Life as a nurse, doctor or any other healthcare professional can be incredibly rewarding and unbelievably difficult at the same time. There are many pros, but the list of cons can sometimes seem to be equally as long (if not longer), especially after a hard day of helping patients, not all of whom are the brightest of the bunch.
A British nurse, who goes by the nickname GoddessBadger on Imgur, shared her work stories about the most oblivious, impolite, and downright bizarre patients she’s ever had to deal with. Upvote the stories you enjoyed the most, share them with your amigos, and keep on scrolling. While we’re on the subject of nurses, be sure to check out our post about the best and funniest nurse memes — they’re sure to get a chuckle or two out of you.
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"We, of course, explain to her that cola is not an appropriate food to be giving to her child."
Need a license for everything else, having a baby should be top of the list
Load More Replies...What the actual f**k? I don’t understand how a parent doesn’t know that babies either need breastmilk or formula.
But she had the cola on hand Breastfeeding 'ruins your figure'. (Don't worry, I don't understand that one either.)
Load More Replies...How can someone go through an entire pregnancy and never find out how to feed a baby?
Ask the mothers who hit up the welfare department for disposable diapers.
Load More Replies...Poor baby. I hope it had no lasting health problems from all that caffeine and the Mom did learn her lesson.
Thinking about this... how did the baby survive a) without formula/ breastmilk and b) with caffein instead?
Load More Replies...Better, having to take a child raising course once they are pregnant. Otherwise baby will not be handed over after birth.
Load More Replies...Please tell me this baby was taken away from the parents and brought to a safe home?
Mom sounds stupid more than malicious. They should try parenting classes and monitoring before taking the kid away.
Load More Replies...But it's very true. And it said they weren't all funny--just notable.
Load More Replies..."Carry on with your c**p and you will be booked in for an autopsy!!"
Better to wait and receive free treatment at the point of delivery than pay extortionate prices or Insurance premiums as you do in some countries.
Load More Replies..."Truly amazing how much this gets thrown at us NHS nurses when somebody can’t get their own way... Do they not realise that we pay taxes too?"
I pay taxes! Also a threat used against police officers, firefighters, and school teachers.
Could be any first world country... except the United States.
Load More Replies...Some parts of the country are so expensive that NHS nurses have to use food banks.
welfare examiners get that too. Always when someone wants special privileges...
Nurses are the hardest working people I've ever known. I've been hospitalized several times over the years and they just amaze me.
I still got this working in private hospitals overseas. ..like their insurance covered them to use us as servants. When visiting child ran out of the room one day, I heard the father tell his wife not to worry, 'the nurses can keep an eye on him' !!!!
GoddessBadger’s work stories were a booming success on Imgur. It even made the front page! Her meme collection got 4,930 upvotes and was viewed over 150,220 times at the time of writing. But these numbers keep on getting bigger and bigger, as the stories go even more viral.
The emergency room nurse from England detailed just how weird her shifts can get: from one patient refusing suppositories because they’re ‘not gay’ to a mother giving her baby fizzy drinks instead of formula. [Groans internally]
It takes the patience of a saint to get through to people who are as oblivious as this. So we’re probably all grateful that there are so many healthcare professionals out there who are patient enough to excuse our mistakes.
"She was at LEAST 80 years old"
My (now passed) 90 year old grandmother said she didn't want to date anyone in her retirement home because they were all too old for her and she didn't have the energy to lift her butt in the air anymore. She had 8 children and said that every time she took her pants off she got pregnant. I hope I'm as spunky when I'm 90.
Your grandmother sounds like she was a cool lady. I'm sure you will be that spunky.
Load More Replies...It's honestly automatic. Plus, you can get downchecked by an a*****e if you don't. My mother got carded at 84.
Load More Replies...Well, quite recently a 73 yo Indian woman named Erramatti Mangayamma gave birth to twin girls. And it didn't hurt to ask :)
The first English sentence all nonspeaker refugees learn is 'Are you pregnant?" And you know you've been doing your job too long when you've asked the 23-yr-old *guy* at your desk that! (And yes, I did.)
This is funny, I get the same question at 65. Look at us you fools! At least read the chart and see our age.
Yup. My wife was going in for minor surgery, the nurse had a problem with the lack of a pregnancy test. Yes, my wife looks young but you're holding her file, you should know her actual age (70 at the time.) That file also indicates she's taking hormone replacement therapy--and why would that be if she wasn't through menopause?
Load More Replies...My mother was one of eleven children, my grandfather used to say every time he used the loo and shook it in her direction she got pregnant.
Mother or grandmother?.....and shook what exactly?...was it a portable loo?
Load More Replies...@Restless People can have fetishes for illegal stuff but that does not always mean that the person has done crimes. So for example not all necrophiles have sex with corpses - just fantasies about it are enough for them. I once discussed with one person who was a necrophile - she just wrote very macabre sex fantasies to one website where stories like that were allowed and that was enough for her. And she knew perfectly that having sex with actual corpse would be illegal and also very unsanitary.
Load More Replies...Do people really get medical terms that confused. A necrophiliac is attracted to dead people and a hemophiliac's blood is unable to clot. Their meanings aren't even close.
Word mixups like these can be normal, but in certain cases it can be a symptom of a brain issue.
Very true. But, sadly, many people are undereducated. They have not taken advantage of the education available to them, and have not actively tried to strengthen their knowledge.
Load More Replies...My father when confronted with a couple of aggressive Jehovah Witnesses.....Sorry guys,I am not allowed to talk to you,I am a philatelist! worked a treat
A misunderstanding when arriving for an appointment, a concern when knocking on the door to the coroner
Bill Cosby is in jail for interpreting these 2 words as the same thing.
There is something endearing about being seduced into surgery. A nice little distraction before the anesthesia kicks in.
Patient: Hello Doctor! Nurse: What do you need? Patient: I'm here to be seduced Nurse: Lucky you, I'm an undercover porn star Patient: That's not what I'm here for but I'm down for that 5 hours later Desk consultant: On a scale of one to ten, how was our treatment? Patient: 11/10. Oh, and, you mind if I go into residency here?
My great grandmother told a story about her neighbour going in to be seduced to have her baby. Wait, do you mean induce? Seduce, induce, all fiddlin with the same hole! She was hilarious
Nothing sexier than a doctor or nurse in their scrubs. Or do I have to remind y'all of J.D?
Speaking of patience with patients (pun intended), Jacksonville University has some great advice on how to deal with incredibly inconvenient individuals. The most important thing for a healthcare professional is to remain calm and maintain control.
Furthermore, it’s vitally important that nurses, doctors, and other hospital staff be as empathetic as they can. If a patient is angry or upset, they might simply want to complain a tad, so try talking to them, show them that you understand their pain and that you’re on their side. We’re all human beings and we all want to be heard.
"Racism is surprisingly common. I am British but not white so I face a lot of these comments. Sometimes I can be on an entire shift without a white British staff member...
If you’re a racist, I have one thing to say to you... 'Grow the f**k up.'"
I understand asking for someone who is more fluent in your language due to misunderstandings and language barriers but definitely not because of race. That’s just ignorant. My regular GP is an Indian and there are rare occasions where he says something that I need him to repeat and he is happy to do so. He is one of the best GP’s I have come across in a very long time.
I must admit I saw my psychiatrist on Monday, he's Indian, and we got into a disagreement about NHS funding (as you do) and unfortunately I couldn't understand most of what he was saying as he started talking more quickly and he has a strong accent which I struggle with already. Other than that one small issue I couldn't care where, what or who they are as long as they know what they are doing.
Load More Replies...Like when some people ask "Where are you from?" and once replied they go further with "but where are you from ORIGINALLY?" From your very same birth place, f****r.
I hate that s**t. Just ask my ethnicity or STFU with “where are you from”
Load More Replies...I know a german doctor working in London, at a time he was the only white doctor at the hospital there, all the others were African or Indian. So some of the (white) english patients, especially the older generation, were happy to see him, they considered him to be a "true" doctor because he was white...until he started to talk with his strong german accent... one of the patients said "the only white doctor is a f*cking nazi!"
FFS people - let it go. The war has been over for 74 years.
Load More Replies...Well, it works both ways.... My NHS GP speaks slowly in simple sentences to me & my partner (but not our kids!). Thanks, we both have science PhDs, both speak 5+ languages, lived and worked in English for two decades; and yes we've established weird accents --- to maximize understandability for non-native speakers... Natives can figure it out anyway, but to say a Spanish, Russian or Indian colleague it can help a lot if you basically pronounce most letters that are written; like not pronounce "car" and "call" the same as in some accents.
Of course the language barrier can work both ways, unfortunately many GP’s can’t just change patients. But if they are able to swap patients with another Dr because of the language barrier, then I don’t see an issue with them doing so.
Load More Replies...Oh, you want a white nurse? Well, I told my supervisor I didn't wanna deal with any a******s on this shift. I guess neither one of us gets what we want today.
I think the patient meant "I want someone from the culture I grew up in and who speaks the language I do perfectly". It was just worded poorly. I don't think the actual skin colour was the issue.
Load More Replies...My aunt urologist is an Indian guy and he is one of the best doctors that our family has ever come across.
I don't know, sounds like the kinda guy who really takes the p**s outta your aunt... /s
Load More Replies...I was returning from New York to Bombay with my father-in-law (a neurologist) and on the flight a guy had some seizure. The pilot asked if there was any doctor on board. When my father-in-law came back from seeing the guy, he told there were 11 indian doctors on that one flight. It ws funny as health sector in India continues to be very poor.
"We end up giving them an IV instead since they were adamant they didn’t want a suppository."
It's funny (and a little sad at the same time) how many men still believe that anything touching their a**s means being gay.
Criticism is exactly why I never tell people about my alien abduction.
Load More Replies..."This is a special suppository. Yes, it has to go in your a*s, but once it's in, it'll never be followed by a d**k. The downside is you have to tell every guy you meet that you shove suppositories up your a*s, but if you also let them know they stop you from being gay, you'll never be hit on by a dude for the rest of your life."
Well you've already got your head up your a*s so I don't see your problem.
Irony here is that in the past, when homosexuality was highly frowned upon (to the point of death sentences) there were medical practices that were entirely useless, but involved blowing smoke up a** (literally, not figuratively) or feeding someone through the a**s due to a sore tooth. So, this tells me that the entire a**s thing is fairly recent despite the fear/ban of homosexuality being prevalent.
One of the best lines from Futurama. "I can't swallow a pill that big!" Professor, "good news! It's a suppository!"
"After much deliberation and a look through their medical records, we realised they meant “Sickle Cell” as in anemia."
We're really not. Drinking lots of tea, moaning about the rain, and insisting that you have to be white to be British, has made some of us dumb. Others are just average enough to muddle through life, and those who are left are the real smart ones, like Stephen Hawking was.
Load More Replies...Arguing with patients is also never the answer because it doesn’t lead to anything other than more arguments: it’s far better to be respectful; the ER is not the place for a screaming match over whose opinion is correct. That being said, you have to set concrete limits on how a patient can treat you. If a person is being disrespectful, say that this is the wrong way to treat you and walk away. At the end of the day, if you’re feeling exhausted and emotionally sapped, just remember, that you’re doing this job for a reason and that the temporary inconvenience is worth it in the long run.
"This was truly one of the most bizarre excuses I’ve ever heard for a dildo stuck up the butt. This patient insisted that he was minding his own business, running as he normally does in the morning when a dildo wielding assailant appeared and started chasing after him. He claimed he tripped and that’s when our mysterious dildo man inserted the toy... Did we believe him... No... and they never caught the dildo wielding man."
While you're making jokes we have a dildo wielder running around unabated.
I think I've seen her on here. She hides them in her cleavage.
Load More Replies...What's the difference between “orifice" and “orifice"?
Load More Replies...A friend of mine dated a nurse who told us that they were so sick of guys coming in with vacuum cleaner poles stuck on their d***s that they would make them sit in the waiting room with an ice pack around the pole to get the swelling to go down
Oh, dude. Man up and admit you were experimenting. Next time remember lots of lube.
If there’s a hole someone’s gunna get bored and put stuff in it. It’s why me and cousin couldn’t have sleep overs anymore
They caught him! Here is the article: https://floridaman.com/florida-man-swings-dildo-at-cops/
"These types end up in the ED often and often they just need to go home and sleep it off. Discharge is often queried with “How am I supposed to get home?!” Why is that my problem? The Ambulance Service is not your personal taxi service."
Well, if you sit awhile over there in that waiting room, you can take yourself home in the morning.
"Yeah, my compassion left when you puked on my shoes. My apathy, however, is going to tell you that I no longer give a f**k."
Bring back the drunk tank. Cold hosepipe by an angry copper should quickly have them wanting to leave of their own accord. Shouldn’t be in A&E in the first place. Annoys be so much these tv docs like ‘Ambulance’ that show the amount of 999 resources wasted on tanked up idiots. Either refuse the ambulance or charge them for it if ‘drunkenness’ is their only diagnosis.
I had a client who was arrested for misusing an ambulance--he lived across the street from the hospital, got drunk,and called them claiming he had a heart attack. Upon reaching the emergency room, he announced he felt fine and didn't even go inside. Bad move...
My mother has some neuropathy (numbness) in her feet as a result of chemo. She keeps telling people she has necrophilia.
If you have to take her places...I think is just wait in the car for her rather than catch the strange looks from people that don’t get it! Lol
Load More Replies...Two young men are sitting in hospital and get into a conversation: 1. "So what are you here for? " 2. "I had a castration, and you? 1. "Just here for observation?" 2. "Damn, that's the word I forgot."
Hahahahaha...defiantly to late for an evaluation!
Load More Replies...Half of these belong on r/boneappletea. The other half is just people being idiots. Still funny anyways!
I saw a t-shirt one day that said "Nurse..the first person you see after you say the words 'Hold my Beer' and 'Watch this'"
as long as they dont reveal the patients names these confessions are not hippa violations
These are hilarious! My former father-in-law was famous for using wrong word. He had a cold one time and asked his wife for some of that nitroglycerin instead of Neoitran! He afforded us a lot of laughs!
Number 11 about the drunk people. If Rescue is called for a public drunk and they are alone, they have to be taken to the ER. They can't just be left out there. Because they can and/or will hurt or kill themselves.
The blatantly for-profit hospitals (like the ones run by the Catholics--seriously) tell them to' go home and take a shower, then come back' before they'll even see them. (Only reason I know is this is the complaints I heard while working in the county hospital's admissions office.)
Load More Replies...My mother has some neuropathy (numbness) in her feet as a result of chemo. She keeps telling people she has necrophilia.
If you have to take her places...I think is just wait in the car for her rather than catch the strange looks from people that don’t get it! Lol
Load More Replies...Two young men are sitting in hospital and get into a conversation: 1. "So what are you here for? " 2. "I had a castration, and you? 1. "Just here for observation?" 2. "Damn, that's the word I forgot."
Hahahahaha...defiantly to late for an evaluation!
Load More Replies...Half of these belong on r/boneappletea. The other half is just people being idiots. Still funny anyways!
I saw a t-shirt one day that said "Nurse..the first person you see after you say the words 'Hold my Beer' and 'Watch this'"
as long as they dont reveal the patients names these confessions are not hippa violations
These are hilarious! My former father-in-law was famous for using wrong word. He had a cold one time and asked his wife for some of that nitroglycerin instead of Neoitran! He afforded us a lot of laughs!
Number 11 about the drunk people. If Rescue is called for a public drunk and they are alone, they have to be taken to the ER. They can't just be left out there. Because they can and/or will hurt or kill themselves.
The blatantly for-profit hospitals (like the ones run by the Catholics--seriously) tell them to' go home and take a shower, then come back' before they'll even see them. (Only reason I know is this is the complaints I heard while working in the county hospital's admissions office.)
Load More Replies...
