Nobody wants to go to the hospital or doctor’s office. When you get stuck with an atrocious nurse, it makes matters even worse! These patients share their ridiculous experiences with the insane nurses they have dealt with. Content has been edited for clarity.
The Crummy Charge Nurse
“For the last fifteen years, I have had relapsing multiple sclerosis. At first, the doctors had no clue what was wrong with me. It took two years and many hospital visits to figure out my diagnosis. I have medication to take three times a week to help cope with my symptoms, and there is no cure. Multiple sclerosis is a bear. I know how to take care of myself when my symptoms flare up, but sometimes other issues arise and I need to be hospitalized. I’m no stranger to this, and I consider myself a reasonable patient. For the most part, the nurses are great and do their best to make sure my needs are met. Except for one lying, rude, terrible, nurse.
At this particular hospital stay, my illness had flared significantly. My doctor sent me directly from his office to check in at the hospital, as he had done several other times when my conditions warranted. This way, by the time I would arrive, check-in, and be assigned a room, my medications would already be prescribed. He always went over the medications with me in his office because I wouldn’t take something if I didn’t know what it was.
Throughout this debacle, I was curled up on a gurney and writhing in pain. I finally got into a hospital room, and I was transferred to a bed. The charge nurse walked into my room looking extremely frazzled.
The nurse said, ‘Just get under the covers. I can’t find a gown for you.’
I understood. It might have been really busy on the floor, and I didn’t blame her.
I finally got an IV in and was changed into a gown. I pressed the buzzer and the frazzled nurse came in ten minutes later.
I asked, ‘Can you check to see if my medications are up from the pharmacy? I am in really bad pain right now.’
I knew getting the medication could take a while, but at this point, I had been in my room for over an hour.
She replied in a snotty tone, ‘I will check when I can. I am too busy right now, and you’re going to have to wait.’
Another thirty minutes went by, and I buzzed the nurse again to find out the status of the medicine. The nurse angrily blew into my room with the medications.
I asked, ‘Can you go over the medications before I take them? I just want to make sure I am taking what was ordered by my doctor.’
She looked annoyed, but she started to list off the medications with a weird smirk on her face.
She said, ‘The last item on the list is Tylenol for your pain.’
I was a pretty easy-going person, but don’t mess with me when I am sick and in pain!
I looked her in the eye and said, ‘There is a mistake, my doctor ordered a stronger medication for pain, not just Tylenol.’
She smirked again and said, ‘Well, I don’t know what to tell you. This is what he ordered, so you just need to deal with it.’
Giving the nurse the same attitude in return was easy at this point.
I exclaimed, ‘I know what was ordered. Did you want to call my doctor, or should I do it myself?’
She stared at me and stammered something about his orders, to which I picked up my bedside phone and said, ‘Alright, I’m calling him.’
Wouldn’t you know? She offered to double-check the chart.
I took all of my medication, and then the nurse went to check my chart. Five minutes later, she walked into the room with the correct medication which had my name on it.
Anyone who is familiar with hospitals knows there was no way she could have called the doctor, have him call the pharmacy, and had the pharmacy dispense the medication to my room in five minutes. But this was her story, and she was sticking to it.
I told the nurse, ‘I am sorry you are having such a bad day, but you are the rudest and most dishonest nurse I have ever met. I refuse to put up with you anymore! I need you to stay out of the room for the duration of my stay.’
Even though she was the charge nurse, I had every intention of contacting her boss and letting them know what had happened.
I smiled and finished by saying, ‘I need you to leave. Now.’
I must have really scared her because every once in a while, she would come to check on me.
She would barely crack the door and asked in a sweet voice, ‘How are you doing? Are you comfortable? Can I get you anything?’
Not to mention, she was calling me ‘honey,’ and ‘sweetie,’ the entire time.
When my doctor did rounds the next morning, I told him everything the nurse had done. My doctor said I could report the incident, and he gave me the name and number of who to contact. I called the number, and it turned out to be the administrator of the hospital. It turned out this nurse had many complaints prior, and she was going to investigate the matter.
If nurses can’t handle their duties in a professional manner, perhaps they should go into another field. I am not sure if my nurse got fired or not, but I hope she at least learned her lesson.”
“Being In The Hospital Is What You Deserve”
“This incident occurred a couple of years ago. I had been feeling extremely run down for a while, and certainly looked like it too. I figured it was because of my long work hours, but then everything hit the fan. I remembered I was riding in my mom’s car one afternoon, and the next thing I knew I woke up in a hospital bed.
When I woke up, I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. I had grown a full beard! How long had I been there? Needless to say, I started freaking out and calling for help. The nurses came in, and they had a terrible bedside manner. Their manner caused me to believe I had done something wrong.
One of the nurses said, ‘You have been in a coma for nearly two weeks.’
Nobody told me anything more. All I knew was that I was in a coma, and I was currently in the intensive care unit.
Once I was checked into a different unit is when the fun really started to begin. I got a dragon lady of a nurse who was constantly rude to me for no reason.
The nurse told me, ‘You’re an addict, being in the hospital is what you deserve.’
I will admit I enjoyed having a few drinks now and then, but at this point, I had been four years sober from other substances. The nurse also made a point to remind me I had been found wandering the streets of a nearby city totally blitzed.
The nurse annoyedly said, ‘You are an absolute disgrace, and you have no idea how to take care of yourself. When I finish my report, I am telling your family you had a psychotic breakdown.’
Had I been my usual self, I would have replied, ‘Hey, lady. If you want to violate my rights, get sued, and have the hospital fire you, be my guest.’
But no, I was too exhausted and weak. I just took her snide remarks. She left the room, and it was finally silent.
To make matters worse, there wasn’t a report until the last twenty minutes of my hospital stay. It turned out I had sepsis brought on my bilateral pneumonia, and the nurse was blaming my hospital stay on substance abuse. I later found out my chances of surviving were one in five.
The nurse dropped hints in the report insinuating my hospital stay stemmed from psychosis, which was a total lie. The first chance I got after my release, I went back to the hospital and obtained a copy of the nurse’s report myself.
I found out I had in fact been wandering around as described when the paramedics arrived. They assumed I was on some type of substance, but when the toxicology report came back, I was completely clean. Then, the paramedics took my temperature. I had a fever of over one hundred and four degrees, and my breathing was irregular. A few more tests made it very clear I was going into shock due to sepsis. My kidneys had shut down due to ammonia buildup in my bloodstream which had reached toxic levels. I wasn’t wandering around by myself because I was blasted, I pretty much had full-blown dementia! The doctors at the hospital were miracle workers and saved my life. The nurse, however, was awful!
I found the nurse’s phone number at the hospital and called her the next day.
In a pleasant tone, I told her, ‘I got the doctor reports, and you completely lied to me. You told me my hospital stay was due to substance abuse, but my system was clean. Why would you say this to me if it wasn’t true?’
The nurse stuttered, ‘Well, I mean, we just assumed it’s what the problem was.’
After she said this, I completely blew up.
I told her, ‘You should be grateful I didn’t report you,’ and slammed the phone down.
A few months later, I found out she was fired from the hospital. Karma is something else.”
“She Had Stopped Working Solely To Berate Me”
“My grandmother was eighty-three years old, and she was very sick. A few weeks ago, her condition started to deteriorate severely. My family called an ambulance for her, and she was rushed to the hospital immediately. The hospital she was taken to had a policy that stated that while patients were in their room, only one relative could be with them at a time. My mom had come to the hospital with me, so we decided we would take shifts in my grandmother’s room. One of us would sit outside of her room while the other person was taking care of my grandmother.
Earlier in the day, we went home to pack my grandmother a bag and let our dog out. My uncle sat with her while we were away. Before we left the hospital, we had spotted some relatives sitting in the waiting room to check on my grandmother. When we came back to the hospital, they were gone. My mom went back into my grandmother’s room to take her shift, and I sat on the floor outside of the door and started reading a book.
I felt a presence looming nearby, and a nurse walked up to me and said, ‘Excuse me, you can’t sit there.’
I felt like I was in the movie ‘Mean Girls.’
I stood up and replied, ‘I have been sitting here all day. Nobody has told me I couldn’t sit here except for you.’
The nurse snidely replied, ‘Well, they should have told you something. You are a health and safety risk. The waiting room is over there,’ as she pointed to the waiting room in the wrong direction.
Before I left to go to the waiting room, I noticed her scanning her card to re-enter the main floor of the hospital. She had stopped working solely to berate me.
The annoying part about the situation was there was a boy, less than ten feet away, sitting outside the ambulance clearing area on the floor with his father. The boy had his phone plugged into a nearby power socket, and he was just sitting there playing Fortnite! I knew a phone charger could cause a risk to the hospital’s busy emergency department and could cause the electricity to go haywire. I wasn’t too happy I was kicked out of the hallway when they were not.
Once I was settled in the waiting room, I texted my mom and explained, ‘Hey, I was just kicked out of the hallway. Apparently, I’m not allowed to sit on their floor.’
She texted me back and said, ‘Really? After you moved, I was yelled at by a nurse for touching my mother’s hospital notes. I was trying to move the blankets over her feet, and the notes were sitting at the end of the bed.’
As my mom lifted the notes from the bed, a nurse snatched them out of her hand and yelled, ‘You aren’t allowed to touch those!’
Needless to say, my already angry and stressed mom was now furious. She had spent six hours with a very sick and confused elderly woman, and my mom was about to blow a fuse. Not to mention, the nurses didn’t offer any drinks to my grandmother who was already extremely sick and dehydrated!
I text my mother and explained, ‘I think you have a right to the nurse’s notes. Grandmother can’t advocate for herself, and the nurse shouldn’t have taken the notes away.’
When my mother and I met up again an hour later, she pointed out the fact some patients had as many as four relatives with them. It couldn’t do much harm if my mother and I were both in the same room with my grandmother. She also pointed out my grandmother’s room had chairs for two people to sit in. Why have two chairs and only let one person in the room at once?
We compared descriptions of the nurse we encountered, and we came to the conclusion it was likely the same woman. While the nurse might have been stressed-out, there wasn’t an excuse for her to act so rudely.
To add to the situation, the nurse also lost my grandmother’s notes. When the doctor finally came into my grandmother’s room, it took the nurse over fifteen minutes to find them.
It goes without saying, but I will definitely be avoiding this hospital in the future.”
The Ignorant Emergency Room Nurse
“My partner’s nurse during an emergency room visit, who she quite liked, really got on my last nerve.
I arrived with my partner in the midst of a severe migraine. She had been throwing up for two days, and couldn’t look at the light, or listen to me talking much without needing to puke again. Now, of course, she just wanted to sleep. When we checked into the emergency room, I explained to the nurse at the front desk she would need to come to get us when the doctor was ready. I was deaf and my girlfriend was asleep, so neither of us would have had any clue if somebody was calling for us.
Our emergency room had two little sections. Each section was partially closed off from the rest of the room and had tinted glass walls. The walls were supposed to reduce light and noise, and they were great for people with sensitive pain or conditions.
I explained to the nurse, ‘We are going to wait in the closed-off section. If we move somewhere else, I will let you know.’
The nurse replied, ‘I will let you know if there are any updates or if your name is called at the front desk.’
My girlfriend and I got comfortable in the little section and she curled up in her wheelchair, drifting in and out of sleep. About four hours in, she woke up to take a sip of water. She thought she heard her name being called, so I started to wheel her out. The nurse was waiting at the other side of the room, and she looked completely ticked off.
The nurse yelled, ‘We have been calling your name for five minutes now!’
I asked, ‘Did you look at her chart? I told the other nurse I can’t hear, and she would be asleep.’
The nurse snidely replied, ‘Yeah, I saw the note.’
My partner isn’t gentle in her wording, and she immediately asked the nurse, ‘Why the heck did you decide to ignore the note then?’
The nurse didn’t answer her but was otherwise very good to my partner. She was chronically ill and treated poorly at other hospitals, and every doctor had an opposing opinion about her treatment.
Even though my partner left happy, I was very much surprised her nurse chose to ignore our necessary accommodations.”
“It Was The Worst Experience I Have Ever Had”
“A while back, I had a cesarean section procedure done. Naturally, I had to stay at the hospital a few days after having my baby to recover. I was unable to go to the bathroom for a couple of days and was dependent on a catheter. It was a situation that had left me at mercy of the daytime nurse for one day. Later on, I found out the nurse just had a baby, too. The day she was taking care of me was her first day back. I could only assume she chose to take out her frustration about having to leave her newborn at home on me.
The graveyard shift nurse had just changed my catheter a few hours before she left.
She told me, ‘The daytime nurse should be coming in to drain it again within the next hour.’
I waited, but the nurse didn’t come into my room. I decided to press the call button instead of continuing to wait.
The daytime nurse finally appeared and said, ‘I will be in to help you out shortly.’
I waited again, but she never came back. I was starting to be in immense pain. I just had surgery, my bladder was about to burst, and I was overdue on my pain medicine. I called the nurse again.
Once again, the nurse mumbled, ‘I’ll be in shortly, please be patient.’
I waited ten more minutes before I couldn’t wait anymore. When she finally came into my room, I was crying and in terrible pain.
The nurse said, ‘Hold on, I have to get another nurse to help me.’
When the other nurse came in, she scoffed at me and said, ‘What’s your problem?
The first nurse replied, ‘She’s due for her pain medicine,’
Gee, you don’t say?
By this time, I was overdue for my pain medicine by nearly two hours.
Finally, the nurse tried to put in a catheter and she did something wrong. Urine shot up and proceeded to land all over the bed and myself.
The nurse mumbled, ‘Gosh darn it,’ and stomped out of the room.
After a few minutes, she arrived back in my room with the second catheter. This time, she managed to place it successfully.
In a condescending tone, the nurse said, ‘You’re probably tired and don’t want to change your gown or sheets right now, I’ll leave for a bit.’
Seriously? My gown and bed were completely saturated with urine, but you thought I wanted to take a nap?
I replied, ‘No, I’m not tired. Please clean me up now. Oh, and I still need my pain medicine.’
It was the absolute worst hospital experience I have ever had.”
The Dreadful Daytime Nurse
“When I was fifteen years old, I started having extremely bad stomach aches. My family doctor kept insisting it was only the flu, but my mom and I suspected it was appendicitis. The family doctor insisted it couldn’t be appendicitis, but he wrote us a hospital note anyway.
I was rushed into emergency surgery because my appendix was about to burst. When I woke up, they removed the catheter and told me to stand up. What I didn’t know was that during the surgery, they had nicked something, so I couldn’t tell when I needed to go to the bathroom. When I stood up, I messed myself. The nurses helping me quickly got the supplies needed to help clean me up.
The lead daytime nurse came into the room and said, ‘Stop helping her. She can clean up by herself.’
I replied, ‘Actually, I can’t do it myself. I have staples and stitches throughout my stomach from surgery.’
The nurse became furious and stormed out of the room.
The next morning, I woke up with my right arm completely swollen. I pushed the call button and waited, but no one came. I repeatedly pushed the call button all day long, but still, no one came.
When the nighttime lead nurse came on shift she started doing her rounds.
When she came into my room she asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone what is wrong with your arm?’
I replied, ‘I have been pushing the call button all day, but nobody came to check on me. I haven’t even eaten today because nobody has delivered my food.’
She cut the hospital bands off of my swollen arm and removed my IV. I later found out the lead morning nurse had told everyone I was being an attention-seeking patient.
When I left the hospital a few days later, I gave glowing reports on all of the staff and nurses except for the one daytime nurse. Honestly, I don’t understand why she still has her job.”
The Lousy Labor Nurse
“This happened when I was in labor with our first child.
The nurse said, ‘You can change into a gown now. Go use the restroom, and I will check to see if you are in labor.’
I had just sat down to use the restroom when she began knocking on the restroom door and yelling, ‘Get out! You need to get out!’
Now she was banging on the door with her fists as hard as she could.
I replied, ‘Just a minute, please!’
I tried to hurry so much, that I ripped my pants trying to get them off so quickly. I didn’t even get to actually use the restroom before I left. Little did I know, this was my last chance for the next nine and a half hours.
The nurse said the doctors did a test to check if I was in labor, and the results were inconclusive. She monitored me for a couple of hours afterward and hooked me up to some wires. I was denied water and pain relief because I wasn’t in labor yet. To top it all off, the nurse didn’t check on me very frequently at all. She refused to come into the room when I paged her. I wasn’t given pain medication, and I was left to lay in my own vomit due to the pain.
Overall, the nurse made my labor experience the worst hospital visit ever.”
“It Was One Of The Rudest Things That Anyone Has Ever Done To Me”
“When my son was around four years old, he was diagnosed with childhood asthma. One particularly bad bout led us to the local children’s hospital. Unfortunately, our hospital stay was during a labor dispute the nurses were having. As my son and I sat in the waiting room patiently to be helped, he vomited on the bench and floor. I told the nurses at the front desk what had happened, but they ignored me and continued talking to each other.
I interrupted them again and said, ‘My son vomited. I don’t care if you help, but can I at least get something to clean up the mess.’
One nurse grabbed a box of tissues and tossed them in my direction. It was one of the rudest things anyone has ever done to me! I cleaned up the mess as best as I could, but the tissues weren’t cutting it. My son and I decided to move seats since the nurses weren’t concerned about cleaning it or even calling to get it cleaned.
A little while later, another patient sat next to the vomit. Before I had a chance to warn them, one of the nurses went to talk to the patient and sat directly in the vomit.
I love instant karma.”
“This Nurse Brought Out My Mother Bear”
“I first want to say most nurses are great, but this nurse one brought out the mother bear in me.
When my son was seven years old, he broke his femur. There were two other young boys with him in his hospital room who also had broken bones. Each time the nurse entered the room, she would bump their beds on purpose to hear the boys scream.
The two other mothers and I hunted down the lead nurse.
After we found her, I explained, ‘You need to keep the nurse out of our room!’
I stood in the doorway of my son’s room and refused to let her through.
I continued, ‘These three boys are in pain, and the rude nurse is only making it worse!’
The nurse tried to push me, but I pushed her back.
Later on in the night, we finally got a different nurse to come to our room. Thankfully, she was a sweetheart.”
“The Nurse Called Me An Idiot”
“Last week a nurse called me an idiot for not following her medical advice.
Three months ago, I caught my pinky in a door and it turned black beneath the fingernail. The nurse said she had to pierce it with a needle to let the blood out or I would lose the nail.
The accident hurt extremely bad, and I wasn’t going to let her stick a needle through the nail. So I ignored her advice, and sure enough, I lost the nail last week.
When she looked at my deformed pinky fingertip she said, ‘I told you so,’ and called me a moron and an idiot.
Admittedly, I had acted stupidly. But a nurse is a health care professional and should not speak to people in this manner. Even if I was her husband.
It’s great being married to a nurse, but ignore their advice at your own peril.”
