The really funny I cannot share, sorry. Due to both confidentiality obligations and common sense, what may seem “funny” for medical personnel is usually not so funny from the perspective of the patient.

Anyway, a story I won’t easily forget involves an older gentleman with a not too gentle demeanor in the ER due to advanced dementia. He had a severe infection of the leg and needed intravenous antibiotics. Unfortunately, he lacked the mental capacity to recognise this and preferred to occupy himself with wreaking havoc in the ER. I had tried both soft and hard love; nothing worked. The guy needed to be restrained, both for his safety and ours. Normally, this is a job for the hospital’s security guards, but there was no one available that night since all of them were on duty somewhere else in the hospital.

What was a young resident to do? I called the attending physician and I called the police. I had some trouble explaining what I really wanted the police to do, until the officer asked me directly: “Are you calling us to put him to bed?” “Well…yes,” was my answer.

So, two young and slightly inexperienced police officers were dispatched. The patient did not seem to think of them any more highly than he did of us, so he continued his tantrum as if they were not there. They were shielding him from approaching any other patient or leaving, but they did everything they could to avoid touching him, despite their protective clothing. I could not blame them.

And then something amazing happened. It was shift change for the nurses and the new nurse assigned to the patient decided that it would be best if we just left her alone with the patient. To be fair, there was nothing around that he could throw at her as he had finally diminished his stock of personal items and urine bottles. “Aren’t you afraid that he might spit on you too?” I asked. “Why should I be afraid? We are all wearing mouth masks for him.”

What she said to him I could not hear. And then, out of the blue, she started singing a lullaby and the patient stopped whatever he was doing to let the childish rhyme sink in. It was like a revelation. Me, the nurse from the previous shift, and the officers standing beside them (me, at least, looking like an idiot) and she, emanating motherly power, had finally done it. The patient lay down on the bed and had fallen asleep before the lullaby was over.

What's the funny thing about this story? The look on my face staring at the look on the faces of the officers who had been dragged to the hospital to listen to a lullaby.