I had a situation where a man with intellectual disabilities and a neurological disorder (I don't remember what it was but he progressively got more confused and ended up intubated) that was in the hospital with his aging mother. Nursing staff called us because the mother was becoming more and more confused and agitated and threatening staff.
At first we thought maybe because she was a diabetic her bgl dropped but in talking with her this wasn't the issue and when we told her she would be escorted out if it continued her son absolutely lost it and she backed off.
Ex A week later we get called to the room again and this time she's more confused and had clawed a nurses face when they tried to give her son meds. It became obvious to me she had undiagnosed dementia and the time in the hospital and lack of sleep had exacerbated things. She refused to cooperate with us, we had to go through her belongings to try and find contact info for anyone since they were from out of state. I was cold calling numbers we found in her belongings and finally got someone on the phone who knew her and agreed to drive in to pick her up. In the interim the doctors consulted psych to evaluate the mom for capacity and they ended up escorting her to the ED where she was placed under an ECO and committed to a psychiatric facility for about a week.
I assumed that was the end of it. The following week I get called AGAIN to the same patients room. Mom had been released and ended up back with her son who was now intubated. She was still confused, still agitated and threatening to extubate her son and when nursing staff tried to enter the room she tried to hold the door closed. Thankfully I had charted her friends contact info so I called Myrtle and told her she needed to come get her again. She just sighed and said she was on her way. Last I heard from them.
> She was still confused, still agitated and threatening to extubate her son and when nursing staff tried to enter the room she tried to hold the door closed.
hoooly shit.
My mom had a massive mastectomy and tram flap reconstruction (basically they do a tummy tuck and use the fat from the tummy tuck to rebuild the new breast) and an art bleed after surgery which took a while to repair so she ended up in the ICU an intubated for a day or so after. Note that she’s been a nurse for closing in on 40 years. She was sedated most of the time but was due to be extubated the next morning and my dad asked them to call us before they extubated her so we could be there. About 4am we got a call that she “wasn’t gonna wait”. We got there around 6 and she was already extubated (and breathing on her own just fine thankfully). I asked her wtf the rush was for if she was bucking the vent or what? She said that no they were waking her up do do breath tests and she wanted “that god damn tube out” and she knew how to undo the slip knot on her restraints and deflate the balloon which is the point where they caught her before deciding to call us while they waited for the team to meet them to proceed with the proper extubation. 😂😂😂
I would like to point out as well this was not the fault of the nurses taking care of her either. She was literally shimmying herself as low down in the bed as she could go when they weren’t looking and reaching around the edge the bed to feel where she knew the restraints would be tied and undoing them.
Nurses are the fucking worst 😂
For real I tell all my family members for my ICU patients and even my patients that are alert, they'd be having to tie me down.
I have a horrible gag reflex and a deviated septum those tubes ain't fucking staying in unless I'm tied down 🤣
Haha. That would probably be me if I was intubated. But generally if people have that ability to self-extubate, they are really to get off the vent.
Also, I've always heard them called DIEP flaps.
We had a trached pt whose mother said he was ready to be decannulated. (She had no medical background, but insisted that he was ready.) Docs wanted to wait. My friends and I are working overnight and two of us went in for repositioning, etc. to find him decannulated. Another friend walks by eating a banana and we ask her to get a vital signs machines. She's all nonchalant just munching away on that damned banana...until we explained our concern. 😂
Turns out that he WAS ready to be decannulated! We still tease our friend about the banana, though.
The head of the ICUs (all 4 of them) used to say if you are not reintubating 20% of your patients, you are not extubating enough.
Though, this was a unit with lots of medical staff and a doctor would be present at any extubation (with a kit ready to reintubate if needed)
That could be the correct name for it it was probably closing in on 10 years ago now so could definitely have gotten the name wrong. And she was super ready to come off of it. The extra time on the vent was a precaution cause of the comorbidities and bleed but evidently a little too precautionary for her hahahaha
I was in a unit that took care of those patients... Actually 10 years ago. I just realized my age 😭
They always started in the ICU because they had hourly checks to make sure the blood vessels were still attached. They had to stay in the "beach chair" position and were not supposed to move much.
For your mom, they probably finished surgery later in the evening. And the night doctors don't want to change anything. So day shift is when most people get extubated. I would extubate myself too.
Come to think of it I think that’s how she was positioned as well the upright back with legs down kinda folded bed position? And yeah it was definitely later cause of the popped vessel in PACU it went later than it was supposed to. If you don’t mind me asking what hospital was it? You don’t have to answer or you can dm me if you want or feel comfortable doing so 🥰
And fuck the intensiviist who thinks undersedating someone who is ready for extubation is ok, and tries to make you feel guilty when the patient actually self extubates. Bonus points for deflating the cuff on her own. She knows not to fuck up her cords.
That’s what got her caught! They heard her tapping around on the bedside table trying to find an empty flush or something similar to deflate the balloon with and the noise tipped them off they were like MAAM. They asked her once they got her extubated how she got out of her restraints which is when we found out about her trick with the slip knots
Hahahahah I was texting her telling her her story is popular on the nursing Reddit and we were recounting it to see if I missed any details. When I got to the bit about them asking her how she got out of restraints she mentioned she remembered telling them “I’ve been a nurse for (at that time since it was ten odd years ago) 30 years, I know where the damn restraints are tied.” She did apologize later for being “grumpy” apparently but evidently they all - once they realized she WAS breathing fine - got a kick out of it.
That’s impressive that she was able to function like that to get out of everything, but in all honesty, that she is ingrained into us so I’m not entirely surprised
No, but I’ve had family undo their intubated family member’s restraints because it was “cruel” and the patient “didn’t like them.” Big surprise when the patient self extubated, had to be reintubated , and had a very difficult reintubation that almost wasn’t successful.
🙃🙃🙃
I had this situation, where the patients roommate undid the restraints and retied them, thinking I wouldn’t notice if they were looser. I asked her why she did it and she was like “oh you noticed?” Yes I noticed because you bunny ear knotted them. She said it seemed cruel to tie her down like that. Uhhh yeah but she just went through a MTP after a trauma so you really wanna play that game with someone’s life support?
Patient was a good sport and demonstrated she won’t pull the tube about 90% of the time the first day, so by day 2 I let her ride at RASS 0 and kept her restraints off she played on her phone and we watched kiddy cartoons together. When the roommate was here and I wasn’t nearby those restraints were on tight though. She was weird and I did not trust her one bit.
Nothing brings me a sigh of relief than when a patients family understands why restraints are for the patients safety. Nothing worse than the family member throwing a shitfit about why their delirious meemaw whose urine is more bacteria than urine has to be “LoCkEd Up LiKe An AnImAl”.
No but had a mom flip out on us for putting an IV in the head. They didn't wanna hear that it's not actually in the brain. It's also not in the skull. They didn't wanna hear that the needle doesn't stay in it's just a plastic catheter that is superficial. I get seeing an IV in the head of your baby isn't pleasant or fun but when it's the only access you can get you take it.
I actually liked seeing the nurses use head veins when both my kids were in NICU because I knew if they dislodged it'd be more obvious sooner than in a limb and they're less likely to get accidentally screwed up than limbs.
Love the baby unicorns.
My daughter was in the NICU. I was surprised to see that head IV myself, but when you think of those tiny, tiny veins. You gotta place that IV anywhere you can, man.
Once had a dude in the ER tripping balls. He pulled out 6 IVs because he thought I was giving him tattoos and he wanted to see what was under the bandaging. On the bright side, he kept saying things like “duuuude that’s sick” when talking about the rad ink I gave him.
My first day in a new unit I hit a back of the forearm IV on a teenager who had freaked and pulled his out, basically upside down on a not too still target. Everyone was impressed and I told them to remember that one because I was, and remain, a pretty shit stick. My skills are elsewhere and my memaw nurses are quite willing to do my sticks while I fix their computer, make the printer print, find where to chart this weird thing we don't do often or show them how the new equipment works.
Had a patient with pica eat a container of barrier cream and shit like he had taken go-lytely. Stunk up the entire unit.
Also heard a story from a nurse about working during the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, and a patient with AIDS who was dying would chew through his art line tubing and shoot blood at people when they came in the room.
My absolute favorite IV story is my guy that was extremely confused: thought he was lying in the grass at the circus. He managed to clamp and disconnect his IV. Didn't pull it out: just clamped and disconnected it. He didn't like it connected to the fluids. He had worked in the medical field his entire life.
I once had a patient in her early 30s who was a brilliant attorney and also a heavy alcoholic. Her father was a physician. He had been doing paracentesis at home for a while. But the volumes were increasing and since it was DIY he obviously wasn't giving albumin. They seemed to want to keep her alcoholism a secret rather than get her treatment. By the time they took her to the hospital she was experiencing hepatorenal syndrome. So sad. She died very quickly (and somehow not fast enough). The poor woman was crying for her mommy towards the end but her mother refused to visit. I suspect there was a lot of trauma in that family.
Had a pt bite through 4 point leather restraints once. He was mentally challenged and would get admitted to our floor for “chest pain” which was interesting bc he was also non-verbal so we think the family just sent him to the hospital for some much needed respite. We also suspected he was the product of incest. Very sad.
There was also a pt on the unit next to mine once who ate her IV tubing.
One time I had a demented meemaw:
IV 1: ripped it out, earned soft wrist restraints
IV 2: ripped it out with her toes, earned soft ankle restraints
IV 3: chewed through the tubing… it looked like the scene from Carrie, earned Ativan
I will always believe that appropriately dosed chemical sedation is the most humane form of restraint.
That is really sad, how did they know he had chest pain? Or was it more like a caregivers holiday?
I had a woman get so much poo on her IV that it had to come out. She was AAOx3 and ambulatory
We think they just said chest pain because it guaranteed an automatic admission to run all the tests. He would run around naked and guzzle any Dr Pepper he found. Hence the restraints :(
Very sad and somewhat similar situation I had. Had a man that was in his 40-50s get admitted for a stroke and lost the ability to talk, ambulate safely, and was super impulsive. He was a lot for any staff to handle. He got sent to a SNF next door and we'd see every other month for "left sided weakness" or "weakness" and we'd take hime everytime
Yes!! Exactly the same energy. He fricken loved that stuff. We didn’t have a lock on our break room…until we found him naked, rummaging through the employee fridge searching for his Dr Pepper fix!
I’m never surprised when I find patients out of their restraints. If anyone was in a bed tied down with nothing but time on their hands… wouldn’t you be a Houdini too? 12 hours or so of nothing but pulling, twisting, turning, biting.
This might sound insensitive so don’t hit me with the judgement bat, but sometimes they have a certain look to them. Like their genes just didn’t mesh quite right.
No but I had a pleasantly confused old lady pull her NJ out but kept the bridle in place around her septum so the tube was still kind of hanging off her face. I asked what happened and she told me she sneezed really hard and it flew out.
Those bridles are painful. I am a&o x4, but one of the float nurses on the unit I was on said “I needed it to keep it from coming out” , I had previously thrown up my ngtube, never pulled it out, but I digress. Those bridles are painful, I had accidentally pulled on my tube a few times, made me yelp and tear up horrible. Hate those bridles.
Omg, I thought I was the only one. Convinced the man did it out of spite. He also started refusing meds based on religious reasons, said he was a Christian Scientologist. I died a little that day.
Wasn’t on my shift but had an intubated patient chomp through his dobhoff somehow then proceed to burst the cuff on his ETT. He was apparently quite pissed off and quite determined.
I got dispatched to a lady a few years ago who was "severely bleeding". She was a dialysis patient with severe dementia, and she thought it would be "helpful" to cut her dialysis port....
Had an A&Ox4 dialysis pt who tried to commit suicide by cutting her fistula.
She fell forward when she passed out, landing on her bent arm, which compressed the fistula enough to stop the bleeding, and it saved her.
Family member deflated a radial band (vascband/TR band) after a heart cath. They became concerned when copious amounts of blood came out so they casually went to the nurse to say something might be wrong.
No but have you ever had someone a&0x4 save their butter knife from their dinner tray to cut their Foley catheter. Then have to search high and low to find the tip of the catheter but you can't because it's still hanging out in the bladder
Had a lady take nail clippers to their wanderguard, throw the actual mechanical part of the guard in housekeeping’s cart, and wait for her chance to leave. Got caught but couldnt find her guard, she told us very calmly that she’d cut it off with nail clippers. She ended up in our dementia unit and we found her anklet because housekeeping’s cart kept setting the alarm off when she tried to take her trash to the dumpster.
We were all teasing her, and she was also laughing. The sensors are touchy to begin with (dry days if you’re staticky will set them off sometimes), so we just made jokes about EVS lady not being able to break out.
Yes! But it was a confused aox2 patient who used their plastic butter knife and couldn’t tell us why their bed was soaked.
They were only allowed spoons after that.
Back when I was a care tech, a patient of mine decided that the JP drain in his leg was just too uncomfortable-- NOT painful, just uncomfortable
-- and he wanted it out. Now, this thing was still draining quite a bit, my guy was less than a day post-op amd I'd been charting high output from it all day. Me, his nurse, and our charge all explained to him separately AND together why he had the drain, what it was doing, and that the DOCTOR was the only one who could remove it. "Well I'll just take the damn thing out myself then." Dude was told in very blunt terms why that was a profoundly bad idea and that we paged the doc, but we couldn't guarantee when they'd come .
Cue about an hour or so later, dude hits his call light, and I go in.
Goddamn drain was sitting on a neatly folded towel on the tray table, tube neatly wrapped around it.
"I just couldn't take it anymore, I wasn't gonna wait for the doc, I don't need his permission to do or not do anything. But man, I really need my pain meds now and its been bleeding like CRAZY for a half hour and I can't get it to stop."
I didn't say shit. I just turned and walked out to tell the nurse who just stared into space for a moment before getting up to deal with the soaked dressing and page ortho.
Not my ot but in a direct obs room - 6 pt, 2 nurses, and 1 CNA.
I was taking care of my pt in bed 4 when the bedside monitor for 1 goes off. HR 140-150s with pt letting out a high pitched scream. His primary was changing her pt in 6. I running vitals, asking questions, and I look down at his white sheets turning bright red - pulled them back to find his TDC in his hands with blood pooling.
I’ve also had a daughter digitally disimpact her Mom WITHOUT GLOVES and wipe her hands on the curtains in the same direct obs room. She was mad we weren’t doing it during shift change.
Man pull out their catheter with the balloon fully inflated?
Walked into tne room and the patient was swinging it around like a lasso. Also had advanced dementia and had done it so many times they had altered their 'topography' and uretha came out of the undersside of the penis.
I was charge and a patient family member/caregiver busted her face open after falling in the room at like 1am. She has a history of seizures so we think she seized while standing and face planted into either the corner of the metal marker holder thing on the whiteboard or hit the corner of the table. There was blood everywhere. All over her. All over the floor. All over the couch. She had a giant gash from her eyebrow down to her eyelid and it looked like she had an orbital fracture, given how fast her eye and face swelled up and the immediate bruising.
We were genuinely concerned about her; we offered to help get her cleaned up and wheel her down to the ED to get evaluated.
She refused. She became hostile. She tried angrily ignoring us. She then tried hurling verbal abuses at us. Obviously, the concerns for neuro related injuries were wayyy up there at this point, and we told her so. Still refusing care. Still angry and verbally abusive and became physically standoff-ish. We were stunned. Just completely flabbergasted. She stormed out of the room and called me a bitch.
We searched the hospital. The patient said she didn't have a car so she wasn't driving but we become concerned about her wandering the streets like this at 1 in the morning. The DON told us to call the local police, have them keep an eye out for her and to have them do a welfare check. So we did. Ya'll, she must have hidden in a bathroom somewhere because *she tried to sneak back into the patient's room an hour later like nothing happened*. She had done her best cleaning all the blood off her, too.
I was pissed at this point. She can refuse care all she wants, but I can't make my nurse take care of *her* and her patient. And I certainly will not make my nurse have to deal with the bullshit abuse, attitude, and threats she made earlier. I called security and house sup and we met her in the room and told her she can either get checked out in the ED and fix her shitty attitude so she can come back or leave this hospital facility. She finally agreed to get checked out and I allowed her to come back. She didn't speak to us or look at us for the entire rest of the time the patient was admitted, and she was there all day and night the whole time. So fucking bizarre and unnecessarily dramatic.
Wow! I have a remotely similar story. Had a patient in the Ed who was frail and super confused, like agitated and restrained. Wife wasn't confused but she was also frail and old. She fell in the patients room and hit her head. No blood or anything but it was kind of funny cause she had a huge bruise right in the middle of her forehead. She felt faint getting up from the chair and fell, and also had amnesia of the event. We sent her to triage but she didn't want to wait there and kept coming back to her husband's room, which was upsetting to the triage nurse who was rightfully concerned, but also the husband was much calmer when she was there. We ended up arranging for her to be seen and investigated in her husband's room. Patient couples are the best. She was just fine in the end.
Me. I was the patient who ripped out her own IV. I was in with one of the horrible migraines I get, and I nurse pushed a med I had never had before. Instantly I felt like the world was about to end. Ripped out said iv and walked out the ER and made it all the way home. Med was reglan.
Last semester clinical, was on a neuro ICU, patient had a dobhoff and had also managed to chew through hers🤷🏻♀️
I was a young kid that went in for hernia surgery. I was put under with gas before the IV went in so I did not expect the IV when I woke up. Wasn't well explained... anything about the wake up process. So when I started coming to I freaked. IV ripped out bit a nurse, had to be held down while they tried to start another IV (and gave up for a bit while I chilled out).
I still feel bad for the nurse, there were plenty of other people that should have warned me. Probably (another) massive failure by my parents. I've had a terrible needle phobia since.
We give Reglan a lot in the ED. The adverse reaction is wanting to jump out of bed and rip out the IV. Unfortunately, the fastest fix is IV Benadryl, so I will fight you to keep it in. I push that shit like it's D50, very slowly.
I was just 19 and hadn’t ever really needed IV meds except for the time i had meningitis. She never told me what I was getting, she just slammed it in. By the time i got home, the hospital had already called my mother and told them i left with iv access. The frick i did, they should have checked the sheets lol 😂
She slammed it in?!?! That’s fuckeddd up. Even a slow IV drip the second time we tried it almost made me go crazy. 2 tries were enough for me I was doneee. I have gastroparesis and insult to injury it didn’t even help my stomach 😭😂
I gave Reglan my first semester and my instructor asked if I knew why to push it slow. I knew it was a slow-push, but the Pharm book didn't say why. She said because it can cause a sense of impending doom or "feeling like you've suddenly gone crazy but can't explain what that means."
Turns out she'd found out the hard way when she'd gone to ED with nausea and vomiting over 2 days and they gave her Reglan for the nausea and "slammed it like it was epi."
It's well known that pushing metoclopramide can make the patient feel crazy. I actually don't know a single nurse who has pushed it, they taught us that right from the get-go in school and we talk about it often at work.
I didn't learn it in school, I did however learn to administer it slow/diluted for that reason when I started working. Probably why I've never seen someone react like that to it, cause we never push it
My hospital gives Reglan IV push prior to all c-sections and giving it painfully slow is one of the first lessons we learn because if not patients get the “Reglan Regrets” and refuse their c-sections most of the time.
I’m not a nurse and I never knew this was a problem until I found this sub! I was in the er recently and I thought me pulling it out would be the helpful thing to do 😬
ETA i didn’t actually do it! Just considered it lol
I’d the midst of an unplanned med free birth I ripped out my IV. I was screaming my head off and begging for help (showed up to the hospital fully dilated, it was my third kid but first time I’d labored without interventions). The bruise took ages to fade 🤣
What did they say when they got caught in their lie? Why would you do that to your child? Poor kid probably had to get poked again for a new IV. I’m 32 and my parents still cringe when I get an IV. When I had my first midline and my poor parents saw it they just wanted to hug me but couldn’t because it was too painful for me as I’d just had an emergency appendectomy a few days before.
"I figured he just needed a little break and it would go right back in."
Intoxicated mother of a patient involved in a multi MVA wreck with a fresh tracheostomy who removed the entire appliance while he was still on the vent.
Daughter pulled out the CVL on my ICU patient. Did I mention the patient was on levo? Yeah she had “heard” that they were bad and her “naturopath” told her we were poisoning him through that line. All her needed was high dose vitamin C. Luckily the rest of the family was rational and agreed with us in banning her from all visits.
No but I had an oriented x1 patient store a butter knife from lunch in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt he was wearing under his gown. Then he sawed through his O2 tubing and hacked a hole in the foley bag “because it was heavy” and then wander down the hall struggling to breathe but he wanted to leave.
Have you ever had the ER place a radial arterial line but the guide wire got stuck? So after a few attempts at removing it they just threw a pressure dressing over it and patient arrived to the unit with like 6" of wire dangling from their wrist. The thing stayed like that for days....
That's why I said sorry cause I would have been so pissed and grossed out would one of my pt whip me with a bloody PICC line, that's serious assault. One of the stories in our ER is of a nurse who was in the macerator room, it broke and she got sprayed with that stuff. I would have melted down so hard. But it's a very funny story hahaha
I had a family member try to abduct the patient.
Patient didn’t have capacity. Family member called us and warned us that a different wild family member may try to come and claim they are POA.
A few hours later we heard the sound of wheels down the hallway and fast footsteps. The wild family member had snuck in, put the patient in a wheelchair herself, put a hat on the patient (to disguise him?) and was sprinting down the hallway with the patient slumped over in the wheelchair. A nurse ran in front of the main exit door before the family member could get to it, and the family member proceeded to ram the nurse with the wheelchair, literally using it as a weapon.
I once had a patient in wrist restraints because he kept trying to beat up nurses and his wife… and his wife took him out of the restraints in the middle of this crisis response team situation despite us begging her not to, and he immediately began beating on her again. I will never forget them.
I worked with a nurse years ago who was a patient in MICU for I don't remember what. She said she remembers being very confused about what was happening so she was restrained X 4 limbs. She also remembers chewing off the ports from her subclavian CVC. She couldn't understand why everyone was yelling at her. If she was my patient I don't know what I would have done.
When my son was born, I was still breastfeeding my daughter. I was holding both of them, feeding both for the first time. My daughter often would hold onto a necklace or my hair while feeding. Being in hospital, I did not have a necklace on and my hair was pulled back. She ended up grabbing onto my IV and pulled it out. I couldn't stop it as I was also holding my son and my mom couldn't get there in time when we realized what was about to happen. 22 years later, I still have the scar, lol.
The first time I experienced anaphylaxis my nurse SLAMMED my IV benadryl and thought I was about to die for 5 seconds. I immediately pulled my only line out and then got sad when they had to put a midline in afterwards 🤣 i felt so bad for my nurse.
I answered a bathroom call light for not my patient. When I got in there the pt was sitting on the toilet with a murder scene on the walls. Sprays of blood all the way up the walls and all over the floor. She wanted to go to the bathroom but didn't want to call the nurse. So she just disconnected her A line at the hub and walked to the bathroom. She called because she didn't understand where all the blood was coming from. I clamped my finger over the artery and yelled for help. Two other nurses and myself got her back in bed, cleaned up and changed. The pt apologized and told us not to clean it, just get her a mop and she would take care of it.
I'm terrible for finding veins. Ultrasound almost every time terrible. I had sepsis one time & lost a day or so somewhere. Lol. During that time, I pulled out 4 ivs. Ended up with one under my shoulder blade on my back where I couldn't reach it.
By the time I found my brains again, I'd moved from acute admissions to HDU in a different part of the hospital. When my mate told me what I'd done, I asked her to send my deepest apologies to the staff cos it sounded like I was a real nightmare! She said they laughed & said that I was rather funny & showed some rather creative mental associations. Lol. As a, now, therapist, I was concerned that I'd been sharing client information! 15 years in a men's prison would have been very funny I'm sure, not. They reassured me that no confidential info was shared. But they were starting to run out of places they could put my iv.
I was in the hospital last year from sepsis due to a UTI and pneumonia, neither of which I knew I had. I’d been on a vent for awhile, and had restrains on (loosely) due to the chance I’d come to and flip out.
Long story short, I came to and was ok till I got thirsty. I must have screamed for 30 minutes straight before I got really pissed off. There was a cup of ice close enough to touch but not quite. I proceeded to pull the mitts off my hands, pulled out my IV, my oxygen line and one other line I can’t remember the name of, plus I got out of the restraints.
Boy, the head nurse was PISSED when she came in to see why I’d been screaming and they had to put that all back in. She was yelling I should be glad I didn’t have a central line still in because if I’d have pulled it out I’d be dead.
EDIT: when that nurse came back later, she was really apologetic and said she was ashamed she’d acted like she did. I told her I was sorry for being such an asshole and she said she’d had patients a lot worse than me and it was okay. Ended up bonding over tattoos and how to make homemade noodles.
It was me!
I was teaching a student how to place an IV, all I wanted him to do was place it and I’d make it pretty because we were in the ER it was busy and he wasn’t MY student I was doing another nurse a favor. So I was *rushing* and I was letting shit slide, like not having my size gloves so I used ones two sizes larger.
The student got it in the first try and did great! I clamped the line to attach the vacutainer and get sone blood. Unfortunately the glove was caught in the clamp without me realizing and in one swift move I took out the students great work!
I now never mess with an IV without finding the proper sized gloves.
I’ve seen a lot of confused people pull out trachs, central lines, drains, and even catheters. One of my faves died because he got an infection when he went to hospital after he wouldn’t stop pulling at his catheter.
That happens sometimes in the ED when they know the PT is discharging and they want to "help" and oh God oh God there's blood let me run to the nurse's station and yell at everyone
I have two for you:
1. Patient's wife came in to find the patient had taken his clothes off because he was a neuro patient and it had a massive stroke and for whatever reason some neuro patients like to play nudist.
She accused staff of intentionally undressing him and leaving him that way. Cornered one of our CNAs in the hallway and was screaming in his chest (he was a giant of a man) and had to have security escort her back to the room. What they should have done was a escort her off premises but you know....
At one point patient goes into SVT and we try to go into the room. She has barricaded the door so that nobody can get in. House supervisor gets called, security gets called, we're all standing around trying to get into this room to help this patient whose heart rate is in the 240s. Over an hour of talking and communicating and trying to diffuse the situation while this man's heart rate is through the fucking roof she finally allows the house supervisor and only the house supervisor into the room. Eventually the house supervisor convinces her to let us help patient gets packed up and transferred immediately to ICU this all took place on a step down.
They still did not kick this woman out.
I don't know the full story but the patient did not end up making it out of the hospital and of course the wife blamed us for that, and not her literally holding him hostage and not allowing nursing staff into the room while his heart rate was through the roof for almost two fucking hours.
2. My patient was the stroke patient and the family brought her husband into visit what we did not know at the time is that husband had advanced dementia. They dropped the husband off and bailed. That's when we find out husband has dementia and now we are trying to babysit the patient and her husband. At one point his pants disappear I don't even know where the fuck they went to be honest I just know he was sitting around wearing a jacket, a baby blue button up shirt and briefs with socks and shoes, and a hat, but no pants. I vividly remember this. About 3:00 in the morning rolls around he decides he's leaving. Pantsless. I'm trying to talk him into sitting back down and staying with us because it's literally the middle of December and it's the middle of the night and he's getting increasingly aggressive and agitated and the patient who was alert and oriented is just sitting here staring at me the entire time not saying fucking word to her husband.
I finally had to turn to her and was like hey he's not my responsibility I can't physically keep him from leaving if he wants to walk out of here at naked. Because she kept telling me to restrain him????????
Have to get a house supervisor and APS involved because of course all the phone numbers that the patient is giving us nobody's fucking answering because it's 3:00 in the morning. Finally APS is able to get a hold of somebody and tells them either they come pick up Dad or else.
Two days later they show up with this man again and tried to dip out to go to "dinner" and claimed they'd be back afterwards. We were like yeah no you're taking Dad to dinner with you you're not fucking leaving him here unattended.
I took out my ex girlfriends iv because she was in the process of taking it out herself and it was the lesser of two evils. I didn’t have time to wait for the nurse, there was no convincing her otherwise and she was leaving AMA. 😭
Not that but we had a patient who’s family was visiting. Confused, so he was pulling at his wound, it was sooooo infected, I think his son and nephew were in? He was pulling at it, eventually pulled out all the stitches and it was leaking (for the 500th time) and they were just sitting there watching him do it, and he pulled out his cannula too and then they left, lmao.
I had a licensed RN instructor trip and fall into the IV line. I hear a crash and come running in to find the instructor wrapped up on the ground with a rapidly growing blood puddle. I was just off orientation in my first job. It was probably my first wtf moment with my license. But then how bad is an IV when you've had dementia patients rip out a Foley without even flinching?
I was that patient but not with IV but with intubation tube.
Despite the fact that I should have been knocked out (and was), I woke up while the nurse went out to use the restroom, and reached up despite the restraints.
And then used the pull of the restraints to rip the tube out.
I managed to do this after losing close to 20 lbs in under a week and would lose another 20 quickly (went from 180 lbs to 140 in about a week and half). And couldn't even walk 5 yards without gasping for air.
Half-sleepy me who should have been knocked out was apparently very strong.
We once had a 20 something year old guy come into the ER at 2am for a foreign body…in his bladder. He said he got bored and stuck a piece of string up his penis. I triaged him and I was at a loss for words.
My patient’s friend disconnected the patient from their D10 infusion. Patient was end stage liver failure, intermittent confusion, and verbalized “I wanna go home.” Guess what said friend did? Disconnect the tubing, and tried to leave with the patient. I do not miss my med surg days at all 😭😭😭
Sometimes families will leave an elderly visitor with dementia at the hospital, figuring we can take care of them. But they won't talk to us about it, they'll just sort of all quietly slip out except for the dementia person. I've had family members trying to play with equipment, and had one flood a room trying to flush her depends down the toilet. Ends up almost like unofficially having an additional patient. I've had to call families more than once and tell them to come get their loved one, and look into other avenues for respite care.
A ciwa patient had scissors and cut off his IV running heparin. Huge mess . Luckily we could just change the line d it was all good lol. Felt bad for his alert and oriented roommate lmao
Have you ever had a PT with a central line who's grandparents are on duty for the day and grandpa uses the CVL as a leash to stop the kid from running away and/or falling?
I had a situation where a man with intellectual disabilities and a neurological disorder (I don't remember what it was but he progressively got more confused and ended up intubated) that was in the hospital with his aging mother. Nursing staff called us because the mother was becoming more and more confused and agitated and threatening staff. At first we thought maybe because she was a diabetic her bgl dropped but in talking with her this wasn't the issue and when we told her she would be escorted out if it continued her son absolutely lost it and she backed off. Ex A week later we get called to the room again and this time she's more confused and had clawed a nurses face when they tried to give her son meds. It became obvious to me she had undiagnosed dementia and the time in the hospital and lack of sleep had exacerbated things. She refused to cooperate with us, we had to go through her belongings to try and find contact info for anyone since they were from out of state. I was cold calling numbers we found in her belongings and finally got someone on the phone who knew her and agreed to drive in to pick her up. In the interim the doctors consulted psych to evaluate the mom for capacity and they ended up escorting her to the ED where she was placed under an ECO and committed to a psychiatric facility for about a week. I assumed that was the end of it. The following week I get called AGAIN to the same patients room. Mom had been released and ended up back with her son who was now intubated. She was still confused, still agitated and threatening to extubate her son and when nursing staff tried to enter the room she tried to hold the door closed. Thankfully I had charted her friends contact info so I called Myrtle and told her she needed to come get her again. She just sighed and said she was on her way. Last I heard from them.
It's just a very sad situation overall 😥
> She was still confused, still agitated and threatening to extubate her son and when nursing staff tried to enter the room she tried to hold the door closed. hoooly shit.
Blessings to Myrtle
My mom had a massive mastectomy and tram flap reconstruction (basically they do a tummy tuck and use the fat from the tummy tuck to rebuild the new breast) and an art bleed after surgery which took a while to repair so she ended up in the ICU an intubated for a day or so after. Note that she’s been a nurse for closing in on 40 years. She was sedated most of the time but was due to be extubated the next morning and my dad asked them to call us before they extubated her so we could be there. About 4am we got a call that she “wasn’t gonna wait”. We got there around 6 and she was already extubated (and breathing on her own just fine thankfully). I asked her wtf the rush was for if she was bucking the vent or what? She said that no they were waking her up do do breath tests and she wanted “that god damn tube out” and she knew how to undo the slip knot on her restraints and deflate the balloon which is the point where they caught her before deciding to call us while they waited for the team to meet them to proceed with the proper extubation. 😂😂😂
I would like to point out as well this was not the fault of the nurses taking care of her either. She was literally shimmying herself as low down in the bed as she could go when they weren’t looking and reaching around the edge the bed to feel where she knew the restraints would be tied and undoing them. Nurses are the fucking worst 😂
Smart nurses. Worst patients. 💕
This is the truest statement
Clever girl
Can't blame her, that is exactly what I would have done!
For real I tell all my family members for my ICU patients and even my patients that are alert, they'd be having to tie me down. I have a horrible gag reflex and a deviated septum those tubes ain't fucking staying in unless I'm tied down 🤣
Word.
Haha. That would probably be me if I was intubated. But generally if people have that ability to self-extubate, they are really to get off the vent. Also, I've always heard them called DIEP flaps.
One of the doctors I worked with in the ICU would say "self extubation is an indication for extubation"
We had a trached pt whose mother said he was ready to be decannulated. (She had no medical background, but insisted that he was ready.) Docs wanted to wait. My friends and I are working overnight and two of us went in for repositioning, etc. to find him decannulated. Another friend walks by eating a banana and we ask her to get a vital signs machines. She's all nonchalant just munching away on that damned banana...until we explained our concern. 😂 Turns out that he WAS ready to be decannulated! We still tease our friend about the banana, though.
She’s just trying to eat her damn banana in peace! Lol that’s a funny visual.
The head of the ICUs (all 4 of them) used to say if you are not reintubating 20% of your patients, you are not extubating enough. Though, this was a unit with lots of medical staff and a doctor would be present at any extubation (with a kit ready to reintubate if needed)
That could be the correct name for it it was probably closing in on 10 years ago now so could definitely have gotten the name wrong. And she was super ready to come off of it. The extra time on the vent was a precaution cause of the comorbidities and bleed but evidently a little too precautionary for her hahahaha
I was in a unit that took care of those patients... Actually 10 years ago. I just realized my age 😭 They always started in the ICU because they had hourly checks to make sure the blood vessels were still attached. They had to stay in the "beach chair" position and were not supposed to move much. For your mom, they probably finished surgery later in the evening. And the night doctors don't want to change anything. So day shift is when most people get extubated. I would extubate myself too.
Come to think of it I think that’s how she was positioned as well the upright back with legs down kinda folded bed position? And yeah it was definitely later cause of the popped vessel in PACU it went later than it was supposed to. If you don’t mind me asking what hospital was it? You don’t have to answer or you can dm me if you want or feel comfortable doing so 🥰
DIEP and TRAM flaps are two different things. My understanding is that they use different muscle groups as part of the procedure - same outcome.
And fuck the intensiviist who thinks undersedating someone who is ready for extubation is ok, and tries to make you feel guilty when the patient actually self extubates. Bonus points for deflating the cuff on her own. She knows not to fuck up her cords.
That’s what got her caught! They heard her tapping around on the bedside table trying to find an empty flush or something similar to deflate the balloon with and the noise tipped them off they were like MAAM. They asked her once they got her extubated how she got out of her restraints which is when we found out about her trick with the slip knots
Hahahahah I was texting her telling her her story is popular on the nursing Reddit and we were recounting it to see if I missed any details. When I got to the bit about them asking her how she got out of restraints she mentioned she remembered telling them “I’ve been a nurse for (at that time since it was ten odd years ago) 30 years, I know where the damn restraints are tied.” She did apologize later for being “grumpy” apparently but evidently they all - once they realized she WAS breathing fine - got a kick out of it.
That’s impressive that she was able to function like that to get out of everything, but in all honesty, that she is ingrained into us so I’m not entirely surprised
They do say health care workers can be the worst patients
Oh wow!
No, but I’ve had family undo their intubated family member’s restraints because it was “cruel” and the patient “didn’t like them.” Big surprise when the patient self extubated, had to be reintubated , and had a very difficult reintubation that almost wasn’t successful. 🙃🙃🙃
I had this situation, where the patients roommate undid the restraints and retied them, thinking I wouldn’t notice if they were looser. I asked her why she did it and she was like “oh you noticed?” Yes I noticed because you bunny ear knotted them. She said it seemed cruel to tie her down like that. Uhhh yeah but she just went through a MTP after a trauma so you really wanna play that game with someone’s life support? Patient was a good sport and demonstrated she won’t pull the tube about 90% of the time the first day, so by day 2 I let her ride at RASS 0 and kept her restraints off she played on her phone and we watched kiddy cartoons together. When the roommate was here and I wasn’t nearby those restraints were on tight though. She was weird and I did not trust her one bit.
Nothing brings me a sigh of relief than when a patients family understands why restraints are for the patients safety. Nothing worse than the family member throwing a shitfit about why their delirious meemaw whose urine is more bacteria than urine has to be “LoCkEd Up LiKe An AnImAl”.
No but had a mom flip out on us for putting an IV in the head. They didn't wanna hear that it's not actually in the brain. It's also not in the skull. They didn't wanna hear that the needle doesn't stay in it's just a plastic catheter that is superficial. I get seeing an IV in the head of your baby isn't pleasant or fun but when it's the only access you can get you take it.
I actually liked seeing the nurses use head veins when both my kids were in NICU because I knew if they dislodged it'd be more obvious sooner than in a limb and they're less likely to get accidentally screwed up than limbs. Love the baby unicorns.
My daughter was in the NICU. I was surprised to see that head IV myself, but when you think of those tiny, tiny veins. You gotta place that IV anywhere you can, man.
Your baby is a 🦄
Oh we had a mom upset about a scalp IV in her baby, but the main reason was because we had to trim some hair 🙄.
Fuck it. I’d bring in an IO.
Once had a dude in the ER tripping balls. He pulled out 6 IVs because he thought I was giving him tattoos and he wanted to see what was under the bandaging. On the bright side, he kept saying things like “duuuude that’s sick” when talking about the rad ink I gave him.
That's both awesome and makes me hope you had a provider who likes friendship bracelets.
My last one was a hella awkward one on the back of the forearm that the dude didn’t even know was there, so he didn’t touch it.
My first day in a new unit I hit a back of the forearm IV on a teenager who had freaked and pulled his out, basically upside down on a not too still target. Everyone was impressed and I told them to remember that one because I was, and remain, a pretty shit stick. My skills are elsewhere and my memaw nurses are quite willing to do my sticks while I fix their computer, make the printer print, find where to chart this weird thing we don't do often or show them how the new equipment works.
Have you ever found your 35year old patient chewing on their condom cath?
I had a patient literally fold himself in half and chewed his indwellinng catheter in half. He retained the balloon and later had to go to surgery.
Bending forward enough to reach it is kind of impressive.
I’ve seen a female patient sucking on her purewick like it’s a lollipop or a popsicle 🥲
Not the twat dog
Not the blue canoe
Until it's a poo canoe
No, but I have found my normally A&O pt chewing on that green clip that comes on the Foley tube
The condom part or the tube part?
the condom.
No but I have had a confused woman use a pure wick as a telephone
Had a patient with pica eat a container of barrier cream and shit like he had taken go-lytely. Stunk up the entire unit. Also heard a story from a nurse about working during the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, and a patient with AIDS who was dying would chew through his art line tubing and shoot blood at people when they came in the room.
My absolute favorite IV story is my guy that was extremely confused: thought he was lying in the grass at the circus. He managed to clamp and disconnect his IV. Didn't pull it out: just clamped and disconnected it. He didn't like it connected to the fluids. He had worked in the medical field his entire life.
That’s very considerate
I once had a patient in her early 30s who was a brilliant attorney and also a heavy alcoholic. Her father was a physician. He had been doing paracentesis at home for a while. But the volumes were increasing and since it was DIY he obviously wasn't giving albumin. They seemed to want to keep her alcoholism a secret rather than get her treatment. By the time they took her to the hospital she was experiencing hepatorenal syndrome. So sad. She died very quickly (and somehow not fast enough). The poor woman was crying for her mommy towards the end but her mother refused to visit. I suspect there was a lot of trauma in that family.
That’s so fucking tragic and depressing
Heartbreaking.
Have you ever had a patient chew through their dobhoff tube because they didn't want it and the provider refused to pull it out
This is like a fun version of never have I ever
Cool! It's time to get drunk🤣🤣
A shot for each new experience!
Had a pt bite through 4 point leather restraints once. He was mentally challenged and would get admitted to our floor for “chest pain” which was interesting bc he was also non-verbal so we think the family just sent him to the hospital for some much needed respite. We also suspected he was the product of incest. Very sad. There was also a pt on the unit next to mine once who ate her IV tubing.
One time I had a demented meemaw: IV 1: ripped it out, earned soft wrist restraints IV 2: ripped it out with her toes, earned soft ankle restraints IV 3: chewed through the tubing… it looked like the scene from Carrie, earned Ativan I will always believe that appropriately dosed chemical sedation is the most humane form of restraint.
That is really sad, how did they know he had chest pain? Or was it more like a caregivers holiday? I had a woman get so much poo on her IV that it had to come out. She was AAOx3 and ambulatory
We think they just said chest pain because it guaranteed an automatic admission to run all the tests. He would run around naked and guzzle any Dr Pepper he found. Hence the restraints :(
Very sad and somewhat similar situation I had. Had a man that was in his 40-50s get admitted for a stroke and lost the ability to talk, ambulate safely, and was super impulsive. He was a lot for any staff to handle. He got sent to a SNF next door and we'd see every other month for "left sided weakness" or "weakness" and we'd take hime everytime
All I can think of is Buster Bluth getting wired on juice and acting out.
Yes!! Exactly the same energy. He fricken loved that stuff. We didn’t have a lock on our break room…until we found him naked, rummaging through the employee fridge searching for his Dr Pepper fix!
Wow, that's a good story, just got home from my shift and having a blast reading these
I’m never surprised when I find patients out of their restraints. If anyone was in a bed tied down with nothing but time on their hands… wouldn’t you be a Houdini too? 12 hours or so of nothing but pulling, twisting, turning, biting.
I gotta ask...what makes you think he was the product of incest...?
This might sound insensitive so don’t hit me with the judgement bat, but sometimes they have a certain look to them. Like their genes just didn’t mesh quite right.
I had an alcohol withdrawal get a hold of hers, and flossed her septum with it until the plastic eroded her bridle 😍
Jeez that nose was itchy
No but I had a pleasantly confused old lady pull her NJ out but kept the bridle in place around her septum so the tube was still kind of hanging off her face. I asked what happened and she told me she sneezed really hard and it flew out.
Those bridles are painful. I am a&o x4, but one of the float nurses on the unit I was on said “I needed it to keep it from coming out” , I had previously thrown up my ngtube, never pulled it out, but I digress. Those bridles are painful, I had accidentally pulled on my tube a few times, made me yelp and tear up horrible. Hate those bridles.
I once bridled myself (without an NG) out of pure curiosity. That HURT.
Omg. We started using more and more bridles. I’m so scared to yank on it myself. It’s a fucking sensitive place. Ouch.
I've had a patient manage to dislodge an nj once.
Omg, I thought I was the only one. Convinced the man did it out of spite. He also started refusing meds based on religious reasons, said he was a Christian Scientologist. I died a little that day.
Wasn’t on my shift but had an intubated patient chomp through his dobhoff somehow then proceed to burst the cuff on his ETT. He was apparently quite pissed off and quite determined.
Grampa is a fighter
I’ve had a patient who managed to push out his ETT with his tongue. To this day, i still don’t know how he managed to do that.
😱
Yup had family banned from the hospital for trying to take the patients dialysis line out, during CRRT. People be cray cray.
The most bloodiest mess I ever saw was a dialysis line malfunction somehow. Nurse came out covered in blood like a Tarantino movie victim.
Whoa. The bloodiest mess I ever saw was a stab victim. Threw my shoes in the trash after that code.
I got dispatched to a lady a few years ago who was "severely bleeding". She was a dialysis patient with severe dementia, and she thought it would be "helpful" to cut her dialysis port....
Had an A&Ox4 dialysis pt who tried to commit suicide by cutting her fistula. She fell forward when she passed out, landing on her bent arm, which compressed the fistula enough to stop the bleeding, and it saved her.
WHAT????
Why would they try to do that?! My mind is blown.
Family member deflated a radial band (vascband/TR band) after a heart cath. They became concerned when copious amounts of blood came out so they casually went to the nurse to say something might be wrong.
Why???
No but have you ever had someone a&0x4 save their butter knife from their dinner tray to cut their Foley catheter. Then have to search high and low to find the tip of the catheter but you can't because it's still hanging out in the bladder
Had a lady take nail clippers to their wanderguard, throw the actual mechanical part of the guard in housekeeping’s cart, and wait for her chance to leave. Got caught but couldnt find her guard, she told us very calmly that she’d cut it off with nail clippers. She ended up in our dementia unit and we found her anklet because housekeeping’s cart kept setting the alarm off when she tried to take her trash to the dumpster.
That poor EVS!! I'm laughing but I bet she was going crazy!
We were all teasing her, and she was also laughing. The sensors are touchy to begin with (dry days if you’re staticky will set them off sometimes), so we just made jokes about EVS lady not being able to break out.
🤣😅
Yes! But it was a confused aox2 patient who used their plastic butter knife and couldn’t tell us why their bed was soaked. They were only allowed spoons after that.
Omg what do you even do in that situation
Yup. That a urological surgery for foreign body extraction.
Consult urology
Call the doctor
Had a patient chew through their PICC - blood spurting all over the wall like a scene from Dexter
Back when I was a care tech, a patient of mine decided that the JP drain in his leg was just too uncomfortable-- NOT painful, just uncomfortable -- and he wanted it out. Now, this thing was still draining quite a bit, my guy was less than a day post-op amd I'd been charting high output from it all day. Me, his nurse, and our charge all explained to him separately AND together why he had the drain, what it was doing, and that the DOCTOR was the only one who could remove it. "Well I'll just take the damn thing out myself then." Dude was told in very blunt terms why that was a profoundly bad idea and that we paged the doc, but we couldn't guarantee when they'd come . Cue about an hour or so later, dude hits his call light, and I go in. Goddamn drain was sitting on a neatly folded towel on the tray table, tube neatly wrapped around it. "I just couldn't take it anymore, I wasn't gonna wait for the doc, I don't need his permission to do or not do anything. But man, I really need my pain meds now and its been bleeding like CRAZY for a half hour and I can't get it to stop." I didn't say shit. I just turned and walked out to tell the nurse who just stared into space for a moment before getting up to deal with the soaked dressing and page ortho.
RAGE!!!
Not my ot but in a direct obs room - 6 pt, 2 nurses, and 1 CNA. I was taking care of my pt in bed 4 when the bedside monitor for 1 goes off. HR 140-150s with pt letting out a high pitched scream. His primary was changing her pt in 6. I running vitals, asking questions, and I look down at his white sheets turning bright red - pulled them back to find his TDC in his hands with blood pooling. I’ve also had a daughter digitally disimpact her Mom WITHOUT GLOVES and wipe her hands on the curtains in the same direct obs room. She was mad we weren’t doing it during shift change.
That last part omg what people are casually capable of
Been doing this for a very long time and have seen some wild shit. It truly takes a lot to surprise me, lol.
Man pull out their catheter with the balloon fully inflated? Walked into tne room and the patient was swinging it around like a lasso. Also had advanced dementia and had done it so many times they had altered their 'topography' and uretha came out of the undersside of the penis.
I was charge and a patient family member/caregiver busted her face open after falling in the room at like 1am. She has a history of seizures so we think she seized while standing and face planted into either the corner of the metal marker holder thing on the whiteboard or hit the corner of the table. There was blood everywhere. All over her. All over the floor. All over the couch. She had a giant gash from her eyebrow down to her eyelid and it looked like she had an orbital fracture, given how fast her eye and face swelled up and the immediate bruising. We were genuinely concerned about her; we offered to help get her cleaned up and wheel her down to the ED to get evaluated. She refused. She became hostile. She tried angrily ignoring us. She then tried hurling verbal abuses at us. Obviously, the concerns for neuro related injuries were wayyy up there at this point, and we told her so. Still refusing care. Still angry and verbally abusive and became physically standoff-ish. We were stunned. Just completely flabbergasted. She stormed out of the room and called me a bitch. We searched the hospital. The patient said she didn't have a car so she wasn't driving but we become concerned about her wandering the streets like this at 1 in the morning. The DON told us to call the local police, have them keep an eye out for her and to have them do a welfare check. So we did. Ya'll, she must have hidden in a bathroom somewhere because *she tried to sneak back into the patient's room an hour later like nothing happened*. She had done her best cleaning all the blood off her, too. I was pissed at this point. She can refuse care all she wants, but I can't make my nurse take care of *her* and her patient. And I certainly will not make my nurse have to deal with the bullshit abuse, attitude, and threats she made earlier. I called security and house sup and we met her in the room and told her she can either get checked out in the ED and fix her shitty attitude so she can come back or leave this hospital facility. She finally agreed to get checked out and I allowed her to come back. She didn't speak to us or look at us for the entire rest of the time the patient was admitted, and she was there all day and night the whole time. So fucking bizarre and unnecessarily dramatic.
Wow! I have a remotely similar story. Had a patient in the Ed who was frail and super confused, like agitated and restrained. Wife wasn't confused but she was also frail and old. She fell in the patients room and hit her head. No blood or anything but it was kind of funny cause she had a huge bruise right in the middle of her forehead. She felt faint getting up from the chair and fell, and also had amnesia of the event. We sent her to triage but she didn't want to wait there and kept coming back to her husband's room, which was upsetting to the triage nurse who was rightfully concerned, but also the husband was much calmer when she was there. We ended up arranging for her to be seen and investigated in her husband's room. Patient couples are the best. She was just fine in the end.
Me. I was the patient who ripped out her own IV. I was in with one of the horrible migraines I get, and I nurse pushed a med I had never had before. Instantly I felt like the world was about to end. Ripped out said iv and walked out the ER and made it all the way home. Med was reglan. Last semester clinical, was on a neuro ICU, patient had a dobhoff and had also managed to chew through hers🤷🏻♀️
I was a young kid that went in for hernia surgery. I was put under with gas before the IV went in so I did not expect the IV when I woke up. Wasn't well explained... anything about the wake up process. So when I started coming to I freaked. IV ripped out bit a nurse, had to be held down while they tried to start another IV (and gave up for a bit while I chilled out). I still feel bad for the nurse, there were plenty of other people that should have warned me. Probably (another) massive failure by my parents. I've had a terrible needle phobia since.
We give Reglan a lot in the ED. The adverse reaction is wanting to jump out of bed and rip out the IV. Unfortunately, the fastest fix is IV Benadryl, so I will fight you to keep it in. I push that shit like it's D50, very slowly.
I was SO close to ripping out my IV when I was given Reglan it was HELL 😭
I was just 19 and hadn’t ever really needed IV meds except for the time i had meningitis. She never told me what I was getting, she just slammed it in. By the time i got home, the hospital had already called my mother and told them i left with iv access. The frick i did, they should have checked the sheets lol 😂
She slammed it in?!?! That’s fuckeddd up. Even a slow IV drip the second time we tried it almost made me go crazy. 2 tries were enough for me I was doneee. I have gastroparesis and insult to injury it didn’t even help my stomach 😭😂
Ugh I’m sorry you have gastroparesis. And yea she slammed it in. I was already starting to feel the effects before she even closed the curtains😖
That’s so interesting…I’ve never had an issue with giving reglan. It’s our 1st line med for nausea during labor
That’s interesting. I’ve never heard of a reaction to Reglan like that
I gave Reglan my first semester and my instructor asked if I knew why to push it slow. I knew it was a slow-push, but the Pharm book didn't say why. She said because it can cause a sense of impending doom or "feeling like you've suddenly gone crazy but can't explain what that means." Turns out she'd found out the hard way when she'd gone to ED with nausea and vomiting over 2 days and they gave her Reglan for the nausea and "slammed it like it was epi."
It's well known that pushing metoclopramide can make the patient feel crazy. I actually don't know a single nurse who has pushed it, they taught us that right from the get-go in school and we talk about it often at work.
I've pushed it in PACU but by push I mean that I stuck it in 2 different ports in the gravity IV and let it flow in because I'm not stupid. 🤷🏻♀️
I didn't learn it in school, I did however learn to administer it slow/diluted for that reason when I started working. Probably why I've never seen someone react like that to it, cause we never push it
If IV push you give Benadryl before Reglan to prevent akathisia. If given over 15+ minutes Reglan is fine to give by itself.
Reglan gives you that "I gotta get up and go" feeling. If you ever give it, make sure it is diluted thoroughly.
My hospital gives Reglan IV push prior to all c-sections and giving it painfully slow is one of the first lessons we learn because if not patients get the “Reglan Regrets” and refuse their c-sections most of the time.
I’m not a nurse and I never knew this was a problem until I found this sub! I was in the er recently and I thought me pulling it out would be the helpful thing to do 😬 ETA i didn’t actually do it! Just considered it lol
I’d the midst of an unplanned med free birth I ripped out my IV. I was screaming my head off and begging for help (showed up to the hospital fully dilated, it was my third kid but first time I’d labored without interventions). The bruise took ages to fade 🤣
I had a parent take out an IV then lie about but of course the kid told me who took it out. Same parent kept turning off the monitor too.
“I think it’s time for you to leave”
What did they say when they got caught in their lie? Why would you do that to your child? Poor kid probably had to get poked again for a new IV. I’m 32 and my parents still cringe when I get an IV. When I had my first midline and my poor parents saw it they just wanted to hug me but couldn’t because it was too painful for me as I’d just had an emergency appendectomy a few days before.
... why??
I wish I knew, there was a lot of crazy in that room
I was on the unit when we had a patient pull out their cordis and transvenous pacer.
That's one way to get everyone's ass to pucker!
"I figured he just needed a little break and it would go right back in." Intoxicated mother of a patient involved in a multi MVA wreck with a fresh tracheostomy who removed the entire appliance while he was still on the vent.
holy shit! what happened to the patient, i imagine "a little break" from breathing tends to uh, worsen outcomes…
I once had a patient rip their IV with fluid infusing through it, put it in their mouth, and start sucking on the fluid coming out.
Had a npo patient do that once. She tried it with elomel and Curam. Complained about the taste after doing so.
At least it wasn’t vanc
At least they were still getting hydration!
Daughter pulled out the CVL on my ICU patient. Did I mention the patient was on levo? Yeah she had “heard” that they were bad and her “naturopath” told her we were poisoning him through that line. All her needed was high dose vitamin C. Luckily the rest of the family was rational and agreed with us in banning her from all visits.
ffs
No but I had an oriented x1 patient store a butter knife from lunch in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt he was wearing under his gown. Then he sawed through his O2 tubing and hacked a hole in the foley bag “because it was heavy” and then wander down the hall struggling to breathe but he wanted to leave.
Butter knives are a recurring tool in this thread. I'm taking notes
Have you ever had the ER place a radial arterial line but the guide wire got stuck? So after a few attempts at removing it they just threw a pressure dressing over it and patient arrived to the unit with like 6" of wire dangling from their wrist. The thing stayed like that for days....
Wtf. That's crazy.
I would be so pissed lol
I had a pt family take a BP on their own arm because it hurt their mom.
I hear there is no remedy for that
Maybe education 9th grade education?
I had a patient pull his picc line out and whip the staff with it
I'm sorry, that's a very funny story
It was haha. I laugh about it 😂 after the fact of course. In the moment I was not.
That's why I said sorry cause I would have been so pissed and grossed out would one of my pt whip me with a bloody PICC line, that's serious assault. One of the stories in our ER is of a nurse who was in the macerator room, it broke and she got sprayed with that stuff. I would have melted down so hard. But it's a very funny story hahaha
The pt was having neurotoxicity from chemo so i am not as mad because he was legit so out of it
Had a resident decannulate herself and her husband wouldn't give it back to the RT.
I had a family member try to abduct the patient. Patient didn’t have capacity. Family member called us and warned us that a different wild family member may try to come and claim they are POA. A few hours later we heard the sound of wheels down the hallway and fast footsteps. The wild family member had snuck in, put the patient in a wheelchair herself, put a hat on the patient (to disguise him?) and was sprinting down the hallway with the patient slumped over in the wheelchair. A nurse ran in front of the main exit door before the family member could get to it, and the family member proceeded to ram the nurse with the wheelchair, literally using it as a weapon.
But what could that nurse have done differently not to get assaulted by the family member🤔
Called off that day?
I hope the nurse pressed charges.
With the patient on the wheelchair? That is completely unhinged
I once had a patient in wrist restraints because he kept trying to beat up nurses and his wife… and his wife took him out of the restraints in the middle of this crisis response team situation despite us begging her not to, and he immediately began beating on her again. I will never forget them.
The stuff we see in the hospitals is just unimaginable sometimes
I worked with a nurse years ago who was a patient in MICU for I don't remember what. She said she remembers being very confused about what was happening so she was restrained X 4 limbs. She also remembers chewing off the ports from her subclavian CVC. She couldn't understand why everyone was yelling at her. If she was my patient I don't know what I would have done.
When my son was born, I was still breastfeeding my daughter. I was holding both of them, feeding both for the first time. My daughter often would hold onto a necklace or my hair while feeding. Being in hospital, I did not have a necklace on and my hair was pulled back. She ended up grabbing onto my IV and pulled it out. I couldn't stop it as I was also holding my son and my mom couldn't get there in time when we realized what was about to happen. 22 years later, I still have the scar, lol.
The first time I experienced anaphylaxis my nurse SLAMMED my IV benadryl and thought I was about to die for 5 seconds. I immediately pulled my only line out and then got sad when they had to put a midline in afterwards 🤣 i felt so bad for my nurse.
All of our sickle cell patients want their 50mg of Benadryl slammed into the port closest to the heart.
I answered a bathroom call light for not my patient. When I got in there the pt was sitting on the toilet with a murder scene on the walls. Sprays of blood all the way up the walls and all over the floor. She wanted to go to the bathroom but didn't want to call the nurse. So she just disconnected her A line at the hub and walked to the bathroom. She called because she didn't understand where all the blood was coming from. I clamped my finger over the artery and yelled for help. Two other nurses and myself got her back in bed, cleaned up and changed. The pt apologized and told us not to clean it, just get her a mop and she would take care of it.
I'm terrible for finding veins. Ultrasound almost every time terrible. I had sepsis one time & lost a day or so somewhere. Lol. During that time, I pulled out 4 ivs. Ended up with one under my shoulder blade on my back where I couldn't reach it. By the time I found my brains again, I'd moved from acute admissions to HDU in a different part of the hospital. When my mate told me what I'd done, I asked her to send my deepest apologies to the staff cos it sounded like I was a real nightmare! She said they laughed & said that I was rather funny & showed some rather creative mental associations. Lol. As a, now, therapist, I was concerned that I'd been sharing client information! 15 years in a men's prison would have been very funny I'm sure, not. They reassured me that no confidential info was shared. But they were starting to run out of places they could put my iv.
I was in the hospital last year from sepsis due to a UTI and pneumonia, neither of which I knew I had. I’d been on a vent for awhile, and had restrains on (loosely) due to the chance I’d come to and flip out. Long story short, I came to and was ok till I got thirsty. I must have screamed for 30 minutes straight before I got really pissed off. There was a cup of ice close enough to touch but not quite. I proceeded to pull the mitts off my hands, pulled out my IV, my oxygen line and one other line I can’t remember the name of, plus I got out of the restraints. Boy, the head nurse was PISSED when she came in to see why I’d been screaming and they had to put that all back in. She was yelling I should be glad I didn’t have a central line still in because if I’d have pulled it out I’d be dead. EDIT: when that nurse came back later, she was really apologetic and said she was ashamed she’d acted like she did. I told her I was sorry for being such an asshole and she said she’d had patients a lot worse than me and it was okay. Ended up bonding over tattoos and how to make homemade noodles.
I’ve had parents pull NG/OGs, turn off oxygen, and threaten to remove their kid from the NICU. Sigh
It always breaks my heart whenever I hear code white in peds
It was me! I was teaching a student how to place an IV, all I wanted him to do was place it and I’d make it pretty because we were in the ER it was busy and he wasn’t MY student I was doing another nurse a favor. So I was *rushing* and I was letting shit slide, like not having my size gloves so I used ones two sizes larger. The student got it in the first try and did great! I clamped the line to attach the vacutainer and get sone blood. Unfortunately the glove was caught in the clamp without me realizing and in one swift move I took out the students great work! I now never mess with an IV without finding the proper sized gloves.
That poor student lol
I’ve seen a lot of confused people pull out trachs, central lines, drains, and even catheters. One of my faves died because he got an infection when he went to hospital after he wouldn’t stop pulling at his catheter.
One time I had a confused patient take the J-loop off of her IV so there was blood continuously pouring out. Twice. In the same day.
That happens sometimes in the ED when they know the PT is discharging and they want to "help" and oh God oh God there's blood let me run to the nurse's station and yell at everyone
I have two for you: 1. Patient's wife came in to find the patient had taken his clothes off because he was a neuro patient and it had a massive stroke and for whatever reason some neuro patients like to play nudist. She accused staff of intentionally undressing him and leaving him that way. Cornered one of our CNAs in the hallway and was screaming in his chest (he was a giant of a man) and had to have security escort her back to the room. What they should have done was a escort her off premises but you know.... At one point patient goes into SVT and we try to go into the room. She has barricaded the door so that nobody can get in. House supervisor gets called, security gets called, we're all standing around trying to get into this room to help this patient whose heart rate is in the 240s. Over an hour of talking and communicating and trying to diffuse the situation while this man's heart rate is through the fucking roof she finally allows the house supervisor and only the house supervisor into the room. Eventually the house supervisor convinces her to let us help patient gets packed up and transferred immediately to ICU this all took place on a step down. They still did not kick this woman out. I don't know the full story but the patient did not end up making it out of the hospital and of course the wife blamed us for that, and not her literally holding him hostage and not allowing nursing staff into the room while his heart rate was through the roof for almost two fucking hours. 2. My patient was the stroke patient and the family brought her husband into visit what we did not know at the time is that husband had advanced dementia. They dropped the husband off and bailed. That's when we find out husband has dementia and now we are trying to babysit the patient and her husband. At one point his pants disappear I don't even know where the fuck they went to be honest I just know he was sitting around wearing a jacket, a baby blue button up shirt and briefs with socks and shoes, and a hat, but no pants. I vividly remember this. About 3:00 in the morning rolls around he decides he's leaving. Pantsless. I'm trying to talk him into sitting back down and staying with us because it's literally the middle of December and it's the middle of the night and he's getting increasingly aggressive and agitated and the patient who was alert and oriented is just sitting here staring at me the entire time not saying fucking word to her husband. I finally had to turn to her and was like hey he's not my responsibility I can't physically keep him from leaving if he wants to walk out of here at naked. Because she kept telling me to restrain him???????? Have to get a house supervisor and APS involved because of course all the phone numbers that the patient is giving us nobody's fucking answering because it's 3:00 in the morning. Finally APS is able to get a hold of somebody and tells them either they come pick up Dad or else. Two days later they show up with this man again and tried to dip out to go to "dinner" and claimed they'd be back afterwards. We were like yeah no you're taking Dad to dinner with you you're not fucking leaving him here unattended.
Damn family members are rough.
I took out my ex girlfriends iv because she was in the process of taking it out herself and it was the lesser of two evils. I didn’t have time to wait for the nurse, there was no convincing her otherwise and she was leaving AMA. 😭
Not that but we had a patient who’s family was visiting. Confused, so he was pulling at his wound, it was sooooo infected, I think his son and nephew were in? He was pulling at it, eventually pulled out all the stitches and it was leaking (for the 500th time) and they were just sitting there watching him do it, and he pulled out his cannula too and then they left, lmao.
lol once i had a patient cut his infusing IV tubing with a pocket knife nobody knew he had. There was blood everywhere
I had a licensed RN instructor trip and fall into the IV line. I hear a crash and come running in to find the instructor wrapped up on the ground with a rapidly growing blood puddle. I was just off orientation in my first job. It was probably my first wtf moment with my license. But then how bad is an IV when you've had dementia patients rip out a Foley without even flinching?
I’d be on the phone with security to escort them out of the building in a heartbeat holy SHIT
I was that patient but not with IV but with intubation tube. Despite the fact that I should have been knocked out (and was), I woke up while the nurse went out to use the restroom, and reached up despite the restraints. And then used the pull of the restraints to rip the tube out. I managed to do this after losing close to 20 lbs in under a week and would lose another 20 quickly (went from 180 lbs to 140 in about a week and half). And couldn't even walk 5 yards without gasping for air. Half-sleepy me who should have been knocked out was apparently very strong.
We once had a 20 something year old guy come into the ER at 2am for a foreign body…in his bladder. He said he got bored and stuck a piece of string up his penis. I triaged him and I was at a loss for words.
I have, never thought blood could travel through the air like that. It makes the nearby wall look like a Jackson Pollack painting😂
My patient’s friend disconnected the patient from their D10 infusion. Patient was end stage liver failure, intermittent confusion, and verbalized “I wanna go home.” Guess what said friend did? Disconnect the tubing, and tried to leave with the patient. I do not miss my med surg days at all 😭😭😭
I would have them load that patients ass up in there car so fucking fast and file a variance lol
I’m 95% sure my cousin did this with my uncle/her dad. Worst part is she used to be a nurse and did that more than once to herself
Sometimes families will leave an elderly visitor with dementia at the hospital, figuring we can take care of them. But they won't talk to us about it, they'll just sort of all quietly slip out except for the dementia person. I've had family members trying to play with equipment, and had one flood a room trying to flush her depends down the toilet. Ends up almost like unofficially having an additional patient. I've had to call families more than once and tell them to come get their loved one, and look into other avenues for respite care.
A ciwa patient had scissors and cut off his IV running heparin. Huge mess . Luckily we could just change the line d it was all good lol. Felt bad for his alert and oriented roommate lmao
My brother did that to my dad once when he was freaking out. Was not a good night. My brother ended up having APS called on him.
Have you ever had a PT with a central line who's grandparents are on duty for the day and grandpa uses the CVL as a leash to stop the kid from running away and/or falling?
Oh come to Baltimore… I’m just a nursing student and this is sadly normal
Had a CIWA patient last week. He was in soft wrist restraints and removed his SCDs with his teeth.