Great quotes from the emergency dept

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DropkickMurphy

DropkickMurphy

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I was in the ED earlier this morning and I overheard the following discussion between the attending and one of the FP residents whom I know:
Attending: "Can we get you to stay for a few more hours? We could use the extra set of hands."
Resident: "Not no, hell no."
Attending: "Why not?"
Resident: "Put it this way...between here and taking care of my kid I've been awake for 27 hours, I've been puked on twice, pissed on once, and after that last patient, I believe I've permanently lost my ability to smell. I'd rather wear a concertina wire thong than stay here one minute past shift change."
:laugh:
Ah....an emergency room is the ONLY place you would ever hear such things....does anyone else have any good quotes they've overheard?
 
Great quotes from the wards:
Attending: can you stay to admit this pt that is coming in 3 hours from now?
Resident, in his own mind: NOOOOOOOOOOO! I HATE IM, Please God not another H & P! Today, I have been bored senseless twice with rounding, each time wondering whether or not this person's INR will ever hit exactly on 2.5. Should I add a mg of Coumadin? Wow, I should really think about this...maybe I will spend all afternoon thinking about coumadin? Wait, what about the Mg!! Oh my God, I can not take it.....too much!!
Resident, to attending: Why yes, absolutely sir, I would love to admit that pt for you. Here is my pager number, I will be on call all night so please page me with more admits if you need to.
Attending: Great, hey, how are you doing on that work limit, are you close to 80 hours? 😉
Resident, to himself God why didn't I go into EM? Those monkeys don't even know their pager numbers.. when was the last time they were on call...they don't ever work 80 hours! but they don't know jack about to work a pt for hypercesiumemia... ha ha
Resident to attending don't worry, I only worked 79 hours last week so I can fudge a little
 
"Wow, how did that get in there?"
 
Me: I've got a drunk in room 12 who hit his head. He's pretty beligerent (drunk a$$hole) and has a big hematoma on his head, but he seems neurologically intact. Should I scan his head?
My attending: Let me go check on him.
My attending (after returning from room 12) Get that guy out of here, NOW!
Me: Nothing valuable to do here?
My attending: The only value this guy ever has a hope of is that he walks out into traffic and gets run over. Then, when he comes back in, hopefully you'll get an intubation, a line, and a chest tube out of it. That's the only value this guy's ever gonna have.
Me: I love you.
 
Very tired Urology resident in a loug booming voice in the crowded ER to a patient who obviously has a circumferential dermatitis on his penis from a ring shaped sexual enhancement device but won't fess up and keeps saying it must have been a bug bite: "I know you're lying to me! No one EVER just woke up one days with their penis lookin' like that!"
 
During residency I saw a guy who had been called back to the ED to be treated for an STD. He wasn't sure, initially, why he was there and didn't want his friends and teenage children excused out of the room. So, finally, I told him why he was there and then I told him that we would need to treat anyone with whom he had been intimate. There was a short, somewhat awkward silence, broken by him asking (quite seriously). "Oh. Will that have to include my dog?".

We clarified what *I* meant by intimate as opposed to what *he* meant by intimate and I didn't have to treat his dog. Thankfully.
 
When I was in the military, we had a colorectal surgeon with NO sense of humor (you would think that being in that specialty would require one). He comes stomping into the ED one day to see a patient down there for something, what precisely I don't recall and my friend Dan who is a native German speaker starts singing the lyrics to "Bück Dich" by Rammstein. For those of you not familiar with this piece of music:

Bück dich befehl ich dir
wende dein Antlitz ab von mir
dein Gesicht ist mir egal
bück dich

Ein Zweibeiner auf alle Vieren
ich führe ihn spazieren
im Passgang den Flur entlang

Roughly translated it's:
Bend over I order you,
turn your face away from me,
I don't care about your face,
bend over!

A two-legged creature, on all fours
I take it for a walk,
ambling down the corridor


Needless to say I burst out laughing, as did the two other people at the nurse's station who either spoke German or at very least had heard the song and knew what it was about......this doc turns and starts chewing me out for what he thought was my laughing at him. I had to convince him that, "No, I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing at what he said....." :laugh:
 
overheard in the hall screamed at the top of her lungs:
how do you expect me to have sex if I can't put blueberries in my ( insert 5 letter term for external female reproductive anatomy here)!!!!!

background.....pts boyfriend would have sex with her only if she douched with frozen blueberries 1st.......there is some weird pathology out there.....
c/c at triage....you guessed it .....smelly blue vag d/c......
 
"I'm gonna put a big yellow tube in your little weiner! Hey, wake up! Did you hear me?!? [Holds up foley to show patient]. I'M PUTTING THIS IN YOUR TINY LITTLE WEINER!!"

- ED nurse, about to insert a foley in a drunk, restrained, combative, vulgar patient
 
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

STICKY ALERT!
STICKY ALERT!
This thread definitely needs to be stickied.

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
 
There is this one doc who I think got a kick out of checking sphincter tone on trauma pts

Attending OK, I am going to have to shove my finger up your a**
Gangbanger SAY WHAT!! NAH MAN, YOU CA.....AHHHHHHH 😱

like that guy hasn't been to jail and been introduced to incarcerated love.
 
(Attractive female) Resident: I just need to examine you before we let you go.
Slightly intoxicated patient: ummmm....
Resident: Do you want me to examine you?
Patient: YES PLEASE!
 
As heard from the other side of a curtain where the 6'7" male intern was about to give his pt a rectal exam....

"Don't worry sir, my fingers are long and skinny!"
 
Me in the ED last night with severe abdominal pain:
Attending (who has known me for nine years): "Steve, calm down. You're not dying."
Me: "Oh really? Could have fooled me...."
 
A few weeks ago while cracking a chest in the presence of trauma one of our residents wanted to expand the field a little and couldn't find the rib cutters, saw or hammer to crack the sternum in this TFA so he pulls out his good old trauma shears and gets ready to go to work..

"Eeeeehk" From the trauma surgeon. "There is no way you can cut through the sternum with those.
"Don't worry, it works. I've done it before" Our attending states with his fingers crossed and a quik prayer.

"""CRACK"""!

Ohhhhhh! The trauma surgeon exclaims.

"Thank f...ing god." The attending mumbles under his breath to the resident at the head of the bed.
 
"Thank f--king God" is a frequent refrain in emergency medicine..... :laugh: Of course in some places "Holy ****, that actually worked?!" is pretty common too.
 
Middle aged man, in four points.............

"THE TURKEYS!!! THE TURKEYS!!!! GET THE TURKEYS!!!"

Same middle aged man quite some time later.................

"Why no Doctor, I don't use drugs." 🙄
 
My psych patient last week: "You can't hold me here! You can't say I'm dangerous. I'm not dangerous. If you say I am I'll f-----g kill you! I'll rip your guts out and choke you to death with them! Now let me go."
 
docB said:
My psych patient last week: "You can't hold me here! You can't say I'm dangerous. I'm not dangerous. If you say I am I'll f-----g kill you! I'll rip your guts out and choke you to death with them! Now let me go."
Click to expand...

:laugh: :laugh:
 
Taaki said:
Middle aged man, in four points.............

"THE TURKEYS!!! THE TURKEYS!!!! GET THE TURKEYS!!!"
Click to expand...

Oh come on! Turkey’s are cute and tasty!

docB said:
My psych patient last week: "You can't hold me here! You can't say I'm dangerous. I'm not dangerous. If you say I am I'll f-----g kill you! I'll rip your guts out and choke you to death with them! Now let me go."
Click to expand...

Do you have those padded rooms in your ER? I'm sure you enjoyed throwing him in there for a while 🙂
 
Taaki said:
Middle aged man, in four points.............

"THE TURKEYS!!! THE TURKEYS!!!! GET THE TURKEYS!!!"

Same middle aged man quite some time later.................

"Why no Doctor, I don't use drugs." 🙄
Click to expand...

Got'em!

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Just a few minutes ago:
Drunk combative patient being aggressively restrained by security: Let me go! I didn't do nuthin' wrong!
Security: You just punched your nurse.
Patient: Well yeah. Except that.
 
LOL with hellacious dementia and a nasty UTI, during one of those strenuous, three-person Foley cath deals, shouted at the top of her (very healthy) lungs:

"Why are you so terrible?"

I thought it was a totally valid question. I even repeated it, much more quietly and at intervals, to the RNs for the rest of the shift. Near as we can tell, we just are. Poor old dear.
 
DropkickMurphy said:
Got'em!

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Click to expand...

Is that you taking the turkey to the hospital?
 
A non-EM-attending was in a slight accident. Over the ems phone, you could hear "I am not a trauma! Do not make me a trauma!"
 
It's hard to get this one across on the net. You have to imagine the sound I'm talking about.

20 yo M presents to ER with a skinned knee.
Me: Why did you come to the ER for a scraped knee?
Patient: (Sounds exactly like a 2 year old girl) 'Cause it hurrrrrrrrrrrrrts!

Triage nurse laughed so hard she choked on her own saliva.
 
Anuwolf said:
Is that you taking the turkey to the hospital?
Click to expand...
Yes, we transported it for treatment. It wound up at my parents house.
 
<----Fellow, American Academy of Emerge-turkey Medicine :laugh:
 
Annette said:
A non-EM-attending was in a slight accident. Over the ems phone, you could hear "I am not a trauma! Do not make me a trauma!"
Click to expand...
Overheard in the back of my ambulance from one of our EM docs who was in SVT with a SBP of 60 and crushing chest pain: "Don't you even think about it!!! NO! NO!"
Doc's wife (who is a cardiologist): "Hit him."
Me: "Everyone clear."
*cardioversion*
Doc: "You motherf--ker! Both of you! You're both sadistic! *pauses* Wait.....I feel better."
Doc's wife: 🙄
 
DropkickMurphy said:
Overheard in the back of my ambulance from one of our EM docs who was in SVT with a SBP of 60 and crushing chest pain: "Don't you even think about it!!! NO! NO!"
Doc's wife (who is a cardiologist): "Hit him."
Me: "Everyone clear."
*cardioversion*
Doc: "You motherf--ker! Both of you! You're both sadistic! *pauses* Wait.....I feel better."
Doc's wife: 🙄
Click to expand...

Are they academics? CLASSIC graduation dinner material. :laugh:
 
BKN said:
Are they academics? CLASSIC graduation dinner material. :laugh:
Click to expand...
I know he is not. As for her, I know she goes over to Indy a couple of days per week, but I'm not sure if she has academic affiliations.

What makes it even funnier was he argued against we EMT-Intermediates begin able to cardiovert when our protocols were being rewritten. I didn't have the heart to ask him his opinion now. :laugh:
 
I hate to admit it but the greatest ER quote I’ve heard in the last few months was from an internist. I had admitted this elderly brittle diabetic patient to him. The patient was having bouts of nausea and vomiting with her glucose swings. The patient and the son were telling me how she has been in the ER for this 5 times this month. On exam I found that the patient had an abrasion on her tongue. Concerned that she might have had a seizure I asked when she had bitten her tongue. The son chimed in with the explanation that that morning when the patient had nausea she started gagging. She was gagging so hard that she couldn’t breathe so naturally the son tried to do mouth to mouth breathing. In the course of doing this he bit her tongue and she bit his lip. The son added that he had been forced to “save her life” in this way 4 times in the last few weeks. I managed to keep a straight face somehow. When I explained all this to the patient’s internist he gave me the quote:

“What a Freudian nightmare.”
 
Not the ED, but on the scene of the delivery the other day:
Me: "Rock paper scissors to see who delivers the baby."
Other EMT: "OK, best of three."
Patient: "Woah, hold it. No! Which one of you has the most experience at this? That's who's delivering the baby!"
 
I don’t even know how to relate how hilarious this guy was. Let me set the stage. 50ish yo drug addict get BIBA for altered mental status. Pt has a crack pipe and some rock in his sock that the nurse finds while undressing him. He chills for an hour or so and then wakes up and wants to leave. He’s lucid but he wants out and now. Because he’s no longer altered and he’s demanding to leave I dc him. The nurse goes into the room with the dc papers and that’s where our story begins:

Nurse: Here are you discharge papers. You were diagnosed with altered mental status and cocaine abuse…
Pt (angrily interjects): What!? I don’t do no drugs. I don’t do no cocaine you f-----g b---h! You all are lying on me!
Nurse: Whatever. Here you go.
Pt (who has just looked at his feet and realized his socks are gone): Hey! Who took my socks? Where’s my f-----g pipe and my rock? You b---h! You stole my rock! You stole my pipe! I wants my f-----g rock right now you m----------r!
Police officer (we call PD when we find dope, he’s been outside the curtain cataloging the contraband): Don’t worry sir. I’ve got your rock and your pipe right here.
Pt: That ain’t mine.

Classic.
 
The other night in the ER was insane. I was on an RT and was standing at the nurses station charting when this newbie FP resident who is doing his ER rotation comes walking up:
FP Resident: "Hey RT!"
Me: "Yeah....what?"
FP Resident: "It's a good sign in an asthmatic patient when you can't hear wheezing anymore, right?"
*pause as I briefly debate in my head if it's possible this kid is really so stupid to be asking about the situation I think he is asking about*
Me: "Please tell me you mean he has clear and equal breath sounds"
Resident: "No, I really can't hear anything."

I take off running back to where the patient is at....the ER attendings were in the middle of dealing with multiple traumas, so I wound up tubing this guy and getting him on the vent. When I came in he was using every muscle in his body to breathe, but not moving much air (if he was moving 100cc with each breath, I'm the next Pope). Needless to say after we stabilized this patient, I had a talk with this resident and this is where the really great quote comes into play.

Me: "How could you not tell he was crashing?"
Resident: "Well he was still breathing....that's why I came to ask you about it."
Me: "That doesn't count as breathing....it's breathing in much the same way a dog humping your leg counts as sex. It's going through the motions but it's not doing much for the person involved."
 
DropkickMurphy said:
I take off running back to where the patient is at....the ER attendings were in the middle of dealing with multiple traumas, so I wound up tubing this guy and getting him on the vent. When I came in he was using every muscle in his body to breathe, but not moving much air (if he was moving 100cc with each breath, I'm the next Pope). Needless to say after we stabilized this patient, I had a talk with this resident and this is where the really great quote comes into play.[/B]
Click to expand...

Wow, they give RT's a lot of autonomy at your hospital. RT's at my hospital can't even intubate, not even to mention the ability to make the decision to intubate. It's just not allowed. Only three people in my hospital can intubate: emergency physicians, ENT, and anesthesia.
 
DropkickMurphy said:
The other night in the ER was insane. I was on an RT and was standing at the nurses station charting when this newbie FP resident who is doing his ER rotation comes walking up:
FP Resident: "Hey RT!"
Me: "Yeah....what?"
FP Resident: "It's a good sign in an asthmatic patient when you can't hear wheezing anymore, right?"
*pause as I briefly debate in my head if it's possible this kid is really so stupid to be asking about the situation I think he is asking about*
Me: "Please tell me you mean he has clear and equal breath sounds"
Resident: "No, I really can't hear anything."

I take off running back to where the patient is at....the ER attendings were in the middle of dealing with multiple traumas, so I wound up tubing this guy and getting him on the vent. When I came in he was using every muscle in his body to breathe, but not moving much air (if he was moving 100cc with each breath, I'm the next Pope). Needless to say after we stabilized this patient, I had a talk with this resident and this is where the really great quote comes into play.

Me: "How could you not tell he was crashing?"
Resident: "Well he was still breathing....that's why I came to ask you about it."
Me: "That doesn't count as breathing....it's breathing in much the same way a dog humping your leg counts as sex. It's going through the motions but it's not doing much for the person involved."
Click to expand...

CLASSIC!!
 
deuist said:
A demented patient was screaming, "Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!"

A nurse got on the microphone and said, "This is God. Shut up!"
Click to expand...
laughy.gif
 
docB said:
we call PD when we find dope...)
Click to expand...
Wow, I really must work in a rough ED. We just get our own security dudes to handle it; they make a little note and then take the crack away to be flushed down the hopper. If we called the PD every time we found a baggie full o' crack, they'd never leave.

This reminds me of a good quote, though. I'll set the scene in much the same way: as a tech, I catalog the personal effects of anyone who's going to be admitted, or anyone who's altered. One time I found some rock and a pipe, as I was going through a guy's stuff near the RN station. It was one of your basic car-antenna pipes; completely economy-model.

Because we're smart-asses, I say to the RN, "hey, do you need a pipe?"

She replies, "Naah. Mine's way nicer than that."
 
southerndoc said:
Wow, they give RT's a lot of autonomy at your hospital. RT's at my hospital can't even intubate, not even to mention the ability to make the decision to intubate. It's just not allowed. Only three people in my hospital can intubate: emergency physicians, ENT, and anesthesia.
Click to expand...
Well, our RT's can intubate and I kind of took a little bit of lee way on tubing this patient- not that the ER doc on duty would say anything, but if anybody asked the resident "ordered me to do it". I figured the little twit owes it to me, you know, for keeping him from getting his ass completely eaten raw at the weekly Death and Donuts meeting.
 
DropkickMurphy said:
Well, our RT's can intubate and I kind of took a little bit of lee way on tubing this patient- not that the ER doc on duty would say anything, but if anybody asked the resident "ordered me to do it". I figured the little twit owes it to me, you know, for keeping him from getting his ass completely eaten raw at the weekly Death and Donuts meeting.
Click to expand...
Who authorized the medications used for rapid sequence induction, or did you do an awake intubation?
 
The guy was more or less out (GCS of maybe 5), no gag reflex to speak of; basically up **** creek without a paddle to use the local expression so we didn't have to give anything to tube him. The ED attending ended up ordering a propofol drip for him after we got him on the vent and everything.....he showed up about two minutes after we tubed him.
 
One from my Appy pt a couple weeks ago.

The scene: 35 yo Active duty army Special Forces guy with apparent acute appy @ ~10:00 PM. I'd examined the guy (didn't do a rectal or GU at the time). My senior examined the guy and did a GU exam. I went in to tell the pt something, and my attending was there - asked if I'd done the rectal, I said no, and he told me to.

Now, after the rectal - from the pt: "This is great; I got my balls fondled, a finger up my butt, and I'm getting my appendix out, all in the same night!"

Gotta love pts like that, really a nice guy. He went to the OR shortly thereafter.
 
My parter yesterday-
Pt: I feel anxious, sweaty and my hands are shaky.
Doc: You did cocaine. I'll give you the number for a rehab.
Pt: You aren't going to do anything about the way I feel?
Doc: I've diagnosed you, educated you and I prescribe that you stop doing cocaine and go to rehab. Goodbye.
 
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