Nurses Are Confessing Their Most Closely Guarded Secrets That Patients Don’t Know

Ever wonder what it’s REALLY like to be a nurse? Well, over on Quora, nurses have been sharing their biggest secrets — ones that patients have absolutely no idea about.

Their responses are pretty eye-opening, and reading them sort of feels like eavesdropping on a private conversation between nurses. Check it out:

1.“Patients don’t know that someone has most likely died in the bed they’re lying in. Sometimes, it was just an hour or so before they were put in it.”

—Ren F., Quora

2.“If you are one of those creepy guys who keeps making sexual jokes or tries to flirt and ask out the nurses, you will be labeled as ‘sexually inappropriate’ on your chart. You will get a special icon next to your chart in our health authority; it’s a purple dot. Every single health provider who goes into your room will know that you’re sexually inappropriate with staff and be cautious. This designation on your chart will follow you for the rest of your natural life every time you have an encounter with the healthcare system. So no, don’t ask the nurse when you get your ‘sponge bath’ with a leering smirk on your face. You will never live that shit down.”

—J., Quora

3.“I won’t tell you how long of a wait time there will be. In the ER, we have no control over how many patients come in or how sick they are, so most of the time, I can’t predict how long you’ll have to wait. All it takes is one ambulance with a critical patient to blow estimations all to pieces.”

4.“As pediatric nurses, we already know that your child is dying of inoperable brain cancer, but we aren’t allowed to say a word. We have to watch you cling to hope that the scan will be negative and spend those terrible hours knowing the truth.”

“We already know the fate of the others who were in the car accident with you. But it’s not for us to tell you, so we must keep the secret until the proper notification is given.

We watch your precious baby who has passed away roll into a freezer in the wall and shut the door. I will take that to my grave, no matter what the parents asked me to describe to them.

We often spend hours intercepting mistakes of things that could have reached you but didn’t. While you sleep happily oblivious to this, nurses are constantly checking and checking, protecting from even the smallest to largest mistake. When you wake up, we say ‘good morning’ and leave it at that.”

—Sara C., Quora

5.“Sometimes, we have awful patients. Some patients have been awful to me directly, some have abused family members, and some are just mean people. I’ve taken care of child molesters, murderers, rapists, even a hitman once. The care that I give doesn’t change, though. I might not be as friendly to the rapists and child molesters or the patient that is belittling my existence. I will still give every patient full care, though. Don’t expect a smile and polite conversation, but you can expect to get your medications and treatments just like every other patient. The choices that you have made are not for me to judge.”

—Beth W., Quora

6.“If you’re over 70, have any sort of terminal illness, or have a severe acute illness with a poor prognosis and you aren’t a DNR, then I don’t know what you’re thinking. CPR isn’t a reset button. Whatever is killing you still will. You know what it’s going to do? Best case, it gives your family a show while I break every fucking rib in your chest and turn the organs under them into mush, and we call it. Worst case, it brings you back, and now you are dealing with said broken bones and fucked up organs while still trying to recover from whatever other illness (you probably won’t, BTW).”

7.“When we have a very sick patient who is severely disabled (i.e., anoxic brain injury) or very old, and the family wants EVERYTHING done if the patient goes into cardiac arrest, we nurses ask, ‘WHY, OMG?!’ Leave the poor patient alone and let them die in peace.”

—Joe O., Quora

8.“We cry about you. Sometimes, I’d end my shift by sitting in my car sobbing because I’d lost a patient, helped deliver some life-changing news, or saw a patient improve drastically, and I was so happy. Your health and well-being mean a lot to me.”

“Sometimes, when I get home, I talk about you. I tell my husband or my mom about you. I tell funny stories. I don’t give any names or identifying information; I try to keep it as generic as possible. But I need to decompress. I need an outlet for that stress. I need someone to say, ‘You did the best you could today.’ The burnout rate is high for nurses. These stories help us cope.”

—Beth W., Quora

9.“If you give me a hard time about starting IVs (e.g., complaining about being ‘used as a pincushion’), it can have an adverse effect on my performance. Not because I feel vindictive but because putting extra pressure on me can impair my concentration. I don’t mind in the least if you confide in me that you’re terrified of needles, and I’ll do my best to make it easier on you. But please don’t bark orders at me or insult me by accusing me of missing the vein just for the fun of it.”

10.“When you attend a hospital because you were ‘walking across the kitchen floor naked and slipped,’ landing on (in the case of men) a milk bottle/vacuum cleaner/length of pipe, (or women) a body spray cap/cucumber/dead fish…yes, really, we know. You’re not fooling anyone, trust me. We may feign surprise and sympathize that it ‘must have been a shock, and how painful it must be’… But we know.”

—Tony H., Quora

11.“If you have stage 3 (and definitely if you have stage 4) cancer, SKIP THE CHEMO! It’s likely not going to save your life and may actually hasten your death and/or destroy the quality of the little time you have left (because it will make you so sick, weak, and tired). Enjoy the time you have left FEELING (relatively) GOOD (not vomiting and dealing with painful mouth sores, infections, and a host of other miseries that come with chemotherapy treatment).”

“If I ever get cancer and am told it’s stage 3 or higher, I will never take chemo (and will only do radiation if it’s palliative and necessary to decrease my pain, not for treatment of the cancer). I have administered chemo agents during my few years as an oncology nurse, and I have seen how awfully sick and miserable it makes people. It also often makes it next-to-impossible to enjoy the little things like eating or being with kids, to give just two examples. Why does it ruin eating? Chemo often causes stomatitis and other painful mouth/throat infections and sores. It also often causes nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.

Why can’t kids be around? Often, chemo makes a patient neutropenic (very low white blood cell count), putting them at high risk for a life-threatening infection. Kids are germy, so they’re usually barred from visiting (unless the patient is dying and no longer getting treatment).

Chemo is a poison that I wouldn’t wish for anyone. Yes, it can be a lifesaving poison, but that comes with a cost most of the time (neuropathies, hearing loss, organ damage, increased risk for other cancers, etc.).

Doctors will keep giving you treatment suggestions because that’s what they’re trained to do, and that’s what they assume everyone wants. But at ANY point in your treatment, you can (and should if you don’t want to keep enduring misery) tell the doctor that you don’t want any more chemo or other painful treatment or meds that make you sick (like oral chemo drugs). A good doctor should always present ‘not doing any treatment’ as one of your options, especially for late-stage cancers.

PLEASE NOTE: This is solely my opinion, as well as that of every nurse I’ve ever worked with. It is not a medical suggestion, and yes, I know some (few) kinds of stage 3 and 4 cancers DO respond to chemo (sometimes). In my experience, it is the exception and not the rule.”

—Lisa M., Quora

12.“Sometimes we are experiencing our own tragedies/family health problems. Somehow, we put that aside for 12 hours and give you the very best care/caring we can. I have witnessed nurses fighting their own cancer back to work a week after their child was killed or died by suicide. Their patients might not have seen them smile as much as other nurses, but they still gave great patient care.”

13.“I won’t tell you (verbally or otherwise) if you smell bad or if I’m grossed out by an unsightly sore or injury. It’s part of my job to handle such problems without flinching or grimacing and embarrassing you or your family. We’re aware that when people get caught up in an emergency, they don’t have time to wash or pretty themselves up, and we won’t hold that against you.”

—Diana A., Quora

14.“ICU nurse here. If you’re able to talk and do things for yourself, you are our lowest priority. It isn’t that we don’t care about you; we do, but our other patient is likely to be barely clinging to life. We get one stable patient and one critical patient. It’s a good thing when you’re the stable one.”

—Beth W., Quora

15.“What you maybe don’t know is that your parent who has dementia is not suffering as much as you imagine. (You’re the one suffering because you see they have changed, but they’re not living a hell as they are not aware of their change.) They say a lot of funny things during the day, and when they come to us, they are (kind of) starting a new life from scratch.”

16.“My wife is a nurse. My uncle said something about nurses being compassionate, so I snarkily said they probably have office pools for what shift a patient will die on. I was joking, of course. I figured my wife would elbow me in the ribs and say, ‘We don’t do that.’ Instead, she turned red and laughed nervously.”

“Also, if you date a nurse, when she’s holding your hand, she’s really feeling the veins and evaluating how easy it would be to stick you. And no, that is NOT a joke. If you know an RN, ask them.”

—Tom H., Quora

17.“Bedside nurses have a lot to do and don’t have time to listen to you talk about your life. Sometimes, I hear a patient go on and on about whatever, and I see the nurse just standing there listening to the patient. I go to that nurse and say, ‘Kathy, Dr. Smith needs you next door now.’ I say it loud enough so the patient hears this and lets the nurse leave their room. Then Kathy tells me, ‘Thank you!’ for rescuing her from you!”

—Joe O., Quora

(Entries have been edited for length and/or clarity.)