Visitors from Hell

I found this on the net and thought it was funny.

Top Ten Visitors from Hades:

10. The man who snuck in three cats to visit his asthmatic mother.

9. The visitor who ate all his father's food, then rang the nurse to say that the patient was still hungry and needed another tray.

8. The wife who asked you to take her stroked-out husband to the bathroom whenever SHE really was the one who had to go.

7. The son who emptied his mother's colostomy bag into the wastebasket.

6. The husband who fell asleep in the patient's bed while his wife was in the bathroom.

5. The wife who discontinued her husband's central line herself, because “John likes to sleep on his right side.”

4. The 80 year-old daughter of the 98 year old man, who kept turning off her father's continuous gastric feeding because, "He never eats this much a home."

3. The children of one patient who insisted upon using their mother's portable IPPB machine as a scooter in the hallway.

2. The husband who kept sneaking in chocolates for his newly diagnosed diabetic wife.

1. The man who never actually visited his mother, but called twelve times every shift to criticize the nurses, the doctors, the food, and anything else that came to mind.

Here are some of my own additions to the above list: (details changed as confidentiality will not be breached in any way shape or form on this blog. Hospital patients and visitors up and down the country pull these stunts all the time every day. You do not recognise anyone here)

The man who thought that the only reason the nurses put a catheter into his wife was because they are "lazy" so he pulled it out with the balloon inflated and didn't tell anyone. Not only was there trauma but she went into severe retention.

The woman who brought litres of pop into her partner who was in severe CCF and on a fluid restriction. After we explained why this is a bad idea she continued to do it and they just hid the bottles.


The husband who shoved food into his wife's trach because he felt that we were starving her to death.

The daughter who messed with the pump and ran her fathers IV fluids in super fast because she thought that we were dehydrating him to death. The fluids that were hanging had potassium.

The man who punched his demented mother and called her a stupid bitch because she did not recognise him and peed on the floor. Prior to this he had accused the staff of being abusive towards her because the tea trolley girl gave his mum tea with sweetener rather than sugar. She was diabetic.

Anyone who doesn't understand that people with end state dementia do not want to eat and will not eat no matter how hard you try and accuses a nurse who is running between 15 of these patients as well as doing a 100 other things whilst being constantly interrupted of "starving gran to death".

The family who feeds their stroked out gran with no swallow reflex despite the staff telling them that this is dangerous. Then they want to sue the hospital when gran dies of aspiration pneumonia. She got pneumonia from the nurses starving her don't you know. Yep. It doesn't matter how many times you try and explain it, they just don't get it. It's actually very sad.

The visitor who takes the patient with fibrosis in the next bed off of her 0xygen and then places it on his gran who is being treated for a Urinary infection instead because "why should the lady in the next bed get something that my gran doesn't". Never mind that gran has o2 sats of 100% on air anyway and the lady in the next bed is now cyanotic. Our beds are very close together.

The visitors who call the asthmatic patient in the bed next to their auntie "a fucking noisy bitch" because she needed to be nebulised at night. Of course the poor asthmatic patient overheard them complain and was in tears apologising because of her breathing treatments being so noisy. The poor thing. I gave those visitors hell.


Management won't do anything about any of this and if we say anything to patients and visitors we just get flipped off. Hospital chiefs want to promote the customer is always right image, much to the detriment of the nurse's sanity and patient care.

That's all for now.