Unbelievable Family Members

[southernbeegirl, BSN, RN]

I'm the weekend supervisor in a LTC/Rehab facility. We are 75% rehab so dealing with unbelievable family members is par for the course. but last night....i had one that just took the cake!

I'm walking around the desk when this woman, about my age...well dressed...looked like someone that would have common sense and "know how to act in public" type person. until she opened her mouth anyways...

she walks straight up to me, got right in my personal face and put her nose about 2 inches from mine screaming "I dont want my mother to have any pain medicine!! She's immune to pain!"

um..ok. btw...who's your mom? lol. doncha love it when people yell at you about their loved one but dont tell you who or what room? yep, i can read your mind.

anyhoo...smile plastered on my face I attempt toget the the details of what we were talking about. she keeps yelling at me that she cant believe we offered her mom pain medicine! then she tells me "some woman came in the room last night and actually asked my mom if she was in pain and did she need anything!! icant believe yall would ask that!!" (i swear i'm not making this up)

i say "ma'am. we are a rehab center. therapy often causes pain and our nurses always ask the patients if they need any pain meds or if they are in pain because many times older patients dont want to 'bother' us by asking for pain meds"

she says "are you kidding me? you really ask people if they are hurting?? thats just setting people up for trouble and thats terrible nursing!!!"

(pick your mouths up of the floor people...i swear i'm not making this up,lol)

so then she says "well my friend is a nurse and she said you shouldnt be asking people if they are in pain"

I couldnt resist a little sarcasm at this point. indulge me, it was just a little, lol. so i tell her "ma'am, actually pain is considered the 5th vital sign by joint commission so it is something we not only ask people every night, but we ask them every shift and many times during the day and if your friend who is a nurse is not doing that with her patients then she is not assessing them properly as ALL nurses are supposed to assess pain level as it is as important as taking a blood pressure"

(heck, i was proud for ONLY saying that,lol)

so then she proceeds to start yelling at me and saying (all the while, almost nose to nose with me...despite me continually backing up until my back was up against the desk) saying..."my mother is immune to pain!" and telling me how her mother never hurts and we will NOT ask her if she hurts. (btw..her mom has in fact asked for pain meds because she was IN PAIN, lol)

so on and on she goes until she starts saying "she even broke her thumb and when i grabbed it like this and pulled as hard as i could it didnt hurt her!" and as she said that, she grabbed my thumb on my right hand and proceeded to pull it as hard as she could. she pulled it so hard it actually popped! and then she continued to hold onto it as hard as she could saying "i did that and it didnt hurt her!!!"

I said "ma'am, that might not have hurt your mom but it is darned sure hurting me and take your hands off me right now!"

(i told, i am not making this up, lol)

she looked at me like i'd offended her and didnt even apologize.

i ended up telling her it would be my pleasure (thats what we are supposed to say,lol) to let the NP know in the morning that she'd like the pain meds d/c'd. she then says "i do not have the time to come wait on her so you just have her call me so i can tell her how my mother doesnt feel pain ever". i just smiled and said "i'd be more than happy to leave her that note":D and i did! shoot, i wanted to tell her if her mom was immune to pain she was a medical miracle and i was telling everyone! not just the NP. lol, but i didnt. she'd allready tried to pull my thumb off...i didnt know what she'd do next,lol. oh, she also had pointed her finger in my face and hit my nose with her finger too during her tirade.

everyday that i think it cant get any worse with family members...somebody comes along and proves me wrong.

can yall believe this? anyone else meet this woman or someone like her?

and can anyone tell me in what other career something like this could happen? somewhere where people think it is perfectly fine to come into a facility and act like this and in the eyes of the law, literally assault someone and it be perfectly fine?

[RosesrReder, BSN, MSN, RN]

Girl, you're 'too nice'. I would have not tolerated that well. At the first instant she stepped into my comfort zone, I would have nipped it in the bud ;-)

I feel sorry for her mother. Some people are truly evil!

[ChocoholicRN]

still picking my mouth up off the floor...

thanks for the laugh though, this woman sounds crazy!!

[suzy253, RN]

Crazy..I know and have no doubts that this actually happened. When doing my assessments, I always, always ask about pain. I've run into lots of family members with ....erm...problems(?) One the other night screaming and cursing at the unit secretary. I stepped in to intervene on that one.

Oh...and I love it when they're screaming about family members and I let them go off and then say something like 'who is your family member'..or what room are we talking about. Like you're supposed to know....that is your one and only patient....NOT.

Yep...some family members are totally out of control. If someone grabbed me like that, I would have security up there so fast they wouldn't know what happened

It's sad actually that nurses are not respected by some.

[Sue7573]

I believe it!!!!! Hey I wonder if she transfered from one of our halls! ? Nah I can't think of anyone we have missing. We have one whole special area for these wonderfull family members. We didn't do it on purpose but seems like they all got put in the same area. Lucky us. Our family members are just more smarter than us plain ole nurses.

[southernbeegirl, BSN, RN]

Isn't it scary that these crazy people look like normal people? lol.

Security? ha! let me tell you about security in LTC and especially our facility. I'M the security,lol.

It's unbelievable to me how people walk thru the door with the thought process that they can treat us like the poo on the bottom of their shoe. I don't get the mentality!

You don't get positive feedback from administration, you sure dont get it from families...why do we do this to ourselves?

thats a question i am asking myself over and over this morning! why am i still doing this? it makes me want to get a job in a hole somewhere.

my husband is a drug/alcohol counselor. he's still yelling at me this morning that this woman assaulted me and wants me to call the administrator and have her banned, lol.

we ALL know how that would go over, dont we?

[southernbeegirl, BSN, RN]

I believe it!!!!! Hey I wonder if she transfered from one of our halls! ? Nah I can't think of anyone we have missing. We have one whole special area for these wonderfull family members. We didn't do it on purpose but seems like they all got put in the same area. Lucky us. Our family members are just more smarter than us plain ole nurses.

omG aint it the truth? if it werent for these smart family members with friends that are nurses, i wouldnt know how to do my job.

we are so lucky, arent we?

(btw..next time you send me your nutjobs?...i'm sending them right back up that road..cuz you aint far from me woman, lol)

[PiPhi2004]

Agreed with PPs, It would have taken every nerve in my body to hold me back from knocking her block off if a family member EVER grabbed me to hurt me (even just my thumb). I really just dont know what some family members are thinking...I also wonder how much they really are embarassing themselves when they choose to act out like that, as we always seem to get a big LOL on here or behind closed doors!

I agree, poor mother! She probably can't get a word in edgewise to even think about pain with this crazy woman there. I also feel that the apple usually doesnt fall far from the tree in most cases...

[southernbeegirl, BSN, RN]

I have to tell yall...we had absolutely what i thought was the worst family in the world. every day they were attacking nurses and threatening to get them fired. unreal at the demands.

anyhoo...one day her son decided to take her out for a car ride. they were forever insisting we get her up to walk when she was very obese and hadnt walked in years! lol.

so this day he takes her out. i asked therapy to help get her in the car cuz i was just over him. but when they came back, therapy was gone. we have cameras in our facility. we saw him pull up at the door and were sitting there groaing cuz they were back.

until.......

when he got her out of the car, he couldnt lift her and barely got her on the edge of her wheelchair and dumped her in the flower bed!

i know, i know...i'm going straight to hell but so are yall so just get on the bus,lol...

we laffed till we cried!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and when he came in to scream at us to go pick her up and he was drenched in sweat and dirt...we were still laffing!

[southernbeegirl, BSN, RN]

i actually agree with yall and have no idea why or how i didnt lose it on the woman.

It had to be God doing for me what i couldnt do for myself cuz she did this at the very tail end of a long, horrible weekend of sick patients, staff fighting and i was drained. so i was so mentally and physically tired i just let it run down my back.

thank you God! lol, it's a good thing i have Him watching out for me sometimes,lol

[Sue7573]

LOL Well we wont be sending anymore your way I promise. That is still to close to home for some.

Have you ever had a family member get upset at the time it takes to call the answering service to get to pts doctor so you can tell him the exact same thing you told him three hours ago. So family member gets phone book looks up Doc's home number calls him on her cell and the shoves cell in your face????? Didn't happen to me but did happen just a little while back. Nurse said she didn't know what to say. Doc was mad.

If it were me and I could contain myself. I would have handed the phone back to her and said I don't know what kind of germs are on that phone.OR made a big ole production of getting alcohol pads out and wiping the family members phone down.

[suzy253, RN]

You're right!!!

....figured you were your 'own security' as well when you mentioned rehab.

It's awful what we have to deal with sometimes.