There is a bathroom down the hall.

Here is a lesson on why you don't use patient bathrooms. A few weeks ago, I was busy in a patients room trying to move her monitors around to find her baby's heart beat again. The baby was on the run so as soon as I would find it he would move again and the search would start over. I finally got it all settled in after 5-10 minutes of looking and as I get up to leave her husband comes out of the bathroom. First, I had no idea that he had been in there that entire time and second, when he opened the door the foulest smell spread through the room. I am sure his wife considered it a gift for her extra sensitive pregnant nose that lasted for hours.

If that didn't deter you, consider this. Yesterday, I went to take a patient out to her room on the post partum unit. She is in the wheelchair ready to roll and all she needs are her belonging that are hanging on the back of the bathroom door. Does she warn me that her husband is in there taking a crap? No. So I open the door to get her stuff and there he is, mid-poop of what sounded to be rather bad diarrhea. I grab her stuff, shut the door and then explain to him where we are going and how he can get to the room.

I wheeled my patient out to the floor, got her settled into her new room and then gave report to the nurse that would be taking care of her from there. I then head back to the room (at least 15 minutes later) to look for the slippers that were left behind in the bathroom in my haste to give her husband some privacy. I guess it was my fault for not knocking but the room had been empty for a while and the door was wide open so who would have thought? I open the bathroom door and her husband is still there, only for some reason he is now squatting over the toilet, looking down between his legs either inspecting his balls or admiring his hard work. I asked him to grab the slippers on his way out and then got the heck out of there.