welcome to the hilton...please dont forget to tip your waitress

Cindy-OB RN/CCE · Mar 6, 2002

I had a post-partum mom ask me to get clippers out of her purse and clip her finger nails! I thought I heard her wrong so I asked her to repeat it and she did. I handed her the purse off her bedside table that was ten inches from her hand and said, " Here you go, you can clip them." What the heck are these people thinking?

Shandy12 · Mar 6, 2002

I particularly love the patient who plays one nurse against another. You all know the type. Nurse so and so said I could get up now, after you've just told her it's only 1/2 hr. until bedtime. Of course, another nurse said no such thing.......

And the patient who is "well-connected" and thinks that playing bridge with the administrator's wife immediately gives her special status.

I like the visitors who are sooo well-informed medically about their family member's condition. Explain to me how the diabetes became so out of control in the home setting if the family has expertise in the treatment of their family member??

It's never dull, that's for sure!

Lynda

thisnurse · Mar 6, 2002

OH MY GOD... i swear that EVERY time i write about something on this board, thats what happens to me on my next shift.

admission..

comes from docs office (from what i gather doc doesnt want to admit her but daughter...RN pushes)

they go from office to information desk where a very helpful and yet stupid volunteer takes them to their room. oops...did we forget ADMISSIONS?

they leave the patient and her daughter the RN, who by the way USED to work floors so she understands that we are busy. she just wants to make sure orders are carried out...ect. in other words she is a bytch.

nobody tells me the patient has arrived. by chance i happened to be walking down the hall and ran into the daughter. they had been in the room for 30 mns they say before anyone even knew they were there. the silly volunteer just put them in the room and left.

there are of course, no orders, no hospital id, no ANYTHING cos as far as the hospital is concerned, she doesnt exist.

by some very strange fluke, the resident for her doc just happens to be sitting at the desk. i tell him that the patient is there. of course he knows nothing about it but will be in.

i call admissions and of course they are pizzed cos now they have to come up and do the admission on the floor.

i LOVE listening to ppl bytch at me.

i go in the pts room and explain what happened and that the admission docs are coming in and both the patient and the daughter are angry because she was "just at the docs office" and doesnt need another doc to look at her. they swear my assitant has her orders. i tell them that an assistant would not have her orders. they argue with me. the assitant comes in and they ask her...of course she doesnt have orders. THERE ARENT ANY

and im wondering what kind of RN would think that md orders would be handled "magically" by a CNA?

there was all kinds of cool stuff after that. the daughter was demanding like you would not believe.

while we are waiting for admissions to come up the doc is giving me verbals. im trying like hell to carry out the orders asap. and as i am in the room, THE DAUGHTER THE RN IS QUESTIONING MY EVERY MOVE. why did the doc order that? she doesnt need that?

finally i stopped and told her to go talk to the doc who was still at the desk.

i waited for her to finish talking to the doc then i went to the desk right after she was back in the room.

look...if i am going to be questioned with every order i try to carry out, i dont want this patient. i dont have time for private duty nursing. you order something and the daughter says you shouldnt have ordered that and she doesnt want it. i am not going to be on the phone with you all night over every little thing. i dont want that and im sure you dont either.

doc says..."problem is, the daughter is an RN"

yeah...that IS the problem. im sure that we can arrange for the daughter to do private duty for mom.

you know sometimes you get these ppl and they come in and they are going to tell YOU what they are going to do. first thing we argued about was her wearing a gown. she DEMANDED to wear her street clothes. I tried to explain why that was impractical...they didnt care.

i told them ok, then, what you wear is up to you.

they will find out later on when mom has the iv going and she cant take off her dress. and tomorrow when its time for the mri and other tests shes going to...she'll see what i meant.

i am now kicking myself for not asking where the daughter worked.

thankfully i only had this gem for an hour. another nurse took over the case cos she thought she could handle the daughter.

it didnt quite work out that way.

by the end of the night the pt was complaining that one of the staff had "assaulted her"

if i get her tomorrow, i swear im going to refuse the assignment.

but you know if they keep this up...the docs will just release her so she wont even be there.

teeituptom, BSN, RN · Mar 6, 2002

Howdy Amy

Yes I bring food into the staff, Just my way of doing things. And yes I cook the large majority of it, Im an excellent if somewhat spicy cook, I do love flavor in food. I guess it matches my personality, because Im not very bland either..

Live in work in Plano texas, nice enough place, and they are building golfcourses all over the place for me too enjoy

keep it in the short grass yall

teeituptom

SICU Queen · Mar 6, 2002

Moons ago when I worked Telemetry, we had a patient named Frank who would come in with CP. He was over 500 lbs. and had Pickwickian Syndrome also.

He would walk around our unit in a pair of cut-off sweat shorts and nothing else, with his remote tele swinging from his chest like an elephant trunk.

We had a glassed in nurses' station, and he would lean against the glass and watch us, and fall asleep standing up, and would drool down the glass. It scared the sh*t out of me first time I saw him do that.

He had an extremely pendulous abdomen and had cellulitis on the underside, and we'd have to run Bactroban on the open areas TID. Talk about revolting, especially since he would get in his bed, lay on his back and pull his pants off for this to be done. Let it suffice to say I was NOT impressed.

His wife was a hoot. She would complain to the manager that we didn't give good PM care because we wouldn't massage him (don't ask where he wanted to be massaged). She also complained about his body odor and would insist that we give him a bed bath with "thorough peri care". One night I was really busy and she was insisting that he be bathed, so I got all of the supplies together and told her to do it. She was not happy :)

I could go on and on about this guy. He was just so disgusting and made no effort to do anything for himself, and his wife was just about unbearable with her demands. This "couple" was a motivating factor in my transfer to ICU.

Sometimes I feel like I should be wearing a Hooters t-shirt...

l-andrée · Mar 6, 2002

Don't you just feel like telling some patients (and their love ones...) that the "H" stands for HOSPITAL not HOTEL or HONOLULU or HARASS-ME or HAREM or HOOKER or HOUSEKEEPING...

And thank God for Diprivan!!!

wolfox · Mar 6, 2002

OMG, the patients on postpartum aren't nearly as demanding as the FOBs. I had three stay-overs last night. One mother had a crotch like raw hamburger and needed assist getting OOB and getting the baby so she could nurse. FOB moaned and sighed everytime I went into the room and disturbed his sleep by helping her. #2 had an emergency D & C to remove placenta. She's due down from surgery any minute. FOB crawls into the bed that is set up to receive her. #3 is a real gem. Two weeks ago he punched her in the face-she wound up in ER getting sutured. Last night, he refused the cot. Then crawled up into the other patient bed in the room-right under the sign that told him not to do so and ate fried chicken in it. Argued with three of us all night about his RIGHT to do so-because he's "tired". Had a temper tantrum in which he threw a cushion from the cot. Didn't lift a finger to assist the mother, who was breastfeeding continuously. Then when the baby was keeping him awake, decided that the baby needed to go to the nursery.

I had the FEMALE security guard escort him from the building.

When I'm queen of the hospital-only FOBs who have completed an infant care course and signed an agreement, or who have just had an 8 pound infant come out of their own tales and plan to breastfeed will be allowed to sleep overnight.

thisnurse · Mar 6, 2002

and we have yet another patient whos wife is a nurse. he is a renal patient and guess what? she is a renal nurse!

after three weeks of hospitalization it might occur to her that hubby dear should be able to move himself in bed. it should also occur to her that there is NO REASON for hubby to be incontinent of stool or to vomit ON THE BED.

you would think she would be KICKING HUBBY RIGHT IN THE ASS AND TELLING HIM TO STOP POUTING AND GET MOVING!!!!

im dying to but wont...ask her what she would do with a renal pt who refused to even move himself down in the bed or roll on his side.

he is only in for dialysis for gods sake. he had another illness but that has been resolved for weeks now.

hubbys skin is breaking down cos he refuses to move. when we reposition him, he gets mad.

if that were my husband i would make him get the hell out of that bed. its obvious that he wants to die because he is now a dialysis pt. MIGHT WANT TO CONSIDER THAT FACTOR IN HIS CARE.....NAH

she just keeps *****ing at us and constantly calling the supervisor because we are trying to make him do for himself.

she doesnt like the care he is getting. MOVE HIM THEN!!

or how bout she comes in and cares for him.

she comes maybe once a week to inspect us. thats cool...i dont mind but as a nurse she should be able to see whats up and she should be able to see her husband with our eyes. i know its hard and i have been there before with my mom.

this nurse, with all her education and experience is buying her husband a one way ticket to a nursing home.

in the meantime we are living in hell, being called in there every 10 mns for ...hand me that pan.....give me a kleenex....change my bed....fluff my pillow.....turn me on my side.....put me on my back....raise the head of my bed.....change the channel on the tv...hang up my phone....ALL THINGS HE CAN DO....ALL BY HIMSELF.

then when we tell him thats not acceptable...he needs to TRY to do those things for himself, our supervisor is in his room.

last night we had to switch assistants cos the one assigned to him told him there was no reason for him to spit on the bed.

his family didnt like that.

gee we had the supervisor down there and the charge nurse and the doc over that one....lol

wolfox · Mar 7, 2002

Oh, and I love the families who think that if you are at the nurse's station it is because you don't have anything to do. You are just sitting there awaiting your next "fetch and step" assignment from the hotel patrons.

Like last night when I was awaiting a call from the MD (I have no unit clerk) and a family of 3 comes out of a patient room to tell me that their family member needs the phone moved to where she can reach it. Then proceed to all stand and stare at me expecting me to jump right on it.

Or when last week, I'm looking up latest platelet count on HELLP pt and latest WBC on an immunosuppressed pt (last WBC was 1.?) and the patient is NOT in on isolation. And a family member of an ambulatory PP pt comes up to the nursing station and RAPS ON THE DESK to get my attention, so she can tell me that her family member wants a snack.

Or the time that I am on the phone on two lines with the family and physician of a patient who is actively dying. I'm making one of those, "you need to come as soon as possible" phone calls to the family. And the family member of another pt is trying to interrupt by out-talking me to inform me that mom has been out of bed long enough and needs to be returned to bed.

ERNurse752, RN · Mar 7, 2002

Had a pt last night who came in for a migraine. There was a new neuro doc on her case, who had amitted her for 23 h obs, and who wrote an order for a protocol which doesn't exist...spent about an hour trying to get ahold of the on-call doc to get pain med orders I could actually use. I went into her room, and she was gone. Positive gown sign. Usually, I would strip the bed and do the elopement paperwork, but I thought I'd just wait for awhile. Eventually, she came back...went to get the IV stuff and her pain meds...came back and she was gone again.

Sigh...lucky for her it was so busy, b/c this time I just didn't have the time to do the elopement stuff. Over an hour later, the triage nurse came in and said she was back in the waiting room, in tears, wanting to know if she could come back. By this time her bed was ready upstairs. Let her back into her room, did her IV/meds, and told her she was darn lucky I was so busy or she would've had to do everything all over again. Went to send report up to the floor, came back, and her mom was gone...she wanted to wait for mom, so I went and did something else for a few. Came back and mom still wasn't back, so I just said sorry, I can't wait.

Had a 17 y/o who was 4 weeks pregnant in with cramping/spotting. She was waiting for an u/s to r/o ectopic. Her parents and bf were with her. They kept asking if she could have something to eat...kept telling them that we had to wait for u/s to be done and have results b/c if it's ectopic she will have to go to surgery tonight. Eventually came back, no ectopic...but they had decided to admit her to L/D since they thought she was going to sp. abort soon, and the OB wanted her NPO.

That went over well...the bf was lying in the cart with her the whole time, while the parents were there. If I was 17 y/o and pregnant, my bf would not be allowed anywhere near me, much less allowed to lay in bed with me...

Had *another* one...elderly lady who had fallen at home multiple times, was going to be admitted. Was in the ER for a long time waiting on a bed. The son was a hospital volunteer, and said that he had talked to admissions personally, and they were getting her a *private* room, what's taking so long, this is unacceptable. Pt was on the BSC at this time, and he said he refused to put her back on the cart. Either get us a hospital bed or get her a room. So I called adm, and we're waiting on the room to be clean. Let him know, told him it was totally out of my hands, and we just had to wait until the floor was ready. Saw the adm guy down there later...bet he got an earful too! Always want to say (and sometimes do!) when the hospital is this busy and this full, you're lucky if you get a bed at all, much less a private one!

Sigh...I love my job! ;P

ERNurse752, RN · Mar 7, 2002

Oh, not to mention the pt who came in for abd pain...they did her labs, CT, etc...she got tired of waiting, so she signed out AMA...wouldn't stay until the tests came back...so when they came back, they showed a bleeding spleen. Uh-oh...luckily, she had come back b/c her pain was worse (ya think?) So they told her what was going on, and that she would need surgery.

She told the PA that we had one try to get her IV, or she would leave again. Grrr..."do you realize that people DIE from this???"

so we got our best sticker to do it...never did hear what happened though!

thisnurse · Mar 7, 2002

those ppl kill me...

they act like they are giving YOU blood for YOUR own personal use or something..lol

well im not going to LET you put an IV in.

oh please...i love starting iv's...cmon be a sport..

or how bout the ones that scream when you are drawing blood. lmao. i had one going on and on and on and on....she had her eyes closed.

hey you can stop screaming now...im on the other side of the room...lmao

ill never forget that one.