What Baffles You?

Nurses General Nursing

Published

So I have come across this a few times. I am holding a straw to a persons lips and they drink and drink and drink and pretty soon they are waving their hands for me to stop. Stop what?! You don't have to keep sucking on the straw just because it is in your mouth. I think the universal sign of I'm done please remove the straw should be to stop sucking on it and open your mouth! I have had a few people have to catch their breath and make comments about me giving them too much! What? I don't get it.

Why parents of my child patients are refusing vital signs..you are in the hospital right?

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I wonder about a patient who, on third shift, will get himself out of bed, in his wheelchair and down to the nurses station to scream at me about the aide not emptying his urinal all night. Something doesn't add up there.

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Specializes in Psych.

People who are able bodied and want to be lifted --as well as those who lift them-- need to be educated. I am a big strong boy and I seriously injured my back helping an able bodied and very light weighted person "get comfortable." And that was back before we had "no lifting" policies in place.

Another thing I swear I will do someday is to call in "the other nurse who did it" to do it again: they make my life a misery.

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Specializes in Psych.
Most of these are just part of a nurse's job to teach and encourage independence. Some nurses refuse to do this, leaving their coworkers to wonder why a 45 year old man is acting like an infant. (More than usual I mean.)

If I were to say this about a women, the comment would have been moderated. Comments like these make this man very uncomfortable on this site and in the workplace.

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Specializes in Med-Surg, Transplant.

Patients who stand outside of their room (or in an even more annoying/baffling twist - their family member's room) awkwardly hovering and then just randomly asking ANY person wearing scrubs who walks by ANYTHING about their/their relative's entire hospital stay. For crying out loud, you HAVE a call light directly liked to your nurse's phone and tech's phone and we've shown you how to use it (like, every shift by now!). That person that you are randomly questioning doesn't magically know all the answers about every patient! Whyyyy is this such a difficult concept for people (especially frequent fliers) to grasp???

Also, speaking of call lights, I am seriously baffled as to why they all must go off in the five minutes before change of shift - and this happens, mind you, after you have been in that patient's room FREQUENTLY for the last several hours! Maybe one day I'll understand this phenomenon :no:

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Specializes in LTC/SNF.
Another thing I swear I will do someday is to call in "the other nurse who did it" to do it again: they make my life a misery.

:roflmao: AMEN! Patients are frequently disappointed to find that I am not as nice as "the other nurse who did it".

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Specializes in LTC/SNF.

What baffles me:

Patients who can feed themselves just fine but somehow need the nurse to wipe their hiney for them.

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Specializes in PDN; Burn; Phone triage.
When our victims of violence sneak in cell phones and tell people who aren't on their visiting list (they get 3 fixed visitors) where they are located in the hospital. If I was shot or stabbed I don't think I would want everyone to know where I was located!

I feel like our denials/violence victims end up with the MOST visitors of anyone on our unit.

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Specializes in PCCN.

why my post mi pts who are on tele get angry that we have to check their vitals every 4 hours.

when pts refuse like 90 percent of their ordered meds ( well, except for that IV dilaudid) . You came in why??

when pts come in for cp or sob(chf), but then sign out ama to go smoke off the property, then come right back in thru ed.

:banghead::banghead::banghead:

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Specializes in Oncology.

When my 350 lb 50 year old woman, who constantly calls out to help her move around, but won't even move her own arms to help. You can call me a million times a night, you can feed yourself 3 meals and countless snacks a day, but when I ask you to lift your elbow off the bed so me and 3 of my closest friends can hoist you up, its too much work.

:sniff:

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Specializes in Critical Care; Cardiac; Professional Development.

Why some perfectly grown, fully matured, completely oriented adults feel the need to whine, raise the pitch of their voice and get softer when they are in pain. Just tell me you are in pain. I'm not going to refuse you pain meds if you aren't acting like a baby. I am, however, going to treat you like I did my kids when they did that as preschoolers. I am going to tell you I can't understand what you are saying and ask you to repeat yourself. Because I can't.

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If I were to say this about a women, the comment would have been moderated...

Not if it was TRUE!

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