Dealing with rude doctors..

Nurses Relations

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I am a new nurse, and have been fortunate enough to work with respectful doctors and NPs--until last week! One of my patients was concerned because the doctor told him he would be back to see him after lunch to re-pack his abd wound, and at 8 pm still no sign of MD. Pt was also requesting pain medicine. I realize that that isn't emergent, but decided to go ahead and call since it's been 8 hours and my pt is getting uncomfortable. So I page the doctor, and he calls me back 2 minutes later. I start to explain the situation to him, and he cuts me off and snaps, "Right now I'm in the middle of intubating a man who's about to die, so I don't have time for that at the moment!" Um yeah ok, if you're intubating someone right this second, why are you calling me back? HA He did come up to see my patient minutes later and all was well. I didn't say anything to him and just let it go. He has been reported multiple times for being hateful to nurses and nothing has ever come of it so I don't plan on going that route. Just curious as to how other more experienced nurses handle hateful doctors?

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL Dave

Specializes in PACU, OR.
HAHAHAHA, LMAO. This is the funniest comment I have ever seen hahahaha. Short and right to the point. I have to agree though :)

You clearly didn't read Dave's response :D

OOOPS! Apologies! You clearly did....

Specializes in Trauma Surgery, Nursing Management.

For some reason, docs seem to think that we all carry around a crystal ball and can actually SEE what they are doing as we call/page them for a question or follow up.

I work in the OR and sometimes our surgeons get paged. I have been an OR nurse long enough to know when to interrupt them during surgery and when a page can just wait. One day, one of my fave surgeons was doing a VERY simple case, and a page came through that I deemed important enough to tell him about. I waited for him to finish his mini-lecture to the resident, and then informed him about the page. He got this snarky attitude, puffed his chest up and said, "YOU tell THEM that I AM OPERATING right now and they need to call THE OTHER ATTENDING!" I blinked a couple of times, waited a moment so that he could see that I was not happy about his tone, and replied, "Well, Dr. X, I feel confident that the hospitalist that just paged you regarding this consult request for a 23 year old in the ER bleeding out from a rectolady partsl fistula is not carrying around the surgical schedule for every attending today. I don't mind calling him back to ask him to call another attending, but did you just win the Jackwagon of the Day drawing or something?"

He immediately understood that he took his frustrations out on me, and apologized profusely. Sometimes you just have to show them a mirror.

I never take it personally unless they purposefully and directly insult me. If they do, I always remind them that I have some land and a shovel...

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