Sorry, but no..:

Nursing Students General Students

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I'm sorry but no. I do not call the people I work for, clients. They are my patients. I do not charge them nor solicit them. I care for them. I have gone to (or am going to) school for my professional designation as a registered nurse. I can't stand the term "client". Seriously. We are not in retail.

I think of it as empowering to the "patient" to be called a client particularly if they're in a rest home or a person using primary health or mental health services.

In New Zealand people using mental health services have many titles I guess you could say, they can be called clients (which is the most common term used amongst nurses), service users/consumers (which is the term used in ministry of health documents) or patients. I think the main reason names alternative to patient are used is to transfer some of the power to the client and it also helps them get out of the sick role. If someone has a mental illness, they are most likely going to live with it for life in varying degrees of severity, therefore if they are called clients it may help them to see that they are 'regular' people and they just also happen to have a mental illness. After all of this rambling I guess I'm saying calling "patients" client's is a positive thing.

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The term "client" was pushed during the dawn of political correctness, and is well-meant. However, it doesn't really fit for most situations.

For my definitions, a person admitted to the hospital = patient

people living where they are treated, like nursing homes = resident

people getting outpatient, often elective treatment, like botox = client

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Specializes in LTC,Hospice/palliative care,acute care.

Patients are "consumers" of our "product" and if they are not satisfied with the "service" they receive they can go elsewhere (within the confines of their insurance plan) Doesn't that make you throw up a little in your mouth?

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I'm used to documenting patients as "clients" (although verbally I'll sometimes refer to them as patients or clients) from my previous place of employment. At my new place when I document, I am having a hard time breaking the habit and always having to delete "client" and replace it with "veteran" or "patient". It's not that I have anything against calling them "clients". As someone else said, it is just semantics. I just want my documents to conform with the normal practices of that unit.

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Specializes in Medical-Surgical, Supervisory, HEDIS, IT.
Who thinks of this stuff?

:roflmao:

Most likely business people who have never had an actual encounter with a PATIENT. :)

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I agree priorities2 - depends on the setting. Now I am in LTC and I write patient everywhere and I am constantly scolded to write "residents."

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Patients are "consumers" of our "product" and if they are not satisfied with the "service" they receive they can go elsewhere (within the confines of their insurance plan) Doesn't that make you throw up a little in your mouth?

No, why would it? It's a true statement. We may not like it, but it's true.

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Most likely business people who have never had an actual encounter with a PATIENT. :)

No, it came out of the humanist psychology movement in the mental health community (providers, who were working with actual, live clients day in and day out) in the '70s and '80s, for the reasons JessNZ already mentioned. Once it was being used widely in the psychiatric community, it spread from psychiatric nursing specifically to all of nursing (with, obviously, some resistance :)).

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Specializes in Med/Surg & Hospice & Dialysis.
Lots of outpatient mental health services/programs use "consumer." I don't care for it myself (I am a long-time "client" user) but there are plenty of agencies that use it.[/quote']

Heck, I'm a long-term mental health patient.

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I don't really give a rip what we call them... customers, clients, guests, patients... all are true...

Mostly, I'll call them whatever my boss wants me to.

I think of them as patients and that probably won't change even if I do refer to them as clients...

I am mindful, though, that many of them have a choice as to where they spend their healthcare dollars and I would like them to spend the money with us.

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Specializes in Med/surg, Quality & Risk.
Patients are "consumers" of our "product" and if they are not satisfied with the "service" they receive they can go elsewhere (within the confines of their insurance plan) Doesn't that make you throw up a little in your mouth?

They sure can, and when we don't like the "consumer's" behavior we should be able to ban them from coming back, but we can't.

The day they insist on me calling a patient a customer I quit. Customers are always right. You are not right when you sneak outside to smoke (especially when you have a wound infection). You are not always right when you use abusive language toward the people who are trying to take care of you. Your visitor is not always right when they push buttons on an IV pump because "it was annoying" despite the fact they've been told before not to touch the equipment.

Being a customer or a consumer of a service is not compatible with our duty to provide quality care and keep the patient from acting against their best interests.

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.
Heck, I'm a long-term mental health patient.

My psychiatrist refers to patients as clients. But when I have to call the office, I refer to myself as a "patient of Dr. Awesomesauce". I guess it's all in what we're used to......when I went to nursing school in the mid 1990s, the powers that be tried to get us to use the word "client" and it didn't take with any of us.

And I LOATHE the term "consumer" when it comes to health care. I'll budge on "client" if I absolutely have to, but "consumer", or even worse, "customer"? Never!!!

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