Well, it finally happened after 2.5 years...

Nurses General Nursing

Published

Specializes in ICU.

I cried at work.

I bawled my eyes out, actually. For about a half hour.

:cry:

I admitted a lady with a SBO last Wednesday. The remember that the patient's daughter gave me a hard time initially when I asked her to step out of the room while we got the pt settled. She announced, "NO, I'm a NURSE." I gently asked her again, using "please" and "ma'am," explaining that it is a policy, etc etc, and she finally agreed to wait outside of the room (refused to go to the waiting room. Whatever.)

Fast forward to today... I get this patient assigned to me. I didn't think I'd have any problems.

Before I go into the room, I notice that this woman (the daughter) is hitting the stat NIBP button on the monitor herself and readjusting the bp cuff. I chose not to say anything about it.

I go into the room, I politely say hello, introduce myself and proceed to ask my patient how she is and if she has any pain. Before the pt can get a word out, the daughter goes, "Yes." I then said, "let her answer" to the daughter. (That happenes to be a pet peeve... let the patient speak for themselves if they can!) The pt proceeded to tell me that she had 8/10 pain.

Ok. So I continue with my assessment (at this point I'm thinking to myself that I should have asked her to step out for the assessment but I'm too far in now)... and get to the "toe" part of the head to toe (lol. I must be slap happy at this point from emotional exhaustion).

I then noticed that the pt's heels were reddened. Stage I. I grabbed a pillow (heck, it's practically instinct at this point for me) and said, "I'm going to lift your heels off the bed, your heels are red." The daughter then yells at me (literally) "OH NO you DONT. Those pillows are HARD as a ROCK and I've been MASSAGING her feet." I said I was sorry, that we usually elevate heels when there is a chance of skin breakdown. She then got angry that I used the word USUALLY. I explained to her that my first priority is patient safety and preventing injury, and she angrily told me, "well MY first priority is my MOTHER'S COMFORT." I said, "Well, we will have to work together on that then." She goes, "yes we WILL." (insert a MEAN tone in everything she says)

I walked out of the room. Took a deep breath.

20 minutes go by. The daughter comes out of the room and asks me for help repositioning her mother. I told her I would be in shortly. I asked a PCT for help. We both went in, and she was standing at the bedside. Now, at my work, we are told that we should not allow family members to help with physical things like repositioning because it could be a liability problem if they were to get hurt. I always thank family members for offering to help, but explain that it is our job and we will gladly do it. So, I told her this as nicely as I could, and she turned to me and started laying into me. She started screaming in my face. She told me that I was getting on her nerves and she'd had enough of my crap!! She told me I was rude for asking her to let her mom answer about the pain. She told me I was doing things to her mother without her consent (elevating heels). She was shouting, "You're off the case! You're DONE! Thats it! YOURE DONE! GO!" (waving her hand as though she was shooing a fly, mind you.) She goes, GO get your supervisor RIGHT NOW. She was shouting at me as though I were some p.o.s. low life that she could order around. It was so humiliating and hurtful. I finally just walked out of the room, and got as far away as I could before the tears started streaming out.

I was able to give report to another RN and take a different patient, which was good, but I was emotionally exhausted the entire day.

:uhoh3:

Well... that's the story. Thank you for reading it. :(

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Specializes in NICU.

I'm so sorry you had a crappy experience. :/ I hope everyone at your job was supportive....and I hope the daughter is just stressed out, and not like that all the time. Eeep. :no:

May you have better and brighter tomorrows! :D

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wowww. Im so sorry that happened to you, this lady seems like a total witch. I send you hugs :heartbeat

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Specializes in ER, TRAUMA, MED-SURG.

Sue - Oh my dear!!! I am SO sorry to hear about what happened. That was HORRIBLE! I can not even imagine how I would react in that situation. I've had "that kind" of patient with "that kind" of family and it just makes me want to run screaming down the hall pulling out my hair and not stop until I am in my car with the engine running ready to leave. That kind of crap is totally unnecessary and is in part why nurses are leaving the profession. When something similar happened to me, I also cried and could not go back the next day because I would have them again. Just couldn't face the nurse-family member.

Again, I am so sorry. If I can help, please feel free to pm me.

Anne, RNC

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This probably is not much comfort, but everyone in her life is most probably treated like this, by her.

She is someone who bitterly complains how everyone in her life continually *hits on her, when it is she, who continually *hits on everyone first!

I seem to meet more and more people like this. It saddens me.

I am sorry you had to take the brunt of this. May tomorrow be a better day for you.

shelly

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What a horror show she is!

What did your supervisor say/do?

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Specializes in ER, TRAUMA, MED-SURG.
This probably is not much comfort, but everyone in her life is most probably treated like this, by her.

She is someone who bitterly complains how everyone in her life continually *hits on her, when it is she, who continually *hits on everyone first!

I seem to meet more and more people like this. It saddens me.

I am sorry you had to take the brunt of this. May tomorrow be a better day for you.

shelly

Hey, just thought I'd add more thing that Shelly brought up. That family member that acted totally out of line to you probably does that to almost everybody. Someone that horrible doesn't just shut it off, they act like that repeatedly, not just a one time occurrence. So at least you probably weren't the only one, but I know that doesn't help much. I'll be thinking about you and hope it gets better.

Anne, RNC

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Specializes in ER, ICU, Infusion, peds, informatics.

imo, she should be ashamed of herself , to treat a peer that way.

nurses are professionals, and she wasn't treating you as such.

i'm pretty confident in saying that if a family member had treated her that way, she'd complain.

of course, if you say anything, you are going to be told that she was under a lot of stress because of her mother's illness.

i wish i could use "i was under a lot of stress" as an excuse for bad behavior when i am at work. 'cause those residents/interns sure would get a piece of my mind if i could.

all that said, let it go if you can. you know you gave your patient excellent care. it is true, that sometimes when a loved one in a patient, we nurse/family members try to control what we can, because there is so much that we can't control. that is not an excuse for her behavior, but explanation you can use for your own benefit.

there was a recent thread on this subject -- a nurse/member here had a family member go into the hospital, and she was posting about her reaction. while most of the responding posts were directed toward the nurse/family member, they were very enlightening to the nurse/non-family member, having to deal with the nurse/family member. i'll post a link if i can. if i remember correctly, scribbler (in particular) had some excellent advice.

(ps, this is one of the reasons why i'm so glad my family is >12 hr drive from me. my dad was hospitalized few months ago, and from all accounts (my mom's account -- she's also a -[retired] nurse) his behavior was horrible with respect to a few certain situations. my mom actually said that she thought my younger sister was going to try to climb out of a window, she was so embarrassed by his behavior. my dad is usually pretty easy-going. hospitalization does bad things to us, even when we try to prevent that from happening).

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I cried at work.

I bawled my eyes out, actually. For about a half hour.

:cry:

I admitted a lady with a SBO last Wednesday. The remember that the patient's daughter gave me a hard time initially when I asked her to step out of the room while we got the pt settled. She announced, "NO, I'm a NURSE." I gently asked her again, using "please" and "ma'am," explaining that it is a policy, etc etc, and she finally agreed to wait outside of the room (refused to go to the waiting room. Whatever.)

Fast forward to today... I get this patient assigned to me. I didn't think I'd have any problems.

Before I go into the room, I notice that this woman (the daughter) is hitting the stat NIBP button on the monitor herself and readjusting the bp cuff. I chose not to say anything about it.

I go into the room, I politely say hello, introduce myself and proceed to ask my patient how she is and if she has any pain. Before the pt can get a word out, the daughter goes, "Yes." I then said, "let her answer" to the daughter. (That happenes to be a pet peeve... let the patient speak for themselves if they can!) The pt proceeded to tell me that she had 8/10 pain.

Ok. So I continue with my assessment (at this point I'm thinking to myself that I should have asked her to step out for the assessment but I'm too far in now)... and get to the "toe" part of the head to toe (lol. I must be slap happy at this point from emotional exhaustion).

I then noticed that the pt's heels were reddened. Stage I. I grabbed a pillow (heck, it's practically instinct at this point for me) and said, "I'm going to lift your heels off the bed, your heels are red." The daughter then yells at me (literally) "OH NO you DONT. Those pillows are HARD as a ROCK and I've been MASSAGING her feet." I said I was sorry, that we usually elevate heels when there is a chance of skin breakdown. She then got angry that I used the word USUALLY. I explained to her that my first priority is patient safety and preventing injury, and she angrily told me, "well MY first priority is my MOTHER'S COMFORT." I said, "Well, we will have to work together on that then." She goes, "yes we WILL." (insert a MEAN tone in everything she says)

I walked out of the room. Took a deep breath.

20 minutes go by. The daughter comes out of the room and asks me for help repositioning her mother. I told her I would be in shortly. I asked a PCT for help. We both went in, and she was standing at the bedside. Now, at my work, we are told that we should not allow family members to help with physical things like repositioning because it could be a liability problem if they were to get hurt. I always thank family members for offering to help, but explain that it is our job and we will gladly do it. So, I told her this as nicely as I could, and she turned to me and started laying into me. She started screaming in my face. She told me that I was getting on her nerves and she'd had enough of my crap!! She told me I was rude for asking her to let her mom answer about the pain. She told me I was doing things to her mother without her consent (elevating heels). She was shouting, "You're off the case! You're DONE! Thats it! YOURE DONE! GO!" (waving her hand as though she was shooing a fly, mind you.) She goes, GO get your supervisor RIGHT NOW. She was shouting at me as though I were some p.o.s. low life that she could order around. It was so humiliating and hurtful. I finally just walked out of the room, and got as far away as I could before the tears started streaming out.

I was able to give report to another RN and take a different patient, which was good, but I was emotionally exhausted the entire day.

:uhoh3:

Well... that's the story. Thank you for reading it. :(

How about turning the tables on the whole situation- tell the charge nurse that YOU DON'T WANT TAKE CARE OF THIS WOMAN'S MOTHER!! THAT THERE ARE MORE THAN ENOUGH PATIENTS WHO WOULD BE DELIGHTED TO HAVE YOU TAKE CARE OF THEM. You might suggest to other nurses that they also request not to have her as a patient. Maybe when enough nurses refuse to care for her mother, it will occur to her that maybe she crossed the line one to many times. JMHO AND MY NY $0.O2.

Lindarn, RN, BSN, CCRN

Spokane, Washington

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Specializes in ICU, Telemetry.

What's bad is when you wrote how the patient's daughter "fired" you, I immediately thought of a pt's daughter that I had who did the same thing to a CNA who was taking mom's BP (mom hit the door wanting morphine q5 minutes, nothing wrong with her, nothing but tylenol on the order and a spiral CT ordered for unspecified "back pain"). I came in the room, she starts getting hysterical, saying the CNA was "dismissed" and demanding her mom get tablet morphine (see this coming?) and she shoved me away from the bed, when I told her that mom had no narcotic orders.

As it turned out, we had a cop in uniform at the nurse's station who heard the commotion, including the CNA scream, "oh no, you didn't HIT her!" Miss Prissy pants found herself in a face to face with the cop, security, and my charge nurse. The cop asked if I wanted to press charges, and I told him I wanted her out of the building. The cop tried to escort her off the floor, and she hit the cop.

Miss Prissy pants went to jail, mom left AMA. Cop came by later, told us the daughter tested sky high for opiates, and he thought that mom was getting the drugs for the daughter. That was a new one on me.

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It did hit me-do you know for sure she is a nurse? I get sooooo many

family members/friends who come in with a pt. and hit me with the "I am a nurse." I guess it is supposed to intimidate me. I usually then use "nurse-speak" and it weeds out the pretenders really fast!

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Specializes in Day Surgery, Agency, Cath Lab, LTC/Psych.

It is so hard to not take attacks like these personally, but you need to try. You need to remember that SHE is the problem, not you. If it were me I would have filled out an incident report for a disruptive family member. I would have called the primary MD and notified him of the family member's unacceptable behavior. Depending upon how supportive the medical staff is at your hospital you can have them come and speak with the family. That often really cools things down and alerts family members that the staff taking care of them are a team and they cannot attack one member of the team without attacking all members of the team. Family members need to be notified that respectful, adult behavior is required at the hospital. I know that she was angry and stressed out but there are much more mature ways to handle her emotions.

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