Pt having a "friend" over for "special nursing care"

Nurses Relations

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You know what I mean. . .a patient having someone of the opposite sex (or the same sex! that's happened too) that they are romantically involved with, spend the night (thankfully in a private room) and performing overt sex acts, to the horror of the poor CNA who has to come in and fix her tele leads, which have obviously come loose from all the activity.

I was horrified to know that not only does my hospital not have a policy against this, but the house supervisor told me I was not allowed to tell them to stop! These are sick people here! I understand people say they have "physical needs," but can we draw a line somewhere?!

Specializes in L&D, Women's Health.
A private room in a hospital is not the same as a private hotel room and with telemetry you darn well better expect a fast visit from your nurse if you go flat lining for no good reason. Isn't that kind of the POINT of telemetry? sheesh!

On a completely different entirely judgmental note: There Their They're... Beliefs believes.. lol. Poor grammar diminishes the impact of an argument imo.

LOL . . . I was just thinking about that spelling/grammar thread as my ears were curling:)

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Specializes in L&D, Women's Health.
There's actually surprisingly little artifact, unlike when a patient goes on a solo mission, which looks more like 'toothbrush' tach.

Solo mission . . . thanks for the chuckle!

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Specializes in None yet..
OMG Sex!!! The world is ending!!! I'm so offended!!!! Please people, grow up and mind your own business!!!, if you want to believe like sex is a dirty thing, go ahead but don't hold everyone else to your Stone Age, goat herder's beliefs.... Vent over lol

Hey, don't give goat-herders a bad name! Some of us are quite easy-going.

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delphine..You need to understand.. this is not about you... or the "poor CNA". This is about the patient.

Their hospital room belongs to them. You and the CNA are present in their environment.That is why the supervisor informed you .. there is no policy against this.

You don't call the shots here, and the doctor does not call the shots here.

Even if the doc "prescribed" no sexual activity.. It's up to the PATIENT to follow the physician's orders. ANY patient .. can decline a doctor's order.. it's a basic patient right.

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Doing "that" in a hospital? Please define ... "that".

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Specializes in SICU/CVICU.
I recently had a pt on my acute med-surg floor that has been with us for at least 21 days. She's great lying down, but once she sits up for longer than 15 mins, things get all outta whack and she's got a good chance of syncope. She's healthy otherwise, with CKD 1 and well-controlled DM II. She and her husband have been together for over twenty years, she told me. Their anniversary was on her second week in the hosp. She had needs. Her husband had needs. They didn't suddenly take a vow of abstinence because their lives were completed upended and their usual forms of intimacy were suddenly, abruptly, cut off.

We are very careful to respect her privacy. She has a private room and we are careful to knock and give them time to answer. That isn't just her though. Every room, every pt, deserves the respect and privacy of the staff unless it's an SI/SH situation. We knock and wait for an answer. Policy. And y'know, I think that's a key part of nursing. Most pts have no control. They can't control the biggest thing in their life - their health. Their body. Its doing things they can't control, things often embarrassing and frightening and bewildering. So we try to offer them little bits of control, ways to cope with the fear and anxiety of hospitalizations. Like the (very radical apparently) idea of respecting their personal spaces. Barging into pt rooms for care or checks has little to do with care and everything to do with not messing with our routines.

That pt had "quiet time" with her spouse, and we were careful to respect that. It met their intimacy needs, strengthened their relationship in the face of this unknown struggle, and made her time in the hospital a little less harsh, impersonal, alien. People don't suddenly become asexual as soon as they are admitted.

And leads falling off over the space of a few minutes does not look like asystole. It looks like noisy signal and/or artifact, and a tele team that can't notice the difference is more worrying to me than two patients doing it like they do on the discovery channel.

Artifact needs to be evaluated and the leads replaced so I would know if the patient is having dysrthmias. I'm assuming that if they are being monitored the potential for problems exists.

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Artifact needs to be evaluated and the leads replaced so I would know if the patient is having dysrthmias. I'm assuming that if they are being monitored the potential for problems exists.

Which is why you knock. Then enter. Artifact is pretty obvious most of the time. Tele can be used as precaution. It doesn't mean *at death's door*. Hell, I wore a tele monitor and I was just freaking fine (and got it on one or few times on Dr's orders lol) b/c I was found to have idiosyncratic arrhythmia. V tach, v fib look nothing like a slipped lead.

But if it makes you sleep better at night believing you have the right of way as a nurse to completely eschew all etiquette by barging in whenever your heart desires...

...I'd hold off on judging others on their manners. Something about glass houses.

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Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.
Maybe inappropriate, but calling them "sick people" is way overreacting and extremely judgmental.

If they wern't sick people why would they be in a hospital?

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Eventually the schedule is going to be like:"Oh,Visiting hours are from three to five, and ba-donk-adonk hours are from five-thirty to seven." And just be like, plastered on a sticker-board in the lobby of every ER and hospital wing.

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Personally, If I was changing bed linens, I would want to know if something transpired on top of them. Just my $0.02.

Why? One should always wear gloves when changing bed linens-there could be any number of things on them you wouldn't want to get on your hands or clothes, so this shouldn't be any different.

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Yes, apparently so. Perhaps they would have no problem with residents getting it on right on the nurse's station countertop.

The OP specifically references that it was a PRIVATE room. Why all this talk about doing it at the nurse's station?

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Specializes in CEN, CFRN, PHRN, RCIS, EMT-P.
The OP specifically references that it was a PRIVATE room. Why all this talk about doing it at the nurse's station?

That's because some here have some weird fetishes lol

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