To want to know what’s the meanest patient you’ve ever had? A question for nurses and anyone else working in the healthcare industry!

[Bellad19]

I’ve only worked in healthcare for 5 years, but NEVER in my five years have I had a patient be horrible to me until today. I am baffled as to how somebody could be so RUDE to someone who is trying to look after them!!
Please cheer me up and share your stories of awful patients with me so I know that I’m not alone 😭 I’m a sensitive person anyway but for some reason today really got to me and I’ve just cried ever since I got home! I’ll blame the pregnancy hormones!!

Oh loads. I work in inpatient mental health atm in a safeguarding role. I really can live with the threats and abuse from patients most of the time, but their families can be astonishingly vile. I will never forget the parent of a patient who regularly seriously assaulted staff, sitting with him in the secure garden and laughing about how the HCAs are only minimum wage idiots who don't need listening to; no wonder the son felt he could batter them with impunity.

I used to work in pharmacy and the level of rudeness from many customers was horrendous. I have been insulted for my looks, my weight, my accent (slight country twang) and my apparently obvious lack of intellect. I have been threatened physically by people. We too had a zero tolerance policy but it wasn't worth the paper it was written on.

I now work in an equally difficult setting but the difference is these patients are mentally unstable. The majority of my pharmacy customers were not.

DF was on a stroke ward full of other patients who were equally unwell, some dying. One patient (not obviously a stroke patient) was in a side room with a nurse presumably paid to sit there all day holding on to the door handle so the patient couldnt get out and verbally and sometimes physically abuse both staff and patients. She wouldnt take her meds, shouted racial abuse day and night, deliberately shit on the floor and smeared it everywhere and was abusive to all the staff who came near her. The other patients were terrified of her, including my sick father. I complained to PALS and they sent someone up whose response was "she is a handful" and just walked away. Nothing changed. That patient had been terrorising patients on that ward for over a year apparently.

Being scared or in pain doesn't mean that people lose the ability of treating people with respect. It's a choice, and should be punished accordingly if you ask me. Do you apply the same criteria to women in labour?

I worked on a psychiatric ICU when I was heavily pregnant

Wtf were you doing working in a PICU at any stage of pregnancy? Occupational health should have had kittens

Isn't it expected that some will not cope and will verbally lash out, or get shitty at times?

Yup. I think we need to differentiate poor behaviour because people are scared, confused, in pain etc. Thats very easy to forgive, and its not right to gossip about them (although a few on this thread have missed that).

The behaviour that isnt acceptable is from people who are just vile, for no reason. I feel like people sometimes come into hospital ready for a fight/argument regardless of what is happening (I work in A+E). Its those patients that this thread (should) be about.

Wtf were you doing working in a PICU at any stage of pregnancy? Occupational health should have had kittens

As long as we didn't restrain, it was deemed "safe". After that interlude with the vile patient, I did think WTF am I doing here and went on early maternity leave. Having had a colleague who was kicked in the stomach and her baby be sadly stillborn, I didn't want to take chances. I knew I was so protective of my bump that if anyone went for me, there was a good chance the "tiger mother" would have kicked in and I didn't want to end up absolutely battering someone who was unwell. The lady who threatened me wasn't though, she was bed blocking and we ended up discharging straight from PICU in the end.

Do you apply the same criteria to women in labour?

Surely that depends on whether they are mentally well when they have gone into labour, and also what effects (if any) the drugs have had on their mental state?

As long as we didn't restrain, it was deemed "safe".

When was this? That is absolutely appalling, especially in a female PICU. I've worked in four Trusts and in each one you're off the ward long before a bump shows. In my pregnancy I stuck it out until 16wks, but they wanted me gone at 10wks. That was just an acute ward.

Yup. I think we need to differentiate poor behaviour because people are scared, confused, in pain etc. Thats very easy to forgive

I totally agree. I have been attacked and threatened by really unwell patients and never ever hold it against them. They can't help it. I don't know any HCP who would hold a grudge about this.

Well people kicking off, and family members being vile, is sadly very common and that gets HCPs annoyed.

@WaitrosesCheapestVodka It was in 2010 and was in a mixed sex PICU too! They didn't automatically transfer any of us. Whether we were on PICU, acute or in the 136 suite. We were expected to just not restrain and couldn't do 1:1 obs. It is such a vulnerable environment. I finished at 26 weeks on the sick and started maternity at 29 weeks. I wasn't willing to take the risk anymore and I couldn't run by that point either.

It’s mainly vile and aggressive relatives that stick in my mind. Like the one who was furious that her husband’s investigation for bowel cancer had come back clear!!! She screamed at me in front of other patients /relatives/staff that
“No wonder the NHS has no fucking money when fucking idiots like you carry out tests on people who don’t even have cancer. You need a fucking slap!”
At which point I told her to walk away and calm down somewhere else or I would call security and have her removed.
She was a seriously nasty piece of work, I had met her before in clinic and she had tried to prevent her husband having the investigation. He had to phone me in secret when she was out shopping to say he really wanted it done.

@SirChing I qualified in 2011. I cynically think it's likely a pregnant MH staff was seriously hurt around 2010 that prompted a change in practice? That usually seems to be the way things change.

@missyB1

@Cosyjimjamsforautumn I can't believe you complained about someone so obviously acutely confused. You think people need bedrails up, 1:1 nursing and smear faeces for fun?

I also listen to umpteen complaints about bad grammer/accents/handwriting and how common all these girls are.

I never really understand why people expect perfection in an area that is peripheral to what they're actually there for. I've had invoices from mechanics and tradesmen before with poor spelling and grammar on them, but it never occurred to me to complain or point it out.

Would I have made those same mistakes? No.
Would I have any hope whatsoever in fixing the car/boiler/pipes/wall myself? Certainly not.

If I ever receive a letter from Susie Dent, I will expect (and doubtless see) perfect spelling and grammar. If I get a job sheet from a man who has made my non-working toilet work properly again, I simply don't care.

Being scared or in pain doesn't mean that people lose the ability of treating people with respect. It's a choice, and should be punished accordingly if you ask me. Do you apply the same criteria to women in labour?

Sure, why on earth not? I've been in labour and it didn't make me suddenly want to abuse someone mentally or physically. My language might not have been clean but that's not abuse.

I think that while sometimes being ill/scared/vulnerable can make people lash out, it’s also worth remembering that even twats get ill sometimes and then being vile to staff is just their nature because they would be like that regardless.

In hospital a few years ago sharing a room with an awful woman. She complained about everything rang the nurses at 3 AM to bring her cups of tea, rang the bell during her meal and demanded the nurse move the fork to the other side of her tray, (she’d been wandering in and out to the day room all day so was perfectly capable of doing it herself.

Then one of the nurses came over for something and she snapped “look at me when I’m talking to you nurse!” She really was vile.

Then she started complaining at me. It was a room with an opening window and I can’t bear to not have fresh air so the window was open. She demanded that the window be shut and then turned to me and said “well, you’re just going to have to get used to the idea that you’re going to have to compromise.” It’s as well I was being discharged that day because we were going to fall out otherwise.

I’ve only had one slightly negative experience with a nurse but considering the amount of time I’ve spent in hospital and the amount of interventions I’ve had it’s really not something worth losing sleep over.

Most of the staff I’ve dealt with have been lovely, if perhaps lacking in bedside manner in some cases (consultants) but they’ve achieved results so I’ll take that.

I even had a cardiologist offer to pour my drink once when he came by and I had the jug in my hand and it was shaking because of how weakened I’d become. As someone who has always been very independent it always felt like a puss take for me to expect anyone else to pour my drinks. .

@WaitrosesCheapestVodka I agree about what will have prompted the change. Its only when a trust is sued or bollocked by a coroner that changes are made

I too have sat there mortified when a very elderly relative in hospital has complained and asked for a white nurse instead. I understand that you don't wan't to be in hospital, but it isn't the fault of the lovely, fully competent nurses who are caring for you whilst you're in.

However, when people have deeply ingrained attitudes from whatever source (background/upbringing, very different generation etc.), it's often pretty much impossible to get through to them. No matter how much you challenge them, they'll often react puzzled because 'black people AREN'T as good as white people' or 'women ARE only there for the sexual gratification of men'. However abhorrent their views, they'll often think that you're the crazy one for not 'understanding' what they see as common knowledge.

*piss-take

Over a decade of midwifery and I've been spat at, shoved, hit, been held in a headlock, locked in a house, threatened with being set alight and threatened with being stabbed. Oh and knocked off my bike on community obviously.

Do I miss the NHS? No I bloody don't

“well, you’re just going to have to get used to the idea that you’re going to have to compromise.”

It's amazing how many people will think others selfish for challenging or stopping their own selfishness.

knowmenclature so hcp have to put up with whatever comes their way because patients are scared and in pain? Despite they're not all scared and in pain.

And then you use an example of some shitty paramedics to illustrate your point completely ignoring the story of the nurse who was punched in the face by a patients dad?

I used to work in a family planning clinic (as they were then known). I was tasked with public health surveillance for new STD infections. Test positive patients were sent my way for research purposes. We had one in who had undiagnosed psychosis-type issues, and thought he was Sir Lancelot. He kept telling me that he liked to follow women like me home, and rape them to give them what he had (HIV+). Revenge for the sex worker who he thought he contracted the condition from. I have to say I was careful in the car park for a while afterwards. He sent me a three page rambling letter within weeks of meeting him about riding his horse, swords and all sorts...I still think about him now as evidence of failings in community care.