35 Doctors Recalled Their Most Entitled Patient’s Demands

Being caught in a scenario where a medical emergency is playing out can evoke strange reactions from people. The helplessness and anger can often be misdirected and medical professionals are often at the recieving end. While its understandable to be apprehensive about the future and scared that something may go wrong, it’s not okay to act like an entitled person when seeking critical care.

#1

Image source: sillybanana2012, Tima Miroshnichenko

Not a doctor, but I had a rather memorable experience. When I was about 21, I began experiencing gallbladder issues. One night, the attack got so bad that I crawled to my roommate’s room and asked her to take me to the hospital. As soon as we got there, the nurse immediately took me in for assessment. I was in so much pain that I couldn’t talk, so my roommate gave the nurse all my information. The nurse went to get me something for the pain, and my roommate went to call my parents for me, so I was sitting alone in intake for a couple minutes. This lady comes in, literally picks me up by the arm and leads me back to the waiting area. I didn’t even realize this lady wasn’t a nurse. All of a sudden, I hear yelling, and I learned later that was transpired was that this lady was actually a patient who was mad that I went to jntake before her, led me back to the waiting room, and tried to take my spot in the intake room. She was escorted out by security.

#2

Image source: hobbesghost, Liza Summer

Saw a 30yo guy who came in with complaint of chest pain. After seeing and examining him, his story sounded like GERD, but cardiac workup was started. Got called away from the module to deal with a teenager who was shot and ended up dying. When I got back the guy’s mom was there and was irate that I hadn’t been in to talk to her in the 15min since she arrived. I tried to explain that his workup had already been started, there were other patients in the department who also needed my attention, and many of whom were far more sick. She lost it, basically said she didn’t care about anyone else and her son was the only one who matters. She wouldn’t calm down, and was eventually escorted out by security.

#3

Image source: yeetus159, Los Muertos Crew

I’m not a doctor but I was waiting to see my grandpa in the hospital. This parent starts grilling the doctors about how their “baby should go first” and how they were “obviously in pain” (the kid was looking at the fish tank). The doctor says, “We have people who are in real emergencies. Your kid just got a dried bean stuck up their nose. You can wait.” The parent says ,” WeLL My bAbY ShoUlD gO FiRst! He Has tO Go to BeD!” The doctor said, “Well, if your kid has to go to bed, then they can go home and you can come back in the morning.” The parent was dumbfounded.

#4

Image source: angelust, Михаил Крамор

I had some teenaged brat say she wanted to speak to my manager. I laughed out loud at her and said that this is a hospital not a McDonalds.

#5

Image source: suitology, Kaitlyn Pixley

I used to volunteer at a hospital and got to overhear a nurse doing her best to not headbutt a woman in all pink with a beehive hair style and giant tortoise shell sunglasses claiming to be distant relatives of royalty. It was extra hilarious because the nurse was kinda ignorant so when the woman claimed to be the second half step-cousin or some s**t of a duke of Liechtenstein I got to hear in a deep urban accent “licken-what? Liechten-stain? That not a real place now I’mma need you to go take a seat hun”.

#6

Image source: TomatoJPG, Pavel Danilyuk

Not a doctor, but I was the patient. I had been hit by a car going 25 and I was on my skateboard (totally my f****n fault btw) and I had broken my pelvis, I had originally thought I had just popped my hip out but I was *wrong*. Anyway, I go in with my parents and I’m standing there with crutches because it hurt to sit and my mother is *screaming* at these nurses to get me into x Ray because I was obviously in tremendous pain (I was fine, I’ve had a lot worse) and I calmly hobbled up to to the nurse she was yelling at and played the “I don’t know who this lady is and I will calmly wait my turn I’m very sorry”. The nurse gave me a candy bar because I was calm and levelheaded so that was nice.

#7

Image source: please_stopthat, Jonathan Borba

Not a doctor, but a nurse and a mom. So this took place in an affluent community in South OC California. When my son was about 5 months old he was in the hospital for a kidney infection. So a sick baby girl is admitted into the next crib, maybe 3 months old. The father was present when the baby was admitted, then immediately took off. He said something to the effect that he was paying tons of money for his baby to be taken care of in the hospital, so he was going to go home and get a good night’s sleep with his wife (who hadn’t even bothered to show up). Meanwhile my husband and I are camped out at our baby’s bedside through the night. Keep in mind, this is not a NICU or PICU, just a regular pediatric unit. This is not a locked unit and anyone can come in and out through the night (meaning anyone could come in and pick up their baby and leave). Well, as you can imagine, that poor baby cried all night, the nurse did her best, but with multiple patients to care for she eventually had to call the parents and demand that one of them come back in to hold their baby. They were not happy. I was blown away that they would just leave their baby like that.

#8

Image source: billbapapa, Cedric Fauntleroy

Last time I was in the ER a local news “anchor” came in. I actually did recognize him.

He walked by where we were sitting, and I saw him go up to the check in area and immediately demand to go straight to triage and I heard what you’d expect:

“Don’t you know who I am?”

a response I wasn’t expecting but made me laugh:

“I do not, and I don’t really care.”

and something like:

“I don’t want to be waiting with all these sick people… you better not make me wait.”

To which she told him to have a seat and wait.

It was really funny to listen to. It’s the second local news personality I’ve encountered in my life, and both were super loud d***s.

#9

Image source: cardboard_box_robot, Los Muertos Crew

Going back many years but my favourite:

Me: *Inspect child’s rash* “It’s impetigo”.

Mother: “What’s that?”

Me: “School sores, it’s a …”

Mother literally said: “it can’t be that, we are rich”

Me: ……

Mother: “can we see someone more senior?”

Me: *gets ED consultant to review*

Consultant: “Hello! Oh what do we have here? Oh look impetigo!”

Mother: *Stares in disbelief* asks to see a paediatric dermatologist as they can’t possibly have a “poor” disease.

ED consultant is a super relaxed guy and says “yep” and calls our most Paediatric skin specialist. He is a big deal in the paeds dermatology world and he is our weird rash expert. He comes to review the patient. We watch him enter the cubicle, a couple of minutes later exits asks for a script pad, scribbles his order goes back in hands the mother the script and she profusely thanks him for his time and expertise. She glares at us as she leaves.

Dr Weird Rash Expert turns to us and says: Impetigo. I just told her it was a unusual variant that children of wealthy people get when in the tropics.

#10

Image source: anon, SHVETS production

I had a lady tell me I would give her a bath because I am a nurse and it is my job (she lived at home alone and could do for herself). I explained to her my role in helping her be independent but stated we would assist as needed. I sent my big male cna to assist “as needed”, which it wasn’t.

#11

Image source: manlikerealities

A lot of pediatricians will tell you the hardest part of pediatrics isn’t the patients, but their parents. It’s difficult to explain to hostile parents that their 6 year old with the sniffles will be waiting longer than the 6 year old coughing up blood. We have a specialized children’s ER in our state, and many parents bring their children with simple ear infections or colds here instead of their family doctor, because they know the ER has senior specialists. It’s a huge burden on the public system. Especially when they act shocked that they have to wait 4 hours after being triaged, and abuse the nurses for it.

Their fears are understandable though, they want what is best for their child. I’d take over-involved before under-involved, any day of the week. Child abuse and neglect is seen in both ER and outpatients, alongside atypical cases. In outpatients there was a child with significant language delay. She was tested for several things like autism, and it turned out her parents just didn’t really speak to her. The father worked a lot and the mother openly admitted she just wasn’t ‘interested’, so wouldn’t take her to play groups, the park, talk to her, etc.

The mother was extensively interviewed for long-term postpartum depression, both were screened for mental health or domestic issues. Ultimately they were right, they just weren’t…interested. The child hadn’t been planned, and they just weren’t deeply invested in the child-parent relationship. The child was otherwise well looked after in this upper middle class family, but was utterly emotionally neglected. They believed feeding and clothing her was sufficient for normal development. It was bizarre and entitled behaviour.

#12

Image source: ClutchClutch, Pavel Danilyuk

When I was a fresh EMT one of my first calls was for a lady with “abdominal pain”. The pain was pretty non-discript and seemed to move around, and the pt could be fairly described as b****y in demeanor.

As we are loading her up, she says that she needs to go to a hospital in a major city, about an hour away from us. This route would have included passing 3 suitable hospitals. This got my partner and I exchanging some glances. So, paramedic partner says, “no, we can take you to the nearest appropriate facility.” This upsets the pt, who begins screaming about customer service and the like.

Well, we happen to work for a s****y private company that shall remain nameless, one who prides itself on meeting each “customer’s” needs. We know that if we deny this lady, we will get written up and the manager will say something like “we need to serve our customers, and besides we can charge double rate after you pass the first hospital.”

F**k anyone else in our ASA who might need help, executives want that cheddar.

So we negotiate the pt down to a hospital in a suburb of said big city, about 40 minutes away. When we arrive, she refused to stand and transfer, so we get a nurse and pull her over to the hospital bed from our gurney.

Now here’s the punch line. As soon as the nurse lowers the hospital bed down, the pt kicks her feet over the edge, stands up and begins to walk out of the room. Nurse asks her where she is going, and the pt responds “I’m leaving, I have to get to *big city* for my appointment.”

My partner, with perhaps his very last breath of good will says, “why didn’t you tell us you had a medical appointment to go to?” Pt replies loudly, “HAIR appointment, and now I’m going to have to hitch hike because YOU wouldn’t drive an extra 15 minutes!”

Nurses, partner and I all stand there gob-smacked.

Nurses look at her record, she has checked out AMA from different facilities in their medical group, after being brought in by ambulance more than 10 times. She’s on a public health plan and clearly has no intent to pay a cent for any of it.

On our way back, partner and I call manager and report what happened. Manager knows the pt, grumbles a bit and basically says they won’t do anything about it. Partner and I guess that the company finds the tax write off from an unpaid bill more valuable than the time of its staff and safety of people living in our ASA.

And now I work single role for a fire agency.

#13

Image source: LadyGreyIcedTea, Kaboompics.com

When I worked inpatient, it was peds Neurology. One of my coworkers once was taking care of a teenager with a headache (the most annoying patients on that floor when we’re literally taking care of children with brain tumors knocking on death’s door every day). IIRC the Mom bi***ed about everything. At one point she asked her nurse when the Neurology team would be rounding. The nurse responded “they’re rounding now.” Mom scoffs “well, I would have thought they would start with the sickest patient on the floor.” They did. My patient who was a young adult with Marfan syndrome who’d had a stroke and was on a heparin drip.

#14

Image source: mamblepamble, Anna Tarazevich

Obligatory not a doctor but I worked in a pediatric ED for a bit. Once, at the start of my shift, a mother asked me if I could get a cup of water for her child. Since some patients are supposed to be NPO, I told her I would check with the doctor. Before I could say anything else, the mother screamed “You f*****g useless ginger b***h!” And threw her purse at me. She had terrible aim and her purse split open all over the floor at my feet. I just walked away when she told me to pick it up. She screamed at me one more time, and by now the rest of the unit was just silently staring at her.

Security was called, and she eventually had to be escorted out of the building with her kid because she was refusing to leave without her child receiving antibiotics. He was there for a cold, was told to go home and rest. I felt so bad for the kid. She spent the entire day refusing to leave and asking for different d***s for her kid, ranging from penicillin to percocet, and becoming more and more irate when she was told no. So asking for water and not being told “yes” straight away set her off.

But I was known as GB by my coworkers for the rest of the time I worked there so. Got a funny nickname I guess.

#15

Image source: isittacotuesdayyet21, Getty Images

One time I had a pt who had been hit by a car at a low rate of speed while crossing the street. She was fully alert and able bodied. Just shook up. (Understandably). She was receiving my undivided attention for over an hour while we waited for her parents to arrive (she was like late 20’s but vacationing with her parents). She was refusing a head CT for some reason and suddenly I received a near cardiac arrest patient from EMS so my focus obviously turned to stabilizing that person who was TRYING TO DIE. The pos entitled patient was in the same room as the dying patient because it was a resus room. She could hear everything and see what I was doing at times due to the s****y curtain. Her family would have seen everything as they came in to be with the patient as well. My coworkers were checking on her periodically while I was busy.

Anyways, once I was done stabilizing the patient, I went to check on her and was met with awful vitriol from her and her mother. Basically the patient stated we didn’t do s**t and accused me of poor nursing care. They wanted wound care to her light abrasions on her face and arms which is fine. However, the entire time they talked s**t about me like I wasn’t there doing her care. They basically talked about me like I was the help. It got to the point that I stopped and told them to stop or I would leave. The mom acted like she didn’t know what I was referring to, trying to basically gaslight me. At that point I said I professionally told her to f**k off and stated that she was perfectly capable of the care I was providing and that they could finish. I said I would no longer provide care and would send my supervisor in. I got the house supervisor involved. Everyone was shocked at how pissed I was as I’m very much a no b******t, laid back nurse. The doc ended up just discharging her because the ct that she finally did was fine. They left while being escorted out by the house supervisor. They then tried to come back hours later and demand narcotic pain pills and for us to dispense the medication. We explained that we could not do so and they literally were so f*****g stupid. They could not understand why we could not legally just dispense medicine. The mother claimed she was a prominent journalist in LA. I didn’t care. She was evil. It’s one of the top 5 terrible, career questioning interactions I’ve had in my nursing career.

They literally were visiting the little town from LA and were acting disgusted that the ER was so small. The lack of reality in the entire family was f*****g amazing. Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past the patient being at fault for getting hit because of how entitled she was. She probably walked out into the street thinking people would just stop.

Anyways. People like that exist and vote. Isn’t that crazy.

#16

Image source: DC4MVP, Nicola Barts

I was a patient visiting the orthopedics clinic of a major hospital in Minneapolis for a follow up on my destroyed arm.

We were in the lobby waiting when this black guy came out from the rooms dragging his 6-7 year old son. He started screaming and screaming about how the nurse asked him to stop talking on his cellphone on speakerphone when his son was getting examined.

He called the front desk ladies (100% innocent) “racist c***s” over and over and that the entire hospital was full of racists. Finally after 4-5 minutes of this, security showed up and asked him to leave and he yelled back “Ya’ll racists better not be here when I get back with my gun.”

I have no idea if they arrested him or let him go but I was happy to get the h**l out of that s**t hole. I felt so bad for his son. What an absolutely horrible role model.

#17

Image source: SparkytheEMT, Frank Flores

ER nurse here. Had a minor local celebrity show up in the middle of the night for back pain. He had another man with him, so I asked how they were related. The visitor stated that he was the patient’s chauffeur and personal assistant. The visitor then proceeded to inform me of the patient’s identity, as if I should be grateful to be taking care of this celebrity.

Woo. Go him, I guess. Having not grown up in the area where I live now, this meant I had literally no idea who he was. Honestly didn’t care and still don’t.

The visitor also told me that money was no object and that the patient required only the best care and if that meant a helicopter to a specialist or whatever, they could make it happen. The ER I work in is a large academic medical center with more specialists than it knows what to do with. We get people flown in to see them, not usually the other way around.

Spent the rest of the night running back and forth while he screamed bloody m****r over his back pain and his personal assistant followed me around expecting me to cater to his employer’s every whim. 1/10, do not recommend.

TLDR- Local celebrity dragged his personal assistant out of bed for his back pain, came to my ER and became my a*s pain.

#18

Image source: anon, Getty Images

There was a woman in my response area who could have put the majority of people on My 600 lb Life to shame when it came to her size, disconnection to reality, entitlement, and immobility. She also of course had a horrible enabler of a niece living with her who continued to feed her- both food, and lies about how much she deserved from society. She lived in a ground floor condo that had three steps leading up to the front door. Why she had purchased a house that she physically could not enter or exit on her own when there were handicap accessible units available in the same building is beyond me, but she did. Any time she needed to leave the house, for whatever reason, she would call 911 and smugly wait for two units to go out of service to wrangle her out of her house into her niece’s car for her weekly trip to Walmart. When she wanted to go back in to the house, same s**t- 911. Obviously this was a nonemergent response, but if we took too long, she would call 911 repeatedly until we arrived. If we got diverted to an ACTUAL emergency and took too long, she would shower us with all manners of profanities as we dragged her 650 lb a*s into the house and tucked her into bed. One time a crew knocked over a photo of her late Yorkie by accident and broke the frame, so not only did she submit a bill to the county for damages, she also started filming every interaction with EMS and would post it on Facebook live. There were days when I would have had at least four calls to deal with her b******t. And God bless our supervisor- not only did he offer to assist her in getting the County dept. of Disability Rights involved to install a ramp for her, he also personally volunteered to build a ramp for her himself on his carpentry company’s dime, but she still refused to do anything about it. This went on for two years before I moved away, so I don’t know what ever happened there, but I hear that the Sheriff’s dept was finally warming up to the idea of slapping charges on her for 911 abuse.

#19

Image source: megalodon319, Andrea Piacquadio

I’m an EMT, not a doctor. Had a patient once who shriekingly demanded a back massage to “calm her nerves” (she did not get one). Also of note was the fact that there was nothing detectibly physically wrong with her.

#20

Image source: BrokeBackMedic, Vanessa Sezini

Just had the biggest snowstorm in 40 years. We had a patient call for an ambulance because she didn’t want to be home alone (fair, I’ll empathize. She had anxiety). She then complained because we didn’t shovel her driveway and she had to walk through 3 feet of snow to get to our truck.

#21

Image source: -OrdinaryNectarine-, Getty Images

Pt was demanding a 6th pillow to get comfortable. Went to get it, but sidetracked when my other pt coded. Eventually took the pillow in to patient 1 and got yelled at for “taking too long.” I explained I had been busy doing CPR across the hall. Pt paused “you mean where you have to press on the chest and breathe for the person cause their heart stopped?” Yeah. That. “Well, whatever. You still made me wait way too long.” 🙄🖕

#22

Image source: pizzawithartichokes, Ono Kosuki

Nurse here. My colleague was discharging a patient and, in the process, asked if he needed his parking validated. He sneered at her and responded, “I’m on the board of this hospital. I don’t need your validation to do anything.”

Turns out he was a local philanthropist and multimillionaire, and I guess we were supposed to know that.

#23

Image source: Nursejlm, Tima Miroshnichenko

Don’t remember all the deets now but years ago in the ICU we had been coding a patient multiple times, very hectic on the unit. We had aneedy family on the unit who was very upset and said something along the lines of “i don’t care if someone is dying….we’ve been waiting for (insert food / drink selection) for over an hour”. I’m sure my face said it all.

#24

Image source: anon, Gustavo Fring

One time a pt I was cleaning up a pt after a BM and I guess she felt the need to fart, so she asked me to hold open her a*s cheeks so that she could fart (this would be farting right at me, I feel like this is important to mention).

I politely declined and told her the fart could wait for another time.

#25

Image source: goforbroke432, Anna Shvets

I was shaving a patient’s abdomen to prep them for a c section (back when we used to do that), and the patient wanted me to touch up her bikini line, too.

#26

Image source: Tellmeanamenottaken, RDNE Stock project

I have had a 100 percent capable patient demand I move their pillow from one side of their bed/body to the other while they sat in bed with nothing in their hands. I have had a patient report me for speaking to another nurse in passing while walking down the hall( pt was being pushed by me in a wheelchair ,apparently I was not concerned enough about her because I spoke to someone else). I have has a pt purposely knock a glass flower vase down and shatter it on the ground because she was mad at/arguing with her spouse and then demand I clean it immediately.

#27

Image source: iweewoo, Pavel Danilyuk

Got dispatched for ETOH in the bar scene in my area. As my partner and I pull up we see this guy start limping over. We unload the stretcher and he goes “hey I think I twisted my ankle, I need an ambulance.” Well our patient that we were originally called for is passed out on the ground in their own vomit. We tell him that we can call for a second rescue for him if he needs it because we have to attend to our etoh patient. Or we tell him that he can just take an Uber to the nearest hospital which is five minutes away. He goes “well I have really good insurance so the ambulance ride will cost about the same as an Uber, which one will be faster? Then this guy proceeds to stand around huffing and puffing about how it’s “ridiculous” that he can’t just hop in with us because “you guys are going to the same hospital anyways”. Dude this isn’t a ride share Uber and we ain’t carpooling?

#28

Image source: Apple-Core22, cottonbro studio

A patient was coughing up / throwing up large amount of blood, was dealing with EMS to send her to ER (this was in a rehab), got to my next patient at 9:10pm, his pain-meds were due at 9pm.

He was livid, I explained why I was slightly (like 10 minutes) late, and he said, “I don’t give a s**t about anyone else. Let her f*****g die for all I care, just make sure my meds are on time, little girl”.

Little girl? I was 50 at the time.

#29

Image source: Tellmeanamenottaken, Andrea Piacquadio

I forgot to share the one that takes the cake, i had a patient attempt to take the hospital bed blanket when I told her it had to stay she said thats fine but i am going to take this pillow and when i told her I couldn’t let her take that either she told me i was selfish.

#30

Image source: medguru87, Jade Destiny

Called for a “fall victim” go to find a 400lb 20 year old who slid out of her recliner when she tried to stand. She is yelling at us the entire time that we’re waiting for fire to help with lifting. We get her up, put her on the stair chair to move her down the narrow stairs because she says her knees hurt from the fall and that she has back pain. We get her down to our stretcher and she requests to go to a hospital 45 minutes away because that’s “where the tv commercials said to go.” I inform her that Medicaid will not pay that bill and she will be liable because she doesn’t meet requirements to go there(STEMI/CVA) and that if she goes to the local hospital 5 minutes away, she would be able to go home sooner. She whips out her state benefits card and tells us, “oh, silly ambulance drivers, I got that all access, go wherever I want to card.” I almost lost it, but instead just told her that we go to the local hospital and then if she really wants to go to the other hospital, she can asked to be transferred. She bitched us out the entire way, that we work for her, her tax dollars pay our salaries, we need to give her the respect that she deserves. My partner flipped out, asked her what she did for a living and what tax dollars does she pay? She said that she collects welfare and disability because she is depressed. I stopped him before he screamed that she is paid by our tax dollars and we don’t owe her anything if she abuses the system like this. I’m very thankful that I don’t work in that area anymore.

#31

Image source: Academic-Rhubarb79, Getty Images

Had a family member tap her empty Coke can outside of the door demanding a new one while I was dealing with another annoying, and honestly unreasonable, task she requested. I left her room not more than 2 minutes before, and told her I’d bring one in with me next time I came in. Take a walk to the vending machine Brenda, this isn’t a hotel.

#32

Image source: crazyhair72, Kaboompics.com

During my surgery rotation in medical school, I was (peripherally) involved in a trauma code in the emergency room. The trauma victim was intubated, had two chest tubes, blood everywhere. By the time it progressed to pericardiocentesis (a needle onto the sac of the heart to remove any blood outside the heart but in the pericardium that can be the cause of cardiac arrest in trauma) a lady grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the trauma bay, yelling at me that her daughter in the room next door was cold and needed a blanket.

Not my last encounter with entitled patients and families, but one of the most memorable.

#33

Image source: just-another-Bekah, SHVETS production

Not a doctor, but I work the front desk of a doctor’s office. Woman came in to her appointment on the 6th floor, but when her appointment was over the elevator was down. She demanded we call the fire department so that they could carry her down the stairs.

#34

Image source: jack2of4spades, Getty Images

Family member pushed their way into a bay as we were coding a patient to ask the nurse who was doing compressions when their family member was going to get the water they asked for.

#35

Image source: anon, engin akyurt

Not a doctor, but the one time I went to the ER I encounted what I’m fairly certain was an entitled parent/daughter combo in the waiting area. I was in for a shattered thumb, and got put into the triage seating, it was a slow late night and there weren’t a ton of people. I remember looking over, and they were both angrily staring at me, and I could practically read on their faces “Why are YOU there? You don’t look hurt! How dare you!”

I then overheard the daughter being approached by a nurse asking her to reiterate her issue (I think), and the daughter replies “You know, I feel like I’m really holding myself together pretty well, considering that I FEEL LIKE I’M BEING STABBED IN THE STOMACH right now. So yeah.” It was in the most valley girl entitled type of voice you can imagine. Her mother is also now staring angrily at the nurse with the “how dare you” glare.

To clarify, this girl was in her late teens, had been sitting there since before we arrived, and she was basically just pouting with her arms folded, and didn’t look sick or in pain at all. The girl continued to be questioned, though I forgot most of the actual exchange since this was a few years back. Just before I got admitted, I heard the nurse advice her that it was likely just an upset stomach or mild flu bug, and to go to a clinic tomorrow if she wasn’t better or if she started to feel worse. They left in a huff, and the girl was walking perfectly fine, as well.