There was a patient in our clinic who kept scheduling and rescheduling an elective surgery. He wanted to schedule it on a day that was already full. He was informed that due to having cancelled or no-showed his surgery four times, he would get lower priority in scheduling. He then called the clinic and threatened to shoot the doctor and the pregnant scheduler.

For some dumb reason, the police weren’t called. [Patient] disappeared, though, and we didn’t think we would hear from him again because he was fired as a patient.

About a year later, [Patient] tried to schedule surgery again but was reminded that, due to threatening to murder the staff, he had been fired from the clinic.

[Patient] filed a complaint with the hospital and medical board stating that he’d been abandoned as a patient. Our doctor explained the situation to those involved, stating that [Patient] had threatened to murder the scheduler and doctor. The medical board and hospital’s response?

Response: “Can you please schedule his surgery? He said he was sorry.”

We decided to call the police at that point. [Patient] will never be coming back to our clinic as he is currently in prison.

This is what happens when you are so entitled that you threaten to murder someone.

I work for a university, hospital, and medical school. I’m a sysadmin, and I do very little in the way of customer support, but I’ve done it plenty in the past.

In April, I had a medical emergency and had surgery. I spent ten days as an inpatient, with strong pain meds and so on.

Every interaction between a patient and anyone on staff is logged into the EMR (electronic medical records) system. It was physically painful watching people navigate between boxes in the EMR system with the mouse when logging an interaction. It wasn’t long at all before I absolutely had to start teaching everyone about the super-simple universal tab-to-jump to the next box.

The nurses began coming in to talk to me, to see if I had any other tips for them. One nurse estimated that the simple tab trick would save them five to ten minutes per day each, which adds up to hours per year.

I am in no way involved in training non-IT hospital staff, but now I want to work up some simple tips-and-tricks tutorials for nurses.

And it all happened on the good drugs. I have no idea how many nurses I taught that one trick to.

I start a new relationship and almost immediately start coming down with urinary tract infections (UTIs). For those of you unaware, these can be incredibly painful and often make you feel like you can’t get off the loo, so you want them treated quickly and avoid them as much as possible.

It becomes apparent over the next few months that this is not a one-off. It’s a long-distance relationship, and my partner and I work out that if we are apart for more than a month, as soon as we have sex, I get a UTI. We improve our hygiene and do what we can, but they keep occurring at a faster rate and getting more serious.

I go to my general practitioner every time, but as I get an infection every few months, to them it doesn’t look like a problem. (“Recurring” is classed at roughly more than three in six months, but as my partner and I normally meet up every three to six months, I only get one or two in that timeframe.) I keep trying to explain the link between my long-distance relationship, my boyfriend arriving, and getting infections. They give me a half-hearted response and send me on my way. This cycle repeats for four years.

When I start peeing blood, I’ve had enough. This time when I go for the antibiotics (in quite bad pain), I sit there with a chart explaining the flights and the infections. I talk through everything we’ve been doing to avoid UTIs.

Doctor: “Some women are just prone to UTIs, unfortunately.”

Me: “In the three serious relationships I’ve had, this is the only one where this problem has occurred; I have never needed treatment for a UTI before this. There is something about my boyfriend I don’t seem to get immunity from, or if I do, I quickly lose it.” *Starting to cry* “Please. I am begging you for anything you can do. I can’t go through this for the rest of my life, risking a kidney infection each time this happens. The problem is only likely to get worse when we finally get together full-time; I might be able to keep any immunity gained, but it’s not a given it will happen.”

The doctor finally put two and two together with the colour-coded chart my partner and I had made, and luckily, we’d been able to spend more time together, so the last three infections made this a recurring problem.

The doctor put me on an E. coli vaccine, which takes around nine months to complete. I’m only on month three, but since my boyfriend and I have moved in together (and this is after a gap, so we would expect an infection to occur) there have been no new infections.

Thank God a doctor finally listened to me and, while I may have bullied her into accepting that there was a problem, she finally accepted that there was one.

I work in an orthopedic office, which means we see a lot of broken arms and legs and injured shoulders and backs. A patient hobbles up to my checkout desk with her partner.

Me: “Checking out?”

Patient: “Yes.” 

She sits down heavily, adjusting the orthopedic boot on her foot. Glancing at her notes, I see that her foot is fractured. Her partner is making jokes, and she’s bearing it with good nature, but he goes just a bit too far.

Partner: “Shame you didn’t break both feet; then, you could have matching boots.”

Patient: “And I could give you a black eye! How about that?!”

Me: “We don’t treat those here, by the way, so choose wisely.”

He kept his mouth shut until she was done checking out… but he started up again as they were leaving! Some people just never learn.

I work as a receptionist for an urgent care center where I have to wear scrubs. I am checking a patient in when she suddenly says to me:

Patient: “Oh, you’ve got a blessing.”

I look at her blankly.

Me: “I’m sorry?”

Patient: “You’ve got a blessing on the way.”

It dawns on me.

Me: “Oh, I’m not pregnant.” *Laughing nervously*

Patient: “Then why are you wearing such a big shirt?”

Me: “Because I lost some weight and haven’t had a chance to buy a smaller one?”