Bedpan Banter
Welcome to Bedpan Banter | The Human Side of Healthcare -- the podcast that feels like sitting at the nurses’ station swapping stories with your favorite coworkers. Hosted by the one and only Nurse Mike, this show goes beyond the textbooks and into the real, raw, and hilarious moments that make up nurse life.
Whether it’s unfiltered stories from the floor, emotional patient moments, or those laugh-until-you-cry shifts you’ll never forget... we’re talking about it all. Oh, and don’t worry, we’ll be sneaking in a few knowledge bombs you can actually use on the job.
If you're a nursing student, new grad, or seasoned pro who just needs to feel seen (and maybe laugh a little), you’re in the right place.
Bedpan Banter
ER Nightmares: When Objects Go Missing
Nurse Mike shares shocking and hilarious stories from the emergency room and from listener submissions. These unfiltered tales reveal the bizarre reality of healthcare that nursing school never prepares you for & finding things in places they shouldn't be.
Please be sure to follow, share and like our episode and if you have any crazy stories, please be sure to comment below or send them in on our website.
To submit your stories & comments, visit: https://simplenursing.com/podcast/
Woo, we got a code brown. Welcome to Bedpan Banter with me, nurse Mike, the death of nursing. Can I get a bedpan over here? Welcome back to another episode of Bedpan Banter, the official podcast of Simple Nursing, where we chat about the human side of healthcare and really all things nursing. I'm your host, nurse Mike, and today we're diving into the unfiltered, hilarious and sometimes shocking side of nursing. We're going to be talking about some of the craziest stories that I've experienced as a nurse and also some stories that you guys sent in. So big, huge warning here if you're eating lunch, you maybe want to save it for later, because there's going to be some interesting stories that could be a little bit gross and may even make you spit out whatever you're eating. All right, so let's dive into some crazy stories from my experience as an ER nurse. So I have a lot of stories in the emergency room, but there's some gory stories. There's heartfelt stories, but there's also even smelly stories, but I have a few that come to mind that really make the top of the list.
Speaker 1:One patient came in with abdominal pain and we're like, okay, that's fine, as we're taking the assessment, taking the vital signs, everything checks out normally, but he's just in like massive abdominal pain and we're trying to get a history of, like, what really happened. Like did he eat something, like what's going on? And this person, or particular individual, fell on something. You know what that means. So we go right to the x-ray room to see what he fell on and it turns out that he fell on something pretty big, pretty massive. He fell into something really huge. So it ends up being something that you know penetrated very deeply into his crevasse, his anal cavity or his basal rectum. It turned out to be around 13 inches in size and it was pretty massive. So, anyways, we had to have a lot of extra hands on deck. Let me tell you, usually these patients will actually go to the operating room, right, because, if you guys didn't know, the rectum actually has a reverse suction. So if you're taking, let's just say, like a uh, a temperature, a rectal temperature, and you pop out the sleeve, that rectum will, like you're like slurp it right in, it's like beam me up, it's going in, and that's exactly what happened to this uh thing that our patient fell on. So before contacting the operating room, you know, because they have to like literally go in, sedate the patient and then, like with instruments I don't know how they go in there, but they have to grab it out so the doctor comes and we have like a russian doctor with I think he's russian or some type of eastern european that had like a thick accent, um, and then I still remember we even say it. Still he he's like, okay, let me see if I can get it, and he's like a little this kind of prong approach, a little ninja turtle hand, it's like going in trying to grab it. But the risk with that is that you can actually push it in deeper into that rectal cavity and get it slurped in, even, you know, into a colon, which is really bad Because the patient could have like an SBO, a small bowel obstruction that can perforate and then lead to peritonitis infection all over the you know peritoneal cavity and the patient can go septic and die. So it's really really crazy. So we're going very gentle, very smooth, you know, trying to get in there, making room kind of loosen it up, like loosen up a really tight jar. You know, getting in there 're, there's like a few nurses like around. We're all, like you know, in the bleachers spectating. I wish I had some popcorn. No, no, but, um, all hands on deck, but only one hand in that cavity. And so the doctor is like and we still, we still remember this quote today. It's like he's looking in there and with his accent, he's like wow, it's big, it's really big. He's like he ends up making contact with this beast inside this patient and is able to actually I don't know how he did it with the Kung Fu grip or whatever, he just grabbed it. I think he used to rock climb because he had a really good grip he grabs it and is pulling it out. And as he's pulling it out I think he says it a few times, cause we still quote that to this day it's like wow, it's so big. And the nurse that was closest to the action, uh, pulling it out, like, as they're retelling the story, they're pulling out. And then she's like thud, like a baby iguana, hit the like, hit the bed, like thud. And then I'm on the opposite side trying to hold some cheeks open, just to make sure that you know we're trying to get this thing out of this patient. And, um, yeah, it ended up coming out of the patient, no, or, which is great, because that's a whole deal and you have to like call the surgeon and everything. I have the whole or team. That's pretty embarrassing as well. But the the funniest part of this whole thing is the patient wanted to take his toy home with him, so we actually had to get a belongings bag and put it in there, kind of like a to-go bag, like a souvenir, like thanks for stopping by the souvenir shop at the ER. And then he's like literally walking out of the ER with his discharge paperwork and this like bag. That's kind of like slapping his shoulder as he's walking out. So that was pretty wild, but just a normal day in the ER. So moral of the story is don't fall on things. Make sure that you have good balance and always keep your friends close but your enemas closer. All right, but enough about me, let's get to the stories that you guys have submitted. First up is Greta Young. This one like oh, as a male, this guy really made me cringe, but I've seen it before. Greta Young says that she walked into a patient's room only to find that the patient pulled out his entire foley with a the balloon intact. And you guys know how, the, how big those balloons are. Because those balloons are supposed to sit inside the bladder and prevent it from falling out right. So imagine pulling that huge balloon all the way through that tiny urethra, like my dad had a uh, a kidney stone and he was saying, like that was like you know, childbearing or childbirth, whatever it was like, very painful, and kidney stones are really small, like like, usually like pea size, imagine walnut size going through that urethra or basically that pea hole, just like like all my gardens. That's gonna be really. Oh, okay, all right. This next story is a nursing school story from emma from new york. Our teacher is a very unhinged person. Oh, you don't say it sounds like the normal nursing instructor. No, I'm, I'm just kidding. Okay, she once changed this kid's. That's so funny. A lot of New Yorkers call people kids. This kid that she openly didn't like changing their grades to zeros just to freak him out. But everyone knew it was an April Fool's joke, all right. So that's pretty mean and pretty sinister, very unhinged. I've never heard of that before where an instructor would pull an April Fool's joke like that. But yeah, I could definitely see that as being very shocking, especially in nursing school when everything's stressful, all right. This next story comes from Brandino from Chicago Illinois. I was interviewing and said the worst thing you could say during an interview Ooh, this is juicy and of course didn't get the job. Okay, so I'm interviewing with the observational unit at my current hospital and wait for it. I told the hiring manager that the department would be a great fit for me because it was a slower pace. Oh, you do not say slower pace, because that's when things really hit the fan, especially if you're going on to unit and dropping off a patient or in the ER. We never say that. So Brandino says why did I say that? She broke it down for me and was pretty much like this department can get slammed at any given time. So the talent acquisition called me and asked me how I think the interview went. I just knew I didn't get the job and she was like yeah, you didn't. And I wasn't even upset because I knew I bombed it. Yeah, if there's anything not to say in interview, it's definitely yeah, I'm looking for a slower paced environment Because usually those are trigger words to a lot of departments, especially me being an ER nurse. Anytime a paramedic would come in or a fire department would drop off a patient and be like wow, it's really quiet in here. That's where we get bam slammed kind of like a full moon. Full moons are a real thing, you guys probably know. If you guys have any full moon stories, please share them in the comments below or hit us up directly. We would love to talk about it. So a side note, a lot of students get scared with interviews, and I used to until I figured out a few tricks. So if you're going to an interview, the interviewer really just wants to know a few things. So number one is are you a team player? And number two, are you going to show up on time and really not call off? So you want to have something in your back pocket that shows you're a team player. And for new grads that don't have clinical nurse experience or clinical experience at all, like on your resume, you want to make sure, even if it doesn't relate, showing that you're a team player. So a great one was this server who only was a bartender or worked in the restaurant industry, didn't have any nursing experience, and you know no one does, as they're becoming a new grad right. So one of the stories that she used was a broken ice machine and this ice machine was just out of service for weeks, and so she took it upon herself to go on YouTube and see how this ice machine worked. Turns out, they just needed a little part, which they ordered for, I think, a few dollars, and it was able to fix the ice machine. So it shows that, even though it's not related to clinical practice, this individual went above and beyond, outside of their scope of work, wasn't paid for it, and so that just shows their initiative of being a team player. Okay, next is Zena from New York City. I was working in the ICU with a patient who had meningitis, okay, inflammation of the meninges inside the skull and, you know, central nervous system. He seemed calm at first, but then suddenly he started to aggressively scold her for literally no reason. I was checking his IV, I was trying to stay professional, and the next thing I know, he stops mid-rant and looks at me with a serious face and starts singing a love song. What the heck? Okay, and I mean full performance. Like a love song, I can serenade you, fly me to the moon. Okay. Then, without missing a beat, he calls me his wife in front of the whole staff. Whoa, I just stood there stunned like sir. So it turns out this poor guy was confused from the infection, but for a moment I was part of the dramatic soap opera in this ICU setting. Yeah, when you have meningitis or really anything that inflames the brain, we see this a lot with urinary tract infections, utis and elderly patients. Or you'll see it a lot with just psych patients in general, which I worked the mental health or psych unit for a number of years as well. You hear some crazy stories. It's wild. So I had a friend who was a new grad nurse and it was around Christmas time and she was short in stature and helping this confused patient and this patient ended up calling her a sexy Christmas elf, which was like really weird. So that was her nickname now on the unit, like oh, you're a sexy Christmas elf and yeah, it just turns out that you know, you'll never know what confused patients will say. So one of the biggest things is that you're going to learn how to make boundaries with patients, whether they're confused or not confused. You've got to maintain your professionalism and therapeutic communication, but that's one of the biggest things you'll learn as a nurse. So, speaking about Christmas elves, I'm just thinking about all the Christmas cookies that you leave out for Santa. There was a patient that came in with chest pain. This patient had a very large BMI, or very high BMI, and lots of folds of adipose tissue. So as we're doing our assessment, we're lifting up folds just to say like, okay, let's assess the area. We're throwing EKG pads on, we're thinking this patient's having a heart attack, right. But as we're doing the assessment, we're drawing blood for troponin, seeing cardiac enzymes and EKG comes out fine. We're like huh, what could it be? So we're doing our full, full assessment, lifting up like these folds of adipose, and let me just tell you it's I still remember this turns out that right under the apical area, right over here, we lift up a fold and we find a moldy cookie crumb that has been there for god knows how long and it was got so moldy that it was eating away at the tissue and now there's an open sore and just sores around like imagine, like you know, like that little, like the furriness of mold, like inside your fridge or like on a strawberry, it's literally was on the skin and it was just like, oh yeah, so basically in the er, the moral of the story is that you'll find things in a lot of places that they shouldn't be all right, and that wraps it up for this episode of Bedpan Banter. Please be sure to follow, share and like our episode and if you have any crazy stories, please be sure to comment below or send them in. And always remember, keep those vitals stable and don't let those bedpans bite.