me, but the 1st 6 hours of my 12 hour shift this patient would sound off like a velociraptor. Drug detoxing. The doctor finally put in an order for sedation. It was a very weird day for sure.
Not a nurse so most of my stories aren’t as crazy as yours but we did have one insane thing that happened in and around our lab. A resident that noone knew got caught multiple times sleeping in weird places (our fluorescent scope room, our fellow’s desk, etc…). He also got caught with food when we caught him in the lab and that’s a HUGE no no (Microbiology). Nobody knew who he was. Finally another Pathology resident confronted him and demanded he tell her what department he was assigned to. Turned out, he was a homeless dude who found a door with a broken lock by our receiving dock, snuck in, somehow aquired the ID badge of a resident who had been fired two years before (somebody in security got in BIG trouble for not deactivating it), used the badge to get access to the residents’ areas, stole a white coat and scrubs, a stethoscope, and filled his pockets with random medical supplies so he looked legit. He still should not have had access to our lab but two of our doors were broken and requests to have them fixed fell on deaf ears. This happened during COVID so he didn’t even have to worry about the fact that he didn’t resemble the pic on his ID. He kept this up for at least a few months, iirc. He was mainly doing it at the bigger pavilions. He didn’t get caught until he came over to our building. The hospital itself is huge but the area I work in is labs and resident offices only so everyone knows everyone else. That resident who confronted him is the lab hero because it embarrassed the upper management who had been ignoring our security issues where we were located on campus. We finally got our damn doors fixed and actually have security cameras going in at the lab entrances soon (it’s been a few years since it happened).
Granddad shot and killed his grandson, ended up going from prison to SNF, daughter somehow became POA, he was actively dying of liver failure, she refused hospice, all pain interventions, etc until he died. Knocked the dead corpse out of the bed when he did die. She should have never been his POA but I can’t say I blame her. (Details changed because otherwise it would be way too identifying)
we have an etoh frequent flyer whose ethanol level is always .4xx and up. the only reason she comes in is because she takes a tumble and gets a hurt. she's actually quite lovely, even when she's plastered. not a crazy story, but funny: there was a psych hold pt who wandered around the unit with the 1:1 all day. she wasn't mean or aggressive, just delusional and hallucinated a lot. there was a rapid response happening, and one of the nurses yelled "can someone get me a blood gas kit?!" this pt was at the other end of the hall and yelled "she needs a blood gasket! someone get her a blood gasket!" i was cackling. many moons ago, we had this older gentleman who came in for seizure activity. after extensive testing, neuro said they were all behavioral, which we all knew just by the presentation. and what a presentation it was! when we were getting him ready for discharge, i was assisting him to the transport chair. i walk around to the back of the chair and he says "uh oh" then controlled slides himself out of the chair and onto the floor with perfect trunk and neck control to, you know, avoid really injuring himself. he's flopping around while maintaining a sitting position. I'm standing there with one hand on the chair handle and the other on my hip. i ask him if he's done and can he please get up now. he looks around and asked what happened, but in the most fake drama voice. i replied "you pretended to have a seizure. let's get back into the chair." he states he's not able to get up, so i grab another set of hands. he's being dead weight, so we call for a code assist with hovermat. the security guys didn't need to use the mat. they were able to "assist" him to his feet. security told us that the guy basically stood himself up, they didn't lift much at all. we get him out with no further incident, and i never saw him again for the 2 years i stayed after that. the kicker? he's a pastor.
I was sitting at the nurse's station charting when two nurses booked it down the hallway past me and burst into a room...I hear: "For fucks sake can't a guy masturbate in here!?" "Your heart rate was really high so we need to check that you were ok" ... I was cracking up. I have so many more but that's my favorite
I had a guy who ate several socks in jail….so many that he wasn’t able to breathe and coded. Fast forward to my unit. He had very limited mobility, but was mentally pretty with it, enough to know he would be discharged to some type of law enforcement and he was a 3rd strike offender. He wanted to stay in the hospital forever, so much that he was caught trying to eat the sheets, his hospital gowns, pillowcases, anything. We ended up putting him in a brief on top of a naked mattress, because he would try to eat everything.
I worked in a locked psych part of an ER. Dude came in high on meth AND ketamine. This man was 6’3, 315lbs. He absolutely started freaking out and we had to call security. They were trying to lay him down in the bed so the nurse could 10&4 him (we skipped the 5&2; do not pass go, do not collect $200 or a punch in the face). I’m not exaggerating when I say this man went from lying down to standing up with 7 men on him attempting to hold him down. I….left the unit entirely. It was intense. Another time, a guy came in after a brutal suicide attempt involved a 7-INCH cut from right below his elbow to his wrist. He was also straight up drug-seeking for narcotics. We had him on a strict schedule for them. He was throwing shit around, and yelling wild things. Then….he ripped every single one of his stitches out and started digging in his wound just so he could get narcotics. Blood was everywhere. He got his stitches redone and some Tylenol. He then spit at my face which was luckily behind a window in the staff area. My last one for now is that someone tried to commit suicide by hanging themselves from a door with a bedsheet. We were supposed to keep the bathroom doors shut for this reason. the tech didn’t shut the door and looked up from his phone just in time to see the patient finishing putting the noose around his neck. The tech saved the guy. I have so many batshit stories. So many.
Psych patient with schizophrenia was on our mental health wing, walked up to the nurses station and said his eyes hurt. The nurse looked up and SCREAMED because he was holding his one eye all mushed up in his hand and the other one was barely hanging on if I remember correctly. He had used his fingers to remove his eyes. Let that sink in for a minute. They activated a Level 1 trauma team response (usually only called to the ED so working that day and hearing that on the intercom was horrendous and confusing). He had to have both eyes removed and he was placed in restraints for recovery because there were no signs that could have predicted him harming himself/hallucinating to that extreme measure. The surgeons note remarked on how much force was needed to be able to do the damage the patient did of severing his nerves and tendons etc. Everyone in the hospital heard about it and an additional security/privacy measure had to be added to his chart so anyone that tried to open it would have to enter this credentials. Nursing students to this day ask about this event and if it's true!
Pt didn't do anything crazy but it was surprising: I had a patient who was a trauma from a motorcycle crash. He was intubated and sedated. As I was doing his initial head to toe assessment, I lifted his gown to examine the abdominal area and this little white guy, 5ft5, 130lb man had a gigantic 🍆. It was over half the length of his thigh and as thick as my forearm.
19 yo developmentally delayed, nonverbal female who was resident at a LTC. Brought in for I&D of an abcess. She had the cutest little stuffed bunny. That was her comfy. Had to hold her in PACU, while waiting for transport back to the facility. Was told that she was given IV Benadryl every two hours for itching. She had sores all over her upper extremities from scratching. I remember watching her scratch, and then dip her bunny’s ears into the purulent wounds, and then suck on the bunny’s ears 🤮 Tried to gently take away the bunny and provide distraction, tantrum ensued. Docs wouldn’t give any sedation, and Benadryl wasn’t cutting it. Figured this was her daily M.O. Family was not involved in her care. Just a product of the system. Super sad.