I'm tired of it! - Page 4

I've only been a nurse for about 2 months working at a hospital as a float nurse. (lucky me FT)

I'm SICK AND TIRED OF THE FOLLOWING THINGS:

1. The patient that calls you everytime you enter their room (4 bed rooms)
2. Patients who are SO UNGRATEFUL- for example i was showering a pt this morning and putting on gloves after bringing cream to put on her back and she started screaming at me to help her (she was fine, water off in comode chair NOT CONFUSED.) I said im coming hun just a sec. She kept screaming it REALLY TICKED ME OFF. And everytime i gave her anything she gave me this confused face, or complained about little things i had already given her meds/solutions for.

For example told me she had a headache i gave her tylenol 2 minutes later i go in to check on someone else and she calls me and tells me the meds arent working...im like SERIOUSLY? by the end of the shift i thought i was going to go nuts on her because she started acting like I havent done anything for her the entire shift. When i explained this to her she would Jekyl and Hyde by patting my back (with the hand she used to pick her nose) and tell me how great i am.

3. Families who want YOU to answer all their questions AFTER the MD has just left
4. RUDE DOCTORS who think their above you in every day
5. Nurses who just stare at you/try to show their better than you. SERIOUSLY WE NEED TO SUPPORT EACH OTHER
6. Student nurses who dont really want to be nurses and thus are rude and messy which you need to clean up after when they go for their 2 hour lunch break
7. Inadequate-Little supplies


...I find the most annoying thing though is number 2..ungrateful demanding patients SERIOUSLY im not your maid and I dont understand why they would have this conception that there is one nurse per patient? because thats seriously how they act like it.

Yes, yes, yes! I dislike when patients and their families wait until after the doctor leaves and then come up with 10,000 questions they should have asked the doc before they left. They then ask you to call the doctor back to their room. I will if the doctor is still on the floor. If not then you'll simply have to wait until he/she either rounds the next morning or is on the floor later in the day. I even give my patients paper and pencils so that they can write down their questions before the doctor gets there. I may not see the doc when they round so they need to ask too. Patients STILL refuse to ask questions and when the doctors ask them if they need anything say no and then ask me why the doctor didn't change their pain medication or didn't order benadryl for their constant itching....um, because you said you didn't need anything!!!!!! Now I have to stop what I'm doing to call the doctor who was just on the floor five minutes ago. -sigh-

Also, patients please stop lying about your needs. I come in to reassess your pain or ask if you need anything. You say you're fine. I walk out of the room and five seconds later you call me back into the room complaining that you're in pain or that you need to pee...or...the list goes on and on.

Had a doctor go into my patients room once (laughable, but that's where the story could stop and be humorous) who was receiving blood. Blood was running slow because pt was c/o being too cold. So it had been running 3 hours already. Doctor proceeds to bump it down more cause pt complaints. I ask him, are you going to write the order for that? Answer: no. I explain to him that it'll run over 4 hours and I'll get in trouble if he doesn't. He explains that he doesn't care. I said ok. Wrote a verbal order and he tells me he's not signing it. I get written up. I refuse to sign the write up and point to a nurses note I had made about the incident. Moral of story: don't be a douche because someone is taking note of it, literally.

The things that I'm tired of:

1) Non-compliant drama queen/kings for patients. Won't take their BP meds, shocked when they have a stroke. Won't take their insulin/watch their diet, shocked when they have a stroke/MI/amputation. Won't monitor their fluid intake, end up in fluid overload, and the poor dialysis tech that has already been at work 15 hours gets to stay for 3 more to try to prevent them from getting flash edema -- every month for the same patient.

2) DKAs. These people make me crazy. It's one thing if you've been sick, post op, and your sugar gets out of whack, can happen to anybody. But the folks we see every 3 weeks, tell us "oh, I've been following the diet, taking my fsbs and insulin" and they've gained 5 pounds, have NO marks where they've been testing their sugar, and their a1c is 11, up from 10.5 the last time? And they act completely hateful. You don't like IVs, then treat your diabetes!

3) Family members who treat you like a dog. Million horror stories.

4) Docs who won't listen, then throw you under the bus.

5) Co-dependent families, weird families, and people who want to have sex while the patient's in the hospital. I mean, come on, that's just freaking nasty!

6) People who aren't nurses telling me how nurses need to be endlessly loving, endlessly approving, take anything without complaint because it's a calling and how wonderful my "calling" is -- well, I've got half a cup of "calling" all over my favorite shoes. It says "nurse" on my tag, not "saint."

I need a vacation. I read that NASA was putting people in isolation for 4 months with no physical human contact (email and video okay) to see what would happen if a Mars mission went bad, and only one person survived to try to come back to earth. I really, seriously thought about signing up.

That sounds MAGICAL. Would totally love that! (As long as you get internet.)

I once heard one of our ICU nurses say, "the best patient is a paralysed, sedated orphan". These days I truly agree a great deal of the time.

if i can offer you one word of advice- please never ever forget how awful bedside nursing is, and how demanding it is.

My favorite . i would take that patient anyday!!!

I will happily work short and take three vented and sedated patients in the ICU any day. versus two step down patients who have worn out the call buzzer and have forgotten how to take basic care of themselves.

My favorite question is "how did you wipe your bottom at home?", oh, you did it yesterday... guess what, you are doing it today!

And no I am not feeding the five family members visiting you with manicured nails, cell phones and designer wear. This is not a full service restaurant.

If you show up as a DKA, for the umteeth time, you WILL do your own accuchecks, you will not get any additional food above your diet and you will NOT get dilaudid as your pain is from YOUR choice of your body eating itself for nutrition.

All totally appropriate things to vent about. But, doctors shouldn't be silencing/messing with alarms/IV pumps/TFs. Imagine what a can of worms that would create!