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!!

@OhTheRoses I can understand why you would be angry with that nurse, completely. Whether she was misinformed re the wait times or whether she spoke out of line, I have no idea. And the ADHD comment was ignorant.

However, neither of those two things would have caused your DD to kill herself. Your DD's poor mental health would have been responsible for that.

Yes you had a right to be angry. The nurses actions would not have been responsible for your DD's death.

So I think what I perhaps haven't made clear, as it isn't coming over in your post, is that who YOU hold personally responsible if your DD was to have done that, is meaningless to everyone except you.

You seem to overestimate the impact it will have had on the nurse - pretty much zero. We are used to that type of emotional blackmail and it really doesn't work. It just makes eyes roll internally.

And you also presume that people on this thread are bothered by the fact that you don't rate the NHS. I can't imagine ANY of us care much. We will still go to work and do our jobs to the best of our ability, irrespective of what you say or feel. Because it isn't about you.

@WaitrosesCheapestVodka I worked in picu until I was 8 months pregnant. Still did 136 and 1:1. My risk assessment was laughable. I left 4 weeks before due date. Whenever I asked if there was something else that I could do instead of being on the ward, The ward manager just shrugged her shoulders. Even colleagues couldn't believe that I was left on the ward.

This was in 2012. At the time it felt like the most normal job in the world but retrospectively I can see how dangerous it was.

@ Moreisnnogedag on a sight sidetrack, are the crash teams blessed with some kind of powers which can teleport them to wherever they need to go? I spent just over six weeks in hospital last summer, on CCU, and also had to go in for a test in the cath lab, and on many occasions the crash team was called to a patient (twice to me as it happened but to other patients as well,) and I was amazed at how quickly they all (loads of them) seemed to appear out of nowhere. I know the main consultant is probably in reasonably close proximity but are they all? Presumably not if the crash happens in a different part of the hospital?

@OhTheRoses

You do realise that when a HCP refers they are making a recommendation or request to another service? The other service can decline and there's nowt the referrer can do. The irony is, making threats like this tends to close doors rather than open them.

I hope you didn't say this in front of your DD, because the message that one HCP is responsible for her safety is about as counterproductive as it is possible to be.

@Yogafairy unbelievable. I can't imagine how precarious that must have felt. Unfair on and unsafe for your colleagues too if you were in numbers

We had a prisoner chained to his bed in a side room with prison officers who was vile to all the nurses. We went in in pairs for several days for moral support.
He grabbed the consultant by the neck on his ward round and was promptly shipped back to prison the next day.
I've had cups my of tea thrown at my head on a psychiatric ward as a student nurse. That was pretty scary.

@AlternativePerspective all those on the crash team have bleeps and just leg it to wherever it tells them there’s a crash call. There’s a skill to absolutely pegging it across the hospital but managing to compose yourself before breezily arriving at patient’s bedside as if you were just around the corner!

Worst patient wasn't a patient but a relative. The patient sadly was not going to be cured, but relative couldn't accept that. Relative accused us of lying, conspiring to undertreat the patient due to being racists, watering down their medication to make them die and prove us right.

Relative followed staff out of the building after their shifts harranging them, and even found one nurse's address and turned up at their house, threatened to make us all pay, make our families suffer as we were making theirs suffer, it was pretty scary and I didn't doubt they meant it. We genuinely feared for her mental health as she was so paranoid and aggressive, but couldn't get psych to see her as she wasn't the patient.

The only thing we could do was ban her from the ward, but none if us felt we could seperate her and her relative at the end of life so we all just had to put up with being screamed at and called murderers every day, for quite a long time. It had a massive impact on the mental health of most of the team.

The worst I have seen has been from relatives, too. I once overheard members of a patient's family discussing with an HCPS the various nefarious ways they could gain control of incapacitous patient's assets. They were speaking loudly and openly in a public waiting area in an obsure foreign language that they clearly hadn't expected me or any other bystander to understand.

@ LapsedVeganAcademic that reminds me. When I was in hospital my family were talking about relatives in the day room, the husband was seriously ill - expected to die at any moment, and the wife was obviously distraught. Then her son turned up and started talking about how she really needed to sell the house and move to a smaller one. Oh and sell the car and get a different one. And the poor bloke wasn’t even dead yet. .

I do often wonder what happened with him and whether he just might have pulled through or not.

You can't provide care if you no longer give a shit about people and consider yourself above them. You think that arrogance and disrespect doesn't come across in your interactions with patients?

I don't know any HCPs who don't give a shit about their patients. But to be able to do that, we have to preserve our own mental health. And that means focusing on the patient, drawing on our training, and doing everything in our power to help them get well.

It DOESN'T mean focusing on family members throwing around threats and accusations. If we let that get to us, we couldn't do our jobs properly. So we learn to let it be water off a ducks back. That isn't arrogance or thinking ourselves above our patients. That's being sensible and ignoring the childish and unhelpful threats that some family members make.

Working in a care home many years ago. One of the lovely old dears had a funny turn and tipped rice pudding all over the floor. I bent down to clean it up and she grabbed me by the ponytail and wouldn't let go, was literally ripping my hair out. It took 2 other carers to release her grip on me. I changed jobs shortly after.

@user12674246853 and you think people who physically or verbally assault HCP’s deserve respect? Don’t see what you think is arrogant about not wanting to be abused...

The one who whistled at us when he wanted a nurse, pointed to what he wanted rather than take his eyes off his newspaper, and was unable to say either please or thank you.

You seem to overestimate the impact it will have had on the nurse - pretty much zero. We are used to that type of emotional blackmail and it really doesn't work. It just makes eyes roll internally.

This x100000

And you also presume that people on this thread are bothered by the fact that you don't rate the NHS. I can't imagine ANY of us care much.

I once had a gentleman threaten to go private instead of using the NHS. Like he was doing us some great service by being there. I couldnt wait for him to leave. Same with patients that threaten to self discharge.

The ones that threaten to go private? Off you go then.

I love the ‘threat’ to go private or self-discharge. Mate I don’t care. Off you pop.

@OhTheRosesyou literally cannot stop yourself NHS bashing can you...its like an obsession!

Just what I was thinking!

I think some patients think that HCPs care more than they do.

When I was a nurse I did the best for my patients, I empathised with them, I was friendly and polite.

But did I go home for work sobbing? No. Do I think that my GP or practice nurse cares deep down inside for me? No. They do a job, for money. I hope that they listen to me and try to get the best possible outcome. But I don’t expect them to care.

It goes both ways, of course.
I was once supporting a vulnerable (if rather loud) young woman who was in hospital. Her surgeon accused her of exaggerating her pain levels in order to get painkillers to sell on the streets
When I asked where her evidence was, she said, 'I can just tell.'
She had sepsis

I’ve heard customers shout at retail workers that they’ve ruined Christmas because they don’t have any turkeys/gravy/sprouts left.

As if the retail worker cares and goes home and sobs hysterically as they personally “ruined” a random idiot’s Christmas.

People are batshit crazy.

Back when I worked in care homes I mainly dealt with dementia clients. The worst I ever had was a man literally throwing his faeces at me (he could barely throw so it was almost comical) and another who was about 5 stone when wet inform me he would snap my wrist like a twig if I ever upset him. Most were lovely and I miss my time in care work

Working in palliative care, I had a patient scream abuse at me as his wife was dying of stage IV lung cancer. Said I would be responsible for his wife’s death. Well no, she died a week later because you know, she was dying from cancer. Nothing to do with me. I did my job by managing her pain, talking to her, ensuring she had everything she needed. There was nothing else we could do.

I found it easy to be nice to his face because he was losing his wife and felt the need to scream at me because he was devastated. I felt sorry for him...but did I really truly care? No. I was glad once he left the hospital and I didn’t have to see him again. I dealt with him in a caring and and calm manner but I can’t say that being abused made me really feel like empathising with him.

His last words to me were “you murdered my wife you ”

99% of relatives did not act like that. I can only conclude that he wasn’t a nice person generally.

The grandfather who threatened to punch me if I touched his 2 year old grand daughter to give her, her iv antibiotics to treat her pneumonia .... now it was 2am but her iv's were due and she was quite sick, so badly needed them !
That was over 20 years ago but it sticks in my head. I was only a young nurse and he was a burly, older man, who should have known better!