Stockbyte | Thinkstock
We asked and you responded! The funny tidbits keep pouring in.
Here’s the latest roundup of the best conversations that nurses overheard this week!
Nurse 1: Why don’t you try hypnosis to quit smoking? It worked for Matt Damon.
Nurse 2: Why don’t I also try writing a screenplay with Ben Affleck in it and win an Oscar?
Angela Kane, RN
Nurse 1: I’ve been a traveler the past three years.
Nurse 2: Did you backpack?
Jamal Franklin, RN
Nurse: What’s your regular doctor’s name?
Patient: Oh my gosh, I have no idea. Maybe it’s John? I always just call him Dr. Becker.
Maria Ramirez, RN
Nurse: [Preparing an S/C needle] You don’t seem to have much fat on your arm.
Patient: Oh, no. Does that mean you have to put it in my butt?
Nora Stevens, RN, MS, CCNS, CCRN
Nurse: Kyle, your weight is 67 pounds—that’s five more pounds than you were last summer.
Patient: How much does Spider-Man weigh this summer?
Peggy Kirkland, RN
Share your favorite “overheards” with us!
Nurse: what brought you into the hospital today?
Patient: the bus.
Nurse: how long have you had stomach pain?
Patient: Ten years.
Nurse: so why did you finally come in today?
Patient: I got a ride.
Nurse: How may I help you?
Visitor: You need to see my son?
Nurse: What is wrong with him?
Visitor: He has the smiling mighty Jesus? (translates into spinal meningitis).
Nurse: What is your emergency today?
Patient: I am passing clogs. (vaginal bleeding, passing clots).
I swear this was all said to me when I was the triage nurse in a very busy ED.
Nurse: (trying to see how confused the patient was) Where are you?
Patient: On page nine (really? I thought you were in the __ Hospital???)
Patient : God told me that I didn’t have breast cancer
Nurse: Oh really… (her history said that she had radiation tx for it)
Res: I can’t imagine why my rash isn’t getting better, I put that cream on it everyday
Me: which one?
Res: the one in the white bottle!!
Me: oh the head and shoulders…..yea might not want that on there!!
Res: oh so should I stop putting that spray on it too?
Me: yea the hairspray? Prob a good idea also! (the rash was on her chest)
(Overheard during shift change) I tried to use a 20 gauge but ended up using a 22.
It sounded like she was talking about a gun.
Nurse: How do you take your Coumadin?
Patient: With water
On an L&D unit: (pt in labor) I think I’m ready for my epidermal.
Parent: “How long do you think he will be incubated?”
A dad asking how long his son will have a breathing tube.
Along the same lines….when asking about past medical history, a parent said “my child has been incubated before”
true story!!
How bout the patients that tell you theyve been vomiking (vomiting)
I had a professor in school who kept talking about brud crots (blood clots)
Nurse: Do you have a history of mental disorders? (in admission/ H&P)
Patient: Yeah, I did.. but I’ve been doing alot better since my doctor gave me that Hound Dog pill. (HALDOL)
I about lost it! haha
Nurse: (After pt. explained symptoms of vaginal itching, burning and etc.) Maybe you have a yeast infection…
Patient: (with confused look)…Naw, I ain’t been baking no bread!
I had to just walk away!
This is a true story, though I was not in the room when it (supposedly) happened. I was working in a busy ED when an OB resident came out of a pt’s room, doubled over with laughter. When I asked him what had happened, he said, “I was asking the patient about her (menstrual) flow, and she said, puzzled, “Flow? My flow be linoleum!” LOL!
This is a personal one. My daughter was 15 and shadowed me in the ER on the fourth if July. She was able to observe a major trauma motorcycle accident team response. We went to a party on the fifth where my daughter loudly announced “I even watched my mom castrate a guy”, catheterize of course.
I was doing a follow up call with a new breastfeeding mother. I asked her, “How often does the baby go to breast?” Her response, “Every time he eats.” I almost fell out of my chair!!
And then there was the patient who reported to me that she had a “valve movement”…………
I had a new dad write keeping track of his baby’s feedings and diapers. The baby was not nursing well but I did a complete double take when I saw what the dad had written under the “stool” column;
“took shit”!!!
While in triage I had a patient write on the sign in slip “OMFG my ankle hurts like WTF”…she was almost 30.
Once on a ‘quiet’ day when I was sitting at the Charge Nurse’s Desk a new RN asked me, in front of the rest of the staff, if I ‘ever lifted a finger’.
So I did…
I once had a double physical come into the office, a 3 year old girl and her 5 year old brother. When I asked them for urine samples the mom brought them both into the bathroom. I was right in the next room when I heard the little girl loudly announce; “but momma, I cannot do that, my vagina does not go in the cup like that”
RN
Registered Nurse
Had a patient write in her history:
Carpool Tunnel