Yeah, Don’t Ever Do This
So I work on a therapeutic campus and I run a unit that specialises in patients with severe learning difficulties, psychosis, paranoid schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. Some of our patients are known for being quite aggressive and extremely dangerous when they are unsettled.
We found out one shift that we will be having a new nurse with us on shift who isn’t familiar with the patients/staff at all. How the shift works is that each staff gets given a patient that they stick with for a few hours before everyone rotates to different patients.
My coworker had just got his patient into the bath, so in the meantime he was cleaning that patients room. That’s when the new nurse came into the room with that patients morning medication, having not seen the patients or the staff before, she thought that the staff member cleaning the room was the patient she was suppose to be giving meds to.
My coworker quickly realised that she was confused and started playing along, answering all of her questions and trying to imitate the patients behaviour.
When she approaches my coworker to give him the patients meds, he put his arms up in the air and screamed “GET AWAY FROM ME” and started to run at her (which is something this patient use to do all the time). She instantly screams and drops the medication, she turns around and runs down the corridor screaming whilst my coworker was still chasing her.
After management had heard about all of this, he just had to apologise and luckily she saw the funny side of it. But places of care are usually super strict with that kind of thing so I’m surprised I’m still working with him to this day hahah! Story credit: Reddit / BlokWorld