Experiencing a medical emergency can be terrifying. You might not have any idea what’s wrong with you, what treatment is necessary and if your condition is life-threatening. So it’s understandable to feel overwhelmed and worried about the future. But once you’ve made it to the hospital, you must accept that you’re in good hands. And complaining isn’t going to magically make the doctor see you any faster or score you a cozier room.
Medical professionals have been recalling the most entitled patients that they’ve ever had to treat, so we’ve gathered some of their appalling stories below. From demanding massages to claiming that their doctor doesn’t know what she’s talking about, enjoy reading about all of these lovely patients (and their family members). And be sure to upvote the experiences that would make you want to violate the Hippocratic Oath!
#1
Not a doctor, but I had a rather memorable experience. When I was about 21, I began experiencing gallbladder issues. One night, the attack got so bad that I crawled to my roommate’s room and asked her to take me to the hospital. As soon as we got there, the nurse immediately took me in for assessment. I was in so much pain that I couldn’t talk, so my roommate gave the nurse all my information. The nurse went to get me something for the pain, and my roommate went to call my parents for me, so I was sitting alone in intake for a couple minutes. This lady comes in, literally picks me up by the arm and leads me back to the waiting area. I didn’t even realize this lady wasn’t a nurse. All of a sudden, I hear yelling, and I learned later that was transpired was that this lady was actually a patient who was mad that I went to jntake before her, led me back to the waiting room, and tried to take my spot in the intake room. She was escorted out by security.
Image credits: sillybanana2012
#2
I’m not a doctor but I was waiting to see my grandpa in the hospital. This parent starts grilling the doctors about how their “baby should go first” and how they were “obviously in pain” (the kid was looking at the fish tank). The doctor says, “We have people who are in real emergencies. Your kid just got a dried bean stuck up their nose. You can wait.” The parent says ,” WeLL My bAbY ShoUlD gO FiRst! He Has tO Go to BeD!” The doctor said, “Well, if your kid has to go to bed, then they can go home and you can come back in the morning.” The parent was dumbfounded.
Image credits: yeetus159
#3
Saw a 30yo guy who came in with complaint of chest pain. After seeing and examining him, his story sounded like GERD, but cardiac workup was started. Got called away from the module to deal with a teenager who was shot and ended up dying. When I got back the guy’s mom was there and was irate that I hadn’t been in to talk to her in the 15min since she arrived. I tried to explain that his workup had already been started, there were other patients in the department who also needed my attention, and many of whom were far more sick. She lost it, basically said she didn’t care about anyone else and her son was the only one who matters. She wouldn’t calm down, and was eventually escorted out by security.
Image credits: hobbesghost
#4
Not a doctor, but a nurse and a mom. So this took place in an affluent community in South OC California. When my son was about 5 months old he was in the hospital for a kidney infection. So a sick baby girl is admitted into the next crib, maybe 3 months old. The father was present when the baby was admitted, then immediately took off. He said something to the effect that he was paying tons of money for his baby to be taken care of in the hospital, so he was going to go home and get a good night’s sleep with his wife (who hadn’t even bothered to show up). Meanwhile my husband and I are camped out at our baby’s bedside through the night. Keep in mind, this is not a NICU or PICU, just a regular pediatric unit. This is not a locked unit and anyone can come in and out through the night (meaning anyone could come in and pick up their baby and leave). Well, as you can imagine, that poor baby cried all night, the nurse did her best, but with multiple patients to care for she eventually had to call the parents and demand that one of them come back in to hold their baby. They were not happy. I was blown away that they would just leave their baby like that.
Image credits: please_stopthat
#5
I had a lady tell me I would give her a bath because I am a nurse and it is my job (she lived at home alone and could do for herself). I explained to her my role in helping her be independent but stated we would assist as needed. I sent my big male cna to assist “as needed”, which it wasn’t.
Image credits: anon
#6
I had some teenaged brat say she wanted to speak to my manager. I laughed out loud at her and said that this is a hospital not a McDonalds.
Image credits: angelust
#7
A lot of pediatricians will tell you the hardest part of pediatrics isn’t the patients, but their parents. It’s difficult to explain to hostile parents that their 6 year old with the sniffles will be waiting longer than the 6 year old coughing up blood. We have a specialized children’s ER in our state, and many parents bring their children with simple ear infections or colds here instead of their family doctor, because they know the ER has senior specialists. It’s a huge burden on the public system. Especially when they act shocked that they have to wait 4 hours after being triaged, and abuse the nurses for it.
Their fears are understandable though, they want what is best for their child. I’d take over-involved before under-involved, any day of the week. Child abuse and neglect is seen in both ER and outpatients, alongside atypical cases. In outpatients there was a child with significant language delay. She was tested for several things like autism, and it turned out her parents just didn’t really speak to her. The father worked a lot and the mother openly admitted she just wasn’t ‘interested’, so wouldn’t take her to play groups, the park, talk to her, etc.
The mother was extensively interviewed for long-term postpartum depression, both were screened for mental health or domestic issues. Ultimately they were right, they just weren’t…interested. The child hadn’t been planned, and they just weren’t deeply invested in the child-parent relationship. The child was otherwise well looked after in this upper middle class family, but was utterly emotionally neglected. They believed feeding and clothing her was sufficient for normal development. It was bizarre and entitled behaviour.
Image credits: manlikerealities
#8
Nurse here. My colleague was discharging a patient and, in the process, asked if he needed his parking validated. He sneered at her and responded, “I’m on the board of this hospital. I don’t need your validation to do anything.”
Turns out he was a local philanthropist and multimillionaire, and I guess we were supposed to know that.
Image credits: pizzawithartichokes
#9
Got dispatched for ETOH in the bar scene in my area. As my partner and I pull up we see this guy start limping over. We unload the stretcher and he goes “hey I think I twisted my ankle, I need an ambulance.” Well our patient that we were originally called for is passed out on the ground in their own vomit. We tell him that we can call for a second rescue for him if he needs it because we have to attend to our etoh patient. Or we tell him that he can just take an Uber to the nearest hospital which is five minutes away. He goes “well I have really good insurance so the ambulance ride will cost about the same as an Uber, which one will be faster? Then this guy proceeds to stand around huffing and puffing about how it’s “ridiculous” that he can’t just hop in with us because “you guys are going to the same hospital anyways”. Dude this isn’t a ride share Uber and we ain’t carpooling?
Image credits: iweewoo
#10
During my surgery rotation in medical school, I was (peripherally) involved in a trauma code in the emergency room. The trauma victim was intubated, had two chest tubes, blood everywhere. By the time it progressed to pericardiocentesis (a needle onto the sac of the heart to remove any blood outside the heart but in the pericardium that can be the cause of cardiac arrest in trauma) a lady grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the trauma bay, yelling at me that her daughter in the room next door was cold and needed a blanket.
Not my last encounter with entitled patients and families, but one of the most memorable.
Image credits: crazyhair72
#11
Don’t remember all the deets now but years ago in the ICU we had been coding a patient multiple times, very hectic on the unit. We had aneedy family on the unit who was very upset and said something along the lines of “i don’t care if someone is dying….we’ve been waiting for (insert food / drink selection) for over an hour”. I’m sure my face said it all.
Image credits: Nursejlm
#12
Not a doctor, but I work the front desk of a doctor’s office. Woman came in to her appointment on the 6th floor, but when her appointment was over the elevator was down. She demanded we call the fire department so that they could carry her down the stairs.
Image credits: just-another-Bekah
#13
Called for a “fall victim” go to find a 400lb 20 year old who slid out of her recliner when she tried to stand. She is yelling at us the entire time that we’re waiting for fire to help with lifting. We get her up, put her on the stair chair to move her down the narrow stairs because she says her knees hurt from the fall and that she has back pain. We get her down to our stretcher and she requests to go to a hospital 45 minutes away because that’s “where the tv commercials said to go.” I inform her that Medicaid will not pay that bill and she will be liable because she doesn’t meet requirements to go there(STEMI/CVA) and that if she goes to the local hospital 5 minutes away, she would be able to go home sooner. She whips out her state benefits card and tells us, “oh, silly ambulance drivers, I got that all access, go wherever I want to card.” I almost lost it, but instead just told her that we go to the local hospital and then if she really wants to go to the other hospital, she can asked to be transferred. She bitched us out the entire way, that we work for her, her tax dollars pay our salaries, we need to give her the respect that she deserves. My partner flipped out, asked her what she did for a living and what tax dollars does she pay? She said that she collects welfare and disability because she is depressed. I stopped him before he screamed that she is paid by our tax dollars and we don’t owe her anything if she abuses the system like this. I’m very thankful that I don’t work in that area anymore.
Image credits: medguru87
#14
Family member pushed their way into a bay as we were coding a patient to ask the nurse who was doing compressions when their family member was going to get the water they asked for.
Image credits: jack2of4spades
#15
I’m an EMT, not a doctor. Had a patient once who shriekingly demanded a back massage to “calm her nerves” (she did not get one). Also of note was the fact that there was nothing detectibly physically wrong with her.
Image credits: megalodon319
#16
I forgot to share the one that takes the cake, i had a patient attempt to take the hospital bed blanket when I told her it had to stay she said thats fine but i am going to take this pillow and when i told her I couldn’t let her take that either she told me i was selfish.
Image credits: Tellmeanamenottaken
#17
Just had the biggest snowstorm in 40 years. We had a patient call for an ambulance because she didn’t want to be home alone (fair, I’ll empathize. She had anxiety). She then complained because we didn’t shovel her driveway and she had to walk through 3 feet of snow to get to our truck.
Image credits: BrokeBackMedic
#18
I was shaving a patient’s abdomen to prep them for a c section (back when we used to do that), and the patient wanted me to touch up her bikini line, too.
Image credits: goforbroke432
#19
Pt was demanding a 6th pillow to get comfortable. Went to get it, but sidetracked when my other pt coded. Eventually took the pillow in to patient 1 and got yelled at for “taking too long.” I explained I had been busy doing CPR across the hall. Pt paused “you mean where you have to press on the chest and breathe for the person cause their heart stopped?” Yeah. That. “Well, whatever. You still made me wait way too long.” 🙄🖕.
Image credits: -OrdinaryNectarine-
#20
Had a family member tap her empty Coke can outside of the door demanding a new one while I was dealing with another annoying, and honestly unreasonable, task she requested. I left her room not more than 2 minutes before, and told her I’d bring one in with me next time I came in. Take a walk to the vending machine Brenda, this isn’t a hotel.
Image credits: Academic-Rhubarb79
#21
Not a doctor, but the one time I went to the ER I encounted what I’m fairly certain was an entitled parent/daughter combo in the waiting area. I was in for a shattered thumb, and got put into the triage seating, it was a slow late night and there weren’t a ton of people. I remember looking over, and they were both angrily staring at me, and I could practically read on their faces “Why are YOU there? You don’t look hurt! How dare you!”
I then overheard the daughter being approached by a nurse asking her to reiterate her issue (I think), and the daughter replies “You know, I feel like I’m really holding myself together pretty well, considering that I FEEL LIKE I’M BEING STABBED IN THE STOMACH right now. So yeah.” It was in the most valley girl entitled type of voice you can imagine. Her mother is also now staring angrily at the nurse with the “how dare you” glare.
To clarify, this girl was in her late teens, had been sitting there since before we arrived, and she was basically just pouting with her arms folded, and didn’t look sick or in pain at all. The girl continued to be questioned, though I forgot most of the actual exchange since this was a few years back. Just before I got admitted, I heard the nurse advice her that it was likely just an upset stomach or mild flu bug, and to go to a clinic tomorrow if she wasn’t better or if she started to feel worse. They left in a huff, and the girl was walking perfectly fine, as well.
Image credits: anon
#22
I have had a 100 percent capable patient demand I move their pillow from one side of their bed/body to the other while they sat in bed with nothing in their hands. I have had a patient report me for speaking to another nurse in passing while walking down the hall( pt was being pushed by me in a wheelchair ,apparently I was not concerned enough about her because I spoke to someone else). I have has a pt purposely knock a glass flower vase down and shatter it on the ground because she was mad at/arguing with her spouse and then demand I clean it immediately.
Image credits: Tellmeanamenottaken
#23
Had a patient demand her medication, looked at chart that it was already given. Communicated to her, she yelled at me that I was withholding her own property from her and told me her son in law is a cop and she was going to call him. Then called daughter telling her that she was being threatened by the nurse etc. I told her she is welcome to call anyone she likes and told her I’d help put a complaint in against me with the hospital if she wanted. Patient declined.
Image credits: alexjkoro
#24
Not a doctor, but I work in patient registration at the ER. Guy came in on an ambulance and we had absolutely no rooms available. The patient was brought in for “vomiting” and was moaning and groaning, albeit quietly. After the paramedics were waiting with him in the hall for 10-15 minutes, the charge nurse had them set the patient out in the waiting room, since he was ambulatory and not critical or anything. The paramedic told me that the guy had literally been at the hospital down the road that morning, and apparently didn’t like whatever they told him, so he called the ambulance to take him to a different hospital. He hadn’t vomited since that morning, and he was perfectly fine otherwise.
After they set him in the waiting room, dude decides this is the worst pain of his life and he’s dying. Went from moaning and groaning to full on yelling in about 5 minutes flat. I work at the check in window and I had full view of his theatrics, where he slumped himself over some chairs hollering and whatnot, and then got up and paced and did the same thing again. When the triage nurse (who had been taking vitals on another waiting patient) went down the hall to start an IV, the guy comes up to the window and says that he’s having trouble breathing. Then he proceeds to give me a laundry list of symptoms, including “I feel like I’m about to pass out” and “I’m sorry I’m being so unprofessional and loud but I am in so much pain it’s unbearable” etc. My thing is, if you can sit there and tell me all of that effortlessly, you’re not having trouble breathing.
I was also not having it that day since not even an hour earlier a girl faked a seizure in the lobby, so I just nodded and said “okay thank you for letting me know.”
When the triage nurse finally calls him back, this guy suddenly can’t walk or stand on his own. When they wheel him back to the triage area, the nurse starts to do an EKG since he is saying he’s having chest pain (another symptom that wasn’t present when he originally checked in). After he hollers and rolls around all through the vitals and everything, they take him back to a room that just opened up, and he’s still carrying on up until the doctor comes in to see him.
After that, I didn’t hear a peep. His friends showed up and visited him, and all was well. Then, when the doctor is ready to discharge him, all of sudden his yelling starts up again.
I don’t know what this guy’s problem was, but apparently he desperately wanted to be admitted to the hospital. Oh, and his main complaint was listed “ate some bad pizza rolls, vomited twice this morning.”.
Image credits: katandhercats
#25
I think the most irate my dad got was when I had emergency surgery and then they moved me up to my room and forgot to tell him, I think he stepped away to grab a coffee and when he came back he saw an empty bed being taken out of the OR. Little freaked out… whoops.
Image credits: njgreenwood
#26
A+Ox4 pt screaming to anyone in the hallway that he needed his melatonin. We were coding the guy across the hall.
Image credits: agirl1313
#27
Obligatory not a doctor but one time I had to go to the ER because I was having trouble with instability in my legs so bad that I could not walk and was stuck in a wheelchair for a bit. Some woman with like 3 kids below 10 came in like half an hour before me and my cousin (he drove and had to carry me into the car) and I think one of her kids had a sprained ankle or something but this woman already seemed upset about waiting (trust me you could tell). I went in back before her kid and she was already flipping out because she had been there longer than me but I didn’t actually find out what happened because after they did the basic ER stuff I was almost immediately transferred to another floor of the hospital.
Image credits: Not_A_JoJo
#28
Not a doctor but daughter of an er doctor, whenever my brother and I were sick when we were young my mom would just swipe her card in the door and wheel us back there to a room, always felt really bad about it.
- You Might Also Like: 35 Wholesome And Humorous One-Panel Comics By Harry Bliss
Image credits: stayawayfrommycan
from Bored Panda https://ift.tt/QY45o1a
via IFTTT source site : boredpanda
