You would think that some things are all common knowledge, but apparently not. Whether it be because these people are dull or uninformed, these stories of doctors explaining the most simple things to their patients will have you rolling with laughter.
Candle Massages
“I once had to explain to an 84-year-old man with a candle stuck in his rectum: You don’t need to massage your prostate with a candle once a month. A doctor had apparently told him 15 years ago to do this and he had not questioned it since” (source).
Is Guinness an alcohol?
“I had a patient who was an overweight lady with some liver damage. Had many conversations about diet and reducing alcohol intake. Patient had cut out whiskey and vodka, but did not know that Guinness had alcohol. Yes, if you were wondering, this was in rural Ireland” (source).
Killer Families
“My personal favorites are when the families of a loved one bring in food that is completely counter to their current medical condition. Off the top of my head I have had a family bring in a ‘Get Well’ Cake to their Dad who was on his 5th or 6th admission for DKA (Diabetic Ketoacidosis). He was still on an insulin infusion and the family didn’t seem to see the problem with giving him a cake because ‘he woke up and was hungry.’ I’ve had families order in pizza to have a pizza party when their parent is admitted to the cardiology ward and on a salt and fluid restricted diet due to extensive heart failure” (source).
Leaking Out of Ears
“I had to explain to my 75-year-old grandmother that there isn’t one straight tube connecting your ears. She put ear drops in, and put cotton in her other ear before she laid down so it wouldn’t ‘leak out'” (source).
Looking at Nutrition Labels
“I have had to explain to so many patients to look at the nutrition label when deciding how much sugar something has in it. I had a patient who had been diagnosed with diabetes and said she was doing her best at avoiding sugar, but her a1c was still around 12, which is very high and means your blood sugars are in the 300 range. I asked her if she had cut out all soda, and she said, ‘Yes of course, I just drink lemonade now.’ ‘Oh, what kind?’ To which she answers Squirt. Not knowing that brand name, I spun around to the computer and googled squirt soda nutrition label. It had an insane amount of sugar per serving. We then had a long chat about how to look at nutrition labels when deciding what has sugar in it” (source).
“nope, that is a LIE”
“Shadowed a dentist in a rural area where most patients were in poverty. One guy was so confused on why his teeth were rotting. He revealed that his diet consisted of sugar, sugar, and alcohol. The dentist had to explain sugar can lead to enamel loss. The guy said nope that is a lie. I had no idea how in the world can he denied it when the proof was literally right under his nose. Figuratively AND literally” (source).
Twice A Day
“Taking a medication twice a day does not mean taking the doses together. One dose now, one dose later… Not both doses now. On a side note, don’t give your son your sleeping medication… Ever!” (source).
“Naw, like tea or something”
“Repeat patient of the STD clinic I work at: ‘Isn’t there something I can buy, like, over the counter so I don’t have to keep coming back in for chlamydia?’ Me: ‘…condoms?’ Patient: ‘Naw, miss, I meant, like, tea or something'” (source).
Lazy Patients
“I’m a nurse in general surgery. My patient had a note in her chart not to let her have any cups in the room, which I thought was strange. We’ve had orders before for other patients saying they weren’t allowed to have any metal utensils but this was something new. I quickly found out why when I walked into her room for morning report and several cups of urine were sitting on her sink. Apparently she was too lazy to get out of bed to pee so she had her husband sneak in some more cups to conveniently pee in. No, peeing in a cup is not allowed. This happened multiple times after multiple talks with the patient, hence the order” (source).
Stupidity Problems
“Had a couple that had been ‘trying to get pregnant for over a year’ without success. Turns out they had sex once and were waiting for an entire year… Another couple was starting to consider doing fertility tests before we found out that the couple was using condoms _every single time” _(source).
Not a Polite Suggestion
“When you were told not to eat 12 hours prior to surgery, it wasn’t just a polite suggestion” (source).
Clueless 40-Year-Old
“I’m a medical student and earlier this year I was taking a history from a patient during a bedside tutorial, where a senior doctor takes a group of us to see a patient together. I was speaking to this man about his symptoms, and used the word ‘penis,’ to which he gave me a confused look. I said it again and he still didn’t know what I was talking about. I ended up having to ask him if he had any pain in his dick while peeing, in front of my classmates and my tutor. Keep in mind that this was a guy in his 40’s” (source).
“germs”
“Not a doctor but I do work in a place where terrible diseases run rampant and staff spend every waking moment fighting them off: a school. There was nothing more bizarre than explaining germ theory to a teacher. She honestly didn’t believe that such a thing could exist; she sincerely believed that sicknesses were caused by ‘negative energy’ and ‘bad auras,’ and asserted that it was fundamentally impossible for something as small as a germ to harm something as large as a human body, if something that small could even be alive in the first place. She spouted off something about how a creature that small would be incapable of living for more than a few seconds, because ‘energy can only get so small.’ ‘A germ’ (she did finger air quotes) could only hold enough energy to live for one or two seconds, at most. These are the people educating your kids” (source).
Dogs and Ketchup
“I’m a veterinarian and I don’t understand owners sometimes. I work at a clinic of a vet who is also a private animal nutritionist so sometimes we do house calls for special cases. A client’s dog isn’t eating well and he has no clue why. I go over and ask him to show me his feeding routine for his dog. He fills a bowl with kibble and the dog seems super excited to eat. I shit you not he then goes over to the fridge, takes out the ketchup and drenches the kibble it ketchup. By this point my jaw is hanging open in shock and I can see that the dog has suddenly lost its enthusiasm for the meal. I politely ask the client what he’s doing and he tells me that his entire family has ketchup on every meal. I then spent the next 15 min explaining to him that his dog may not like ketchup on its food. Now the dog eats great and the client thinks I’m a miracle worker” (source).
No Words.
“My sister is an ER doctor in Chicago. She has had many stories of ridiculous things she’s had to explain. She once had to explain to a Mormon couple on their wedding night how to have sex. The 19 year old man had taken his 18 year old bride into the ER convinced his wife didn’t have a vagina. Another time, she had to tell a mother of 4 that giving your children a heavy doses of vodka did not ‘kill the bacteria’ in their bodies when they got colds. She also had to report that obviously. In another case, she had a very frightened 23 year old girl come to the ER very afraid because she had found a ‘growth’ in her crotch. It turned out to be her clitoris. When my sister was asking her how she had never noticed it before, the girl responded ‘My mom told me if I touched my area that the devil would get me.’ The girl had lived for 23 years without ever touching or seeing her own vagina” (source).
“Bleeding every month down there”
“A female patient came in and told the doctor that she has been bleeding every month ‘down there,’ thinking it had something to do with the birth of her daughter. She did not know that it was her period. The doctor said it might be because she was a late bloomer or if she abused narcotics as a teenager it could have messed up her menstrual cycle. Either way the birth of her child ‘synced up’ her reproductive organs to produce regular periods. Yeah, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of sex education” (source).
A New Fashionable Bracelet
“I work at a pharmacy and we get crazy questions all the time. We had gotten a phone call from a seemingly distressed woman asking if we carried a larger-sized NuvaRing. My first thought was ‘holy crap, how big is your vagina?!’ but I realized that there is only one size of NuvaRing, so I told her to come up to our help window and we can try to figure out what the problem was. When she finally came up, I kid you not this will most likely be one of the funniest things I have ever seen. She comes up, and she is honest to God wearing the NuvaRing as a bracelet… Her actual thought process was if she wore the NuvaRing on her wrist, she could have all the unprotected sex she wanted and be just fine. The look on her face when we told her that it was a vaginal contraceptive was priceless. She turned ghost white, and gave a meek ‘thank you’ and hauled ass out of the pharmacy. I felt bad for her, but I could not help myself from laughing” (source).
Two Kidneys is NORMAL!
“I’m a sonographer – whilst performing a 20 week morphology scan, I had to reassure a hysteric mother that it was in fact a normal and good thing that baby had two kidneys rather than one. And here I thought basic anatomy was common knowledge” (source)