How do you respond to rude and complaining patients? I took an earache patient back the other night who waited in the waiting room for 12 minutes before being called back. She stormed to the room yelling about how much pain she was in and how long she waited, and that she never comes to the hospital, "especially this one.", etc. (Hello....it says right on the chart when your last ED visit was....ah hem...6 weeks ago.) In the 12 minutes that she waited to be seen after registering, I was seeing a head trauma patient, that I was working on getting back to CT. I'd been yelled at by a patient a few hours before (not even my patient, but she stopped me in the hallway) about how she was still in so much pain, she'd waited forever, and she didn't even know if she had a nurse, etc. so I was not in the mood for this treatment again, especially when I was dealing with a head trauma patient and this earache is yelling about waiting 12 minutes. GRRRRR!!!!! Oh, and I had pneumonia, but still came to work because there was no one else to work night shift. And she's yelling at me because her ear hurts! How do you deal with the rude and grouchy patients?? What do you say to them? You'd think they'd be grateful that someone is there trying to help them. It just infuriates me to be treated this way and feel like I can't say much back to them.
