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!!

Work as a community carer so i have huge respect for the medical profession met some really lovely paramedics in my time when i have had to call them out .Remember one time when my nan was alive i was giving her a bath and the bath chair broke and she couldn't lift herself out of the bath .I had no one to assist so i dialled for help and lovely woman who answered said don't worry she would send someone out to help .Had two ambulance men arrived one lovely the other so rude bit my head off why couldn't you do it yourself
No way i could have .Lovely ambulance man was mortified , apologised and actually said out of his colleagues earshot, i am so sorry we we just about to finish and we got sent he did actually tell me to complain because my nan heard it and she was a proud lady and it upset her as she felt she had been a nuisance .I didn't as it was but never forgot it only one time it has happened though .

I think some of you are totally missing the point. HCPs know that people can be arseholes when they’re confused, in pain, scared, lonely, demented, medicated etc. Of course we make allowances for them, you understand why they’re being arseholes and let it wash over you.

The ones that get to me are the ones that don’t have any of those reasons - they’re just horrible nasty people and would be whether they’re in a care setting or not.

A few stick in my mind. The woman who made an appointment for a smear as she was planning to try and get pregnant. Fine, sounds sensible, but unfortunately the NHS doesn’t offer smears on demand (she wasn’t due hers as she had had it recently) and when I explained this to her she went nuclear, ending in her telling me that if she got pregnant, then developed cervical cancer and had to have an abortion it would be my fault and I’d have the blood and responsibility of her dead baby on my hands.

Then she made a formal complaint to the practice manager about me, just to top it off.

In ten years of Midwifery I’ve never been verbally or physically assaulted by a woman in labour. Labouring women don’t undergo a personality change, and usually any swearing or shouting they do during a contraction is usually followed by profuse apologies as the contraction subsided, it’s very sweet

The parent who came in with her child for an operation in the morning. She demanded a bed be put down for her as she was tired and needed to sleep. I explained that this wasn’t going to happen as it was 8am, we didn’t have beds down at this time, the ward was going to get busy with children trollies going to theatre, ward round, doctors will want to speak to her etc. Well she kicked off. Demanded to talk to the Sister (who agreed with everything I’d said), and demanded transferring to another ward. So we did. Almost waved on her way out. Vile woman.

I work in pharmacy. I've been screamed at, threatened, even complained about when refusing to give certain drugs that hadn't even been prescribed, that was clearly not my fault. There was one woman who screamed at me because we were closed for 30 minutes to allow the pharmacist to have a break (they were doing a 12 hour shift) and demanded to know why they were allowed to do that. Most patients are lovely but some do make you want to cry in the corner for a while.

One of my first jobs in a caring capacity many years ago, was looking after an older man who needed escorting when he walked due to falls risk.

Escorted him to toilet, he stood swaying dangerously. He refused to sit down, so I had to stand behind him to support him.

Quick as a flash, and with zero unsteadiness, he turned around and began urinating all over my legs.

Shocked, I began exclaiming, "Oh no, the toilet is the other way!" and kept trying to turn him around, imagining he had become confused.

I'll never forget the way he looked me in the eyes and grinned, "I know what I'm doing."

im white (think Dakota Fanning vampire white) and i wouldnt think calling someone "the whitest" is an insult. I would be confused it had been commented on (as i would be confused if they said i was the blondest or the shortest person in the room). but wouldnt be offended. its an observation. im pale, yes. i just dont tan. i burn then go back to white, its not out of choice. but it is a fact.

I just want to say I'm sorry.

My mother will have been one of those patients you can't reason with, is totally dismissive of anyone else's view other than her own, says horrible things about you in earshot (because you are not only without intelligence but without hearing as well, obvs) and throws tantrums when she doesn't get her own way.

It's not that she has dementia or a mental illness. It's because she's always been that way. With everyone.

My father spent their whole marriage trying to clean up the upset she causes. He thought he was protecting her. He wasn't. He just enabled her. Now he has passed away and I'm not there anymore to continue his work of apologising to everyone for the way she behaves because after a lifetime of it, I've had enough. We're NC.

Even so, I'm truly sorry. 💐

Why are you Signing

Totally missing the point of apologising there

Let her get on with it, the responsibility, and therefore, apology, is only hers.

You did nothing to be apologising for, nor are you responsible for her

I've met a lot of people in my long career.
Most lovely, some doing very silly things to themselves (bottle of gin a day, then unable to grasp why their balance is off )
Some patients are nasty generally, and can be even more so when seriously ill.
Some lovely ones you do hold in your heart for a long time, and their rellies.
Probably the funniest comment was when I was told I had 'big hands, like a farmer' - strangely, I do live on a smallholding, but can easily fit in the medium gloves. My colleague laughed her head off at that gem.

Assaults on NHS staff have a shockingly poor conviction rate I think. Most of the time nothing is done.

I was in hospital next to a nasty woman once. She didn't appear to have mental health issues, obviously I don't know for sure- but she was horrible to the nurses. Spoke to them like crap, ordered them around, nothing was ever good enough. Constantly on the call bell for things like pour her water (she was capable of doing it herself), and "wipe down my table, I don't want MRSA because you people can't wash your hands" etc etc. The poor nurses had a dogs life and we were all very glad when she went home a few days after I was admitted!

Just adding another voice and eye roll to "zero tolerance" - our trust says it too. Absolutely pointless when it's never acted upon...... Unless you're a medic - I've only ever known assaults on doctors taken to court, never the nurses. One patient ended up on a s.37 after assaulting a junior doctor. Very odd.... she'd been assaulting us nurses for years

Oh god I just laugh and eye roll now, my favourite was when a well known opioid seeker called me a fucking stuck up bitch for refusing to give him a prescription.

What I hate is when patients are rude/mean to other patients, really gets me mad. Examples include, a man kicking off in clinic about why the ‘blackies’ were getting seen before him. The previously mentioned opioid seeker screaming and rolling around on the floor outside a private room where a patient was dying and family were doing final goodbyes. And when a visitor kicked off and started intimidating an elderly patient because she’d asked to use the commode so visitors were asked to step outside for a moment. All of the above were removed from the premises by security.

"I hope you catch what I have and suffer and die" I've been a nurse for almost 22 years. Unsurprisingly she was suffering the side effects of alcoholism so I had no chance of catching anything from her

After I suffered a severe sexual assault at knife point by a patient, his next of kin reported me to the police for assault and theft, the assault was my self defence during the attack, the theft was removing the knife from his possession. The police came and interviewed me while I was in a hospital bed awaiting surgery for the damage he'd caused me.
I can forgive the actions of the patient, his behaviour was not his own. But what his wife did to me was unforgivable.

EverdeRose

I hope you got some justice?

I’m a paeds nurse and a 3 year old called my an ‘f-ing B’ and a ‘fat lady’.. I was more upset about being called fat, I’d recently lost loads of weight and was a size 10-12, children can be so mean haha!

@AgathaMystery WTAF?! By the women in labour?! This is absolutely nuts!

A colleague was off sick after a bereavement. A patient went absolutely ballistic and said "How DARE he be off...why the fuck does the NHS employ anyone who is going to take days off work". It was quite shocking.

I received a small sum of money as settlement from the employer. It about covered the time I'd had to take off due to physical and mental illness that the attack caused. Shockingly on my return to work I was formally interviewed regarding my sickness.
I also received a very apologetic letter from the police following their very short investigation.
Nothing will rid me of the shame of reporting the investigation to my governing body though.

The patient was apparently distraught when he returned to himself and was informed of what he had done. He was as innocent in it as I was.

I got nothing from his wife, not even an apology. She had to deal with the wrath of my amazing colleagues though. I believe she got a thorough dressing down by the consultant who considered an attack on his staff as one on himself.

Has the PP confirmed you’re the whitest nurse, isnt a typo for shitest nurse? That would make much more sense...

While a patient in cubicles in A&E I had another patient asking the staff to make a formal complaint about me because I wouldn't tell her what was wrong with me. I wasn't rude when she popped her head around the curtain, I had just said I would rather not say.

I once worked on a ward and noticed a patient on Mumsnet on her phone, not close enough to see her username or posts though.
On my bus ride home I was looking through active posts and found a rather unpleasant post from a woman in hospital who was being treated by rude nurses who wouldn’t let her go home.
By some of the info in her posts it was clearly the woman I’d looked after all day who had never mentioned going home To me at all.
It was a high dependency bay so only had 3 patients who got all my attention

I used to be a nurse in a walk in centre / minor injuries. Most patients were normal, nice people with a few exceptions:

Teenage girl threw a chair at me because I wouldn’t give her antibiotics.
Posh woman called me a stupid bitch because I wouldn’t give her antibiotics

When I was a student nurse on the wards, a man assaulted a pregnant nurse and she lost her baby that had been conceived with IVF. He had full capacity and nothing happened to him. I’m sure he’s out there living his best life.

I once briefly worked as a teaching assistant. An 8 year old stabbed me with scissors and kicked at me telling me he was going to kill me. I walked out and didn’t go back two hours into the day.

I work in an office now. Can’t stand people.

Working as a HCA in A&E in the late 90s, man kicking off cos of the wait...i went and explained that it was because of all the doctors working on someone brought in severely injured.. sorry about delay...man said I hope they die quickly then so I can be seen..