I am a new nurse, and I hope I don't ever become one of these nurses. I work on a demanding medicine floor, where many patients become quite needy and require a lot of attention from the nurses. I have been appalled to notice that some of the nurses on my floor resort to bashing patients while they are at the nurses station. I have heard some of them refer to certain difficult patients as jerks (or worse), and if told by the CNA or another nurse that their patient needs pain meds, they roll their eyes and in a huff go to pain scale them.
I don't know if I am wrong in feeling the way I do. I know how hard our jobs are and I realize it's therapeutic for nurses to vent about their work, but this just seems to go beyond venting. I don't feel patients deserve to be name-called at all. Some of these nurses are also the same ones that say on report that certain patients are difficult to handle in some way, but then when I have them, I get along with them very well (except for one old lady I once had, she was nice to no one, but I never bashed her with other nurses). So I take with a grain of salt what nurses report to me about the patient's demeanor. Perhaps I have a different approach? Sometimes I do give off a "I will take great care of you but I won't tolerate crap" approach. Perhaps also because I am male? Who knows.
Thanks for listening. This has been bugging me for a little while and just wanted to put it out there.
