My Mom Can't Say NO!

[adrienurse, LPN]

Okay guys, I'm really worried about my Mom. Until last year she was a retired nurse administrator, but she decided to go back to bedside nursing last summer. She hadn't done general duty nursing for 20 years and here she was going back to work at the same rural 25 bed hospital where she used to be hospital administrator. I thought she was mad, they had treated her so badly for so many years and I made her promise me that she wasn't doing it out of guilt, she claimed she wasn't. So at first she would pick up here and there and eventually she was being asked to work all the time. She and my dad don't even need the money! They both have pensions. They pressured her into taking charge nurse duties way before she was comfortable doing so (they have L+D beds, an OR, ER and 4 bed ICU). I know the stress is getting to her and she has been working insane hours just because they cannot find anyone else to work. She doesn't know how to say no.

This really worries me, because they talk her into doing things that I would never agree to do. They're used to taking a lot of risks in that hospital, because they refuse to close beds or make any compromizes even though they are so short of staff. The doctors refuse to close the OR. She's really naive about how much legal trouble she could be getting herself into. I try to tell her all the time what she should say or do, and it falls on deaf ears.

This also bothers me personally because all through my childhood I had to share my Mom with this place, and here she is again cancelling plans with me because "they need her".

[fergus51]

My mom is the same way. We all realized how bad it was when my brother told her to get off the cross.... I learned the hard way that if it's falling on deaf ears, there's a reason for it (my mom needs to be needed) and I stopped bugging her. You just can't change another person, no matter how much you try. She wouldn't be doing what she's doing if she wasn't getting something out of it, and until she doesn't need that anymore, she won't do anything differently. I wish I could offer you some fabulous advice, but I just don't have any.

[adrienurse, LPN]

I'm just worried that she's gonna get sued.

[fergus51]

I know, I would be too. I know this isn't an easy situation, but all you can do is tell her what you think, then it's all up to her. It sounds backwards to say this, but sometimes parents need to make their own mistakes too.

[adrienurse, LPN]

Yeah. I don't know when things swung around and I started parenting my parents.:roll :roll