Maybe I was just cranky from lack of sleep yesterday (baby was sick and up all night- should have called in), but one of my patients had a visitor that just irritated the heck out of me.
Note that I've had this patient a couple of times during his 5 week stay in our ICU. He's very ill, but he is getting better. Yesterday was the first day that I had ever seen this woman, but I had been told that the patient had 2 current girlfriends (1 of which visits him daily, and I have gotten to know her pretty well), and an ex-wife that visits regularly. They all get along, surprisingly.
My first experience with her was when she shows up right after I left his room yesterday morning (after spending an hour getting him straightened out and comfortable- finally). She comes up to the nurse's station and says, "We need our nurse." That just rubbed me the wrong way for some reason- like she was summoning her waiter, or something. When I introduced myself as his nurse, she says he needs mouthcare. I told her I had just done it. Then she says she wants to wash his hair. I told her no, I just had to bump up his sedation medication and give him MSO4 to get him comfortable again. Then she starts asking me a bunch of questions about his status, and gets huffy when I ask if I could inquire who she was, as I had never seen her before.
She tells me who she is and says she's been here every day since he got admitted. Not true- she hadn't even been there the day before. So, I only give her the basic HIPAA-proof info. She then goes behind me and verifies what I've told her with the PCA. Later on, she wants to get huffy with me again, when I ask her to leave the room, so I could turn him and do skin care to his peri area/coccyx SBD. She says, "Well, it's not like I haven't seen it before." The thing is, he is sedated on a Diprovan drip, and I'm not turning it off so I can ask his permission- he gets very agitated at times. I again asked, "For the sake of his privacy, can you go wait in the waiting room for about 15 minutes while I do this?" She huffs off.
Fast forward to 2 hours later: I transfer him to the long-term vent unit. She tried to enter the room twice while we were getting him settled in his new room after I repeatedly asked her to wait in the waiting room. As the receiving nurse and I are getting him settled, we notice his toenails have been painted bright orange! She did this to him when she came back in the room after I did his skin care. What a jerk! :angryfire
Now, I hear the guy has a great sense of humor, but he's really sick, and isn't recovering all that well from his CABG (he ended up being trached, pegged, etc.). The receiving nurse on the long-term vent unit said he wasn't going to allow her in the room from then on. Had I realized what she had done, I wouldn't either. I wanted to go chew her out in the waiting room, but thought better of it, because I probably would've gotten fired.
