Absence of Manners

Nurses General Nursing

Published

i'll admit to being somewhat cranky today, and this is a vent. this is only a vent. please do not accuse me of being mean to or mistreating anyone i'm venting about! but i swear, people's parents neglected to teach them manners!

the hospital cafeteria has wifi, and i know that you're bored waiting for uncle zeke to get out of surgery. it's great that you can sit in the cafeteria with your laptop and surf the net. however when lunchtime comes and you're not eating, just surfing, please get up and go somewhere else so that all those people standing around with trays full of food and peering around for an empty table can sit down and eat!

didn't your mother teach you that it's rude to sit in front of grandma, who is npo for the or, and eat your tacos or fried chicken? grandma can't eat and she's very hungry. please go somewhere else to eat your bagful of fast food and come visit grandma when you're done.

poppop had surgery, he's getting diuresed, his mouth is dry and all he wants is a big glass of water which he cannot have. it's rude to sit there and slurp on your big gulp in front of him.

i know you're a brand new np and all, and very proud of your degree, your knowledge base and your new prescribing priveledges. you would look every so much more professional, though, if you weren't chewing a big ole wad of gum with your mouth open and snapping, cracking, popping and blowing bubbles!

yes, the intensivist is slow, he's boring and he's old fashioned. it's excrutiating to watch him tackle the keyboard on a cow. but that's no excuse to be on the other cow shopping for stilettos during rounds! nor is it cool to be texting your husband, your best friend, or your husband's best friend instead of paying attention to what the nurse has to say.

i know you graduated from man's best nursing school last month and that therefore you think you know everything. but please, i'd rather have you ask what you think is a really stupid question than try to give blood through a d5w carrier, use ffp as a carrier or push dilantin through tpn. and it's really not cool to give the 20 meq of kcl iv push, either!

i know that you think 15-b's 20 or so relatives who average two teeth and thirty-two tattoos each are immensely entertaining. i might think so, too, if i could get past them to take care of the patient. we have rules that state only two visitors at a time -- please enforce them. if you let all and sundry hang out in the patient room eating their kfc and drinking their big gulps (see above) and then i tell them they need to follow the rules about no food, no drinks and only two visitors at a time, i become the mean nurse. that's not fair!

i appreciate that you're 30 years younger than me and ever so much more good looking than i ever dreamed of being. that does not mean, however, that it's cool to roll your scrub pants down to your hips so that your thong pokes out the top even when you're not bending over. nor is the push-up bra that's spilling the girls out your v neck very professional, either!

please hang up the cell phone so i can assess you. please get off facebook -- you're sitting in my chair and using my computer and that's just not cool. and please, if you work here, come and help me clean up poop even if the packers are winning in the next room!

Specializes in ER I/CCU Cath lab LTC.

And I thought bright thongs under light pants were bad.

Ye gods and little fishes! Butt cracks hanging out? Skanky! Thankfully, this is a failrly conservative area and I haven't been exposed to anything that toxic. I hope management took care of these problem children?

Specializes in Peds, PACU, ICU, ER, OB, MED-Surg,.

I agree with all of your vent. I hate when the visitors are in the bed with the patient. Especially my teenage patients with a boy/girl in bed with them and with a parent right there. I say "Only one person in that bed and it better be my patient!" Yes I am the mean nurse!

Plumbers crack in the nurses station should never happen, and I have had to explain that to a few new nurses.

Specializes in Peds Medical Floor.

Also we had a resident who really should have been on palliative care but his family kept wanting him to have treatment. He was on a fluid restriction of something like 1000 cc's a day! You try to explain to the family exactly what that is and all they were thinking about was keeping him alive. Then his family decided to bring in bottles of 2 liter Pepsi. I grabbed his daughter and tried to get her to get them out of there. She wanted to give him some. I took a container and showed her exactly what 1000 cc's looked like. She started crying and got all the Pepsi out of there. I don't think the doctor showed her 1000 cc's. It was frustrating.

Specializes in Peds Medical Floor.

Ok only one more story I promise! :)

We have a new resident who is sweet as pie. Her daughter is a pain in the ass however. Two quick examples: a very confused resident was being combative with a nurse. This resident is very strong, was abusive to his wife and daughter (ie: hates women), and can kick butt. He also likes to get up and walk even though he can't. So she was trying to get him back to his chair after ambulating him and he was punching and kicking and pulling hair. This other resident's daughter was trying to ask the nurse for something while the nurse was getting beaten up and then started yelling when the nurse ignored her. Then the nurse yelled at the daughter to get someone to help her and the woman just walked off in a huff. Really lady?

The second incident was with the same daughter. Her mother's roommate was going to the bathroom. She needed a few minutes. This daughter threw a fit because the aides wouldn't get the roommate off the toilet so the daughter's mother could brush her teeth. Really?

I'm sorry. I didn't realize your mother was the only resident on the floor. She's apparently a nursing home hopper though, so she'll probably be gone soon enough. The resident herself is sweet; the daughter a different story. She would probably have people visiting her on their breaks and doing nice little extras (we've made special trips to the vending machine for residents; I've picked up stuff at the store like special shampoo if they don't have family members to get it for them, when we get pizza or someone brings in food we share with some of the residents, not in front of the ones who can't have it of course and no one does this with this lady because they are afraid to run into the daughter.) I know there is abuse and neglect in nursing homes, but I swear that people see these commercials for lawyers prosecuting nursing homes and think they can bully the staff into doing what they want so they don't call the state. Grrrrrrr!

Specializes in Vascular Access Nurse.
yeah that happened at my place, too. until recently we could only wear white pants. several staff member had to be talked to because they liked wearing red or black thongs or bikini underwear under their white pants. classy! even a guy had to be talked to about the color of his boxers lol.

which explains why my hospital switched nurses to maroon scrub pants....

Specializes in Vascular Access Nurse.

at one hospital i worked at, one family would bring in two grocery bags full of food and a small cooler of sodas to drink while they camped out in mom's room. no visiting restrictions means many families come early and stay late. and yes, i do try to get them out of the room when appropriate, but y'all know what that's like! when did visiting a sick relative become a social event?

you mean they bring their own food instead of ordering 3 trays of food "for the patient?" we have room-service style patient meals, and the patients can order as much food as they like as often as they like from 6:30am until 10pm. i've never knew patients could be so hungry.......:banghead:

I hear you, Ruby!! Here's one of my pet peeves . . . bringing a patient back from a transport and either a couple of visitors OR a couple of docs are standing right in the middle of the hallway, flappin' their jaws. "Beep, beep . . . excuse us", I say . . . and then they step 1.25 inches out of the way!! Grrrr! I just hit them with the bed!!!

Specializes in Plastics. General Surgery. ITU. Oncology.

Beat this for the ultimate example of selfish rudeness.

I was working on a very busy, and terribly understaffed surgical ward, some patients on there really should have been in HDU as they had undergone very major surgeries such as oesophagectomy and colostomy.

One day a patient who had a resection for colon cancer and formation of a stoma came back to the ward and his vitals were awful. Low BP, rising heart rate, confused and hypoxic.

I fast-bleeped the surgical team and we got to work with fluids, oxygen the works.

In the middle of the emergency (this was a six bed bay) an patient in the bed opposite who MUST have been aware of what was happening took it upon himself to open the curtains and whine at me "I need my toe dressing done. I'm diabetic you know"

The Registrar in charge of the crashing patient yelled at him to get out.

We stabilised the patient, transferred him to CCU and I left that shift more than 2 hours late then has 3 days off.

Upon my return to the ward the Sister pulled me up. The toe-dressing patient had made a complaint. Sister asked "Why didn't you ask another nurse to help?" Er well now let's see...perhaps because the only two others were also frantically busy.

I left that hospital not long after and now work in a much better one.

I'm with you on the gum chewing! I hate, hate, hate the sound of gum smacking, the look of gum rolling around in someone's mouth etc, etc etc. I'd rather have to go and deal with an exploding colostomy that listen to the sound of someone chewing gum!

I think of the movie "Grease" whenever someone chomps on their gum like a cow!

otessa

Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
yes, they do that, and worse. i once had to gently explain to a staff member why it was not a good idea to wear thin white scrub pants and go commando. seriously. no undies!!! :eek:

don't ya just love it when the white scrubs have been washed so often they're threadbare, and you can count the pubic hairs . . . .

Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
if i am a vistor at the hospital when i see the nurse come in with an iv bag or the tech coming to take vitals i automatically will ask if they need to get by or i will move ,so that the nurse or tech has the space to perform their duties because after all that is why their there .

would that all visitors were like you!

Specializes in PeriOp, ICU, PICU, NICU.

Ugh, we shouldn't even have to ask. If you see me struggling to reach the IV pump to add time/volume, or *gasp*, reach my pt. to auscultate breath sounds, get the Flip away so I can do my job. I should NOT have to ask you to please excuse me or to step aside.

+ Add a Comment