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Let’s face it: If you’ve been in nursing long enough, you’ve seen some pretty strange stuff. Take a look at some of the odd encounters our readers have experienced, and share your own in the comments section below!
- A nurse was doing a stroke assessment on an elderly patient. She asked her to smile, but the patient said that she just didn’t feel like smiling. Then the nurse said, “Well, show me your teeth.” The lady opened her mouth, took out her dentures and handed them to the dumbfounded nurse.
- One elderly gentleman asked his nurse for some tape after putting in his hearing aids. The nurse watched as the patient began to put the tape over his ears. When asked why, the patient said, “It’s to keep them hearing aids from falling out!”
- An elderly patient came out of his room during a code. With curiosity, he looked into the room at the coding patient. Deciding he didn’t want to bother anyone, he promptly urinated on the floor and wandered back to a different room. He then proceeded to climb into bed with another patient.
- A nurse encountered a patient who refused to use the toilet in his room. He would urinate on the carpet or in the trash can. The nurses thought he was confused. One night, the nurse was giving him a bath, and he needed to use the toilet. He refused to sit on the seat, and when she asked why, he replied, “Because the water is cold and it freezes my balls!” When the nurse looked, he did have enormous testicles. Turns out, he wasn’t crazy after all.
- A nurse came in for her shift and saw a patient she had a great relationship with. She said, “What’s new, Tom?” He held his hand over his head and said, “Everything under this point isn’t new at all!”
- In the middle of July, a nurse was feeding a patient when another patient came by on her wheelchair. She turned into a room that wasn’t hers and began singing “Jingle Bells.” The nurse jumped up and hurriedly pulled the confused woman out of the crowded room. The patient replied, “I guess they didn’t like it!”
- One nurse came in to start her morning shift and was surprised to see an elderly resident already up and in her chair. The nurse bent down to say hello to the lady, and she replied, “Hey, I know you. You’re my friend.” The nurse said, “That’s right. I’m your friend.” She replied, “Then get me the hell out of this place!”
What’s the strangest or funniest thing you’ve seen lately?
I once was getting a patient ready for chemo, and took his vital signs as usual. His blood pressure was about 180/120, and he looked a little shaky. I said, “Did you have anything to eat yet today?” He said, “Yeah, about six cups of coffee.” :-X
I once recently asked a female patient her pain level. One for no pain and Ten for pain really bad, you know as bad a childbirth. The patient calmly told me she was a nun so she would not know what childbirth was like. I could feel my face turning red.
I was helping with activities on the dementia unit when a patient holding a doll looked at me and said, “I’ve cared for this baby all day. I’ve fed her and changed her diaper and fed her, and come to find out, it’s a false one!”
CNA
Certified Nursing Assistant
So I work in assisted living and memory care and one time I was going into a residents (she isn’t a memory care res. in fact, she is one of the most with it residents we have) room after she paged and asked her what she needed help with. She told me that she wanted me to strip her bed and wash her sheets, I was slightly confused as she is continent and hadn’t been in bed since 6 that morning. I was even more confused when I looked at the schedule and saw that housekeeping had washed her sheets that day. I asked her why and she told me that the laundry soap dried out her skin…this was odd since we’ve been using that laundry soap all the time she had lived here and she had never c/o about it before. Well I did what she asked. The next day I was taking her to dinner and she told me that there was a piece of gauze that had fallen out of the trash can and she couldn’t leave her room because that piece of gauze would explode and give her asthma. The next time I went in their she said that there was a gas leak in there, I couldn’t smell any gas, the director couldn’t smell any, maintanince checked the gas lines and there was no leaking gas, but she insisted their was and demanded a different room. Seeing as we are usually packed full there wasn’t any other available room so she proceeded to tell all her neighbors we were trying to kill her which turned everyone else down that hall against us. Then after making more odd complaints, each one more and more bizarre, she told us that her housekeeping lady brought in a machine gun and was shooting her and the bullets barely missed her, she was even able to show us where the bullets had hit in the wall. Needless to say we got a UA on her and yep, sure enough, she had a UTI