If you’ve been a reader of my newsletter for any amount of time, you’re already well aware of the many worrisome accounts about the increasing number of medical errors a patient may experience, ranging from improperly prescribed or contaminated medications, to the mistakes health care workers conveniently ignore.
Pausing for a moment from the serious side of medical errors, I suspect you‘ll laugh as long and hard as I did to this collection of funny medical stories. And, frequent laughter can indeed do many wonderful things for your health. For example:
So, with that in mind, here‘s hoping for a day when medical mistakes are limited to the embarrassing ones that are easy to laugh at, or about, and not those of the life-threatening kind.
1. A man comes into the ER and yells, "My wife‘s going to have her baby in the cab!" I grabbed my stuff, rushed out to the cab, lifted the lady‘s dress, and began to take off her underwear. Suddenly I noticed that there were several cabs -- and I was in the wrong one.Submitted by Dr. Mark MacDonald
2. At the beginning of my shift I placed a stethoscope on an elderly and slightly deaf female patient‘s anterior chest wall. "Big breaths," I instructed. "Yes, they used to be," replied the patient.Submitted by Dr. Richard Byrnes
3. One day I had to be the bearer of bad news when I told a wife that her husband had died of a massive myocardial infarct. Not more than five minutes later, I heard her reporting to the rest of the family that he had died of a "massive internal fart."Submitted by Dr. Susan Steinberg
4. During a patient‘s two week follow-up appointment with his cardiologist, he informed me, his doctor, that he was having trouble with one of his medications. "Which one? " I asked. "The patch. The nurse told me to put on a new patch every six hours and now I‘m running out of places to put it!" I had him quickly undress and discovered what I hoped I wouldn‘t see. Yes, the man had over fifty patches on his body! Now, the instructions include removal of the old patch before applying a new one.Submitted by Dr. Rebecca St. Clair
5. While acquainting myself with a new elderly patient, I asked, "How long have you been bedridden?" After a look of complete confusion she answered..."Why, not for about twenty years -- when my husband was alive."Submitted by Dr. Steven Swanson
6. I was caring for a woman and asked, "So how‘s your breakfast this morning?" "It‘s very good, except for the Kentucky Jelly. I can‘t seem to get used to the taste," the patient replied. I then asked to see the jelly and the woman produced a foil packet labeled "KY Jelly." Submitted by Dr. Leonard Kransdorf
7. A nurse was on duty in the Emergency Room, when a young woman with purple hair styled into a punk rocker mohawk, sporting a variety of tattoos, and wearing strange clothing, entered. It was quickly determined that the patient had acute appendicitis, so she was scheduled for immediate surgery. When she was completely disrobed on the operating table, the staff noticed that her pubic hair had been dyed green, and above it there was a tattoo that read, "Keep off the grass." Once the surgery was completed, the surgeon wrote a short note on the patient‘s dressing, which said, "Sorry, had to mow the lawn."Submitted by RN no name
8. As a new, young MD doing his residency in OB, I was quite embarrassed when performing female pelvic exams. To cover my embarrassment I had unconsciously formed a habit of whistling softly. The middle-aged lady upon whom I was performing this exam suddenly burst out laughing and further embarrassing me. I looked up from my work and sheepishly said, "I‘m sorry. Was I tickling you?"She replied, "No doctor, but the song you were whistling was, I wish I was an Oscar Meyer Wiener!”Dr. wouldn‘t submit his name