Things you'd LOVE to be able to tell patients, and get away with it.

[AngelfireRN]

Hi, my name is AngelfireRN, I'll be your nurse tonight.

I am not a waitress, nor am I your slave.

Yelling and hurling obscenities at me will not get you your pain meds any sooner than they are ordered. Nor will having your family member or entourage do the same.

Threatening lawsuits and having umpteen family members camp out in the halls or hold up the nurse's station will not get you preferential treatment.

Physically grabbing me as I go down the hall is NOT a good idea.

I do not give the orders, but I do have to follow/enforce them. This is something that you should take up with your doctor.

No, I will not call him again to ask him for more pain medicine. He has been called twice and has said no both times.

No, I will not give you his number so you can "straighten him out".

No, you are not my only patient, and I highly doubt that you are single-handedly paying my salary. On the off chance that you are, let's talk about a raise.

NO, NO, NO, I most empahatically will NOT come get you when it is time for your next pain shot while you are having a smoke break. I also will not bring it to you in the smoking room. (Have actually said that, I am allergic to cigarettes. I did it once, had an asthma attack, desatted to 83, and turned blue, according to the patient and my charge nurse, after the patient had to help me back to the floor).

No, I don't really care if your family has not eaten all day, they drove here by themselves, they are not sick, and no, I will not call for 6 guest trays. (This of course, is if the patient in question does not need all 6 family members present, and is not at death's door).

No, you may not have 3 six-packs of soda from the kitchen, there are other people that would like a snack, too.

No, they will not open up the kitchen up just for you, at 1 in the morning, because you don't like the snacks we have on the floor.

I could think of hundreds, but those will do for a start. I know it sounds mean, but this is why I got out of bedside nursing. When a hospital becomes the Hilton, I'm gone!

Have fun!

[tvccrn, ASN, RN]

had I been him, I would have been getting paler and paler to, that would have scared the crud monkeys out of me

Crud monkeys???

[dissle]

AAAAHhhh the positives of the British NHS!

We do get this, but people are usually very English and very grateful for everything that we do for them!

But then i am sure that an English nurse will come on here shortly to tell me that i am mad and that this IS what they get all of the time!!!!

[lpnstudentin2010, LPN]

Crud monkeys???

yes crud monkeys. one of my friends says it and i love it thus started it myself. lol.

[Fiona59]

AAAAHhhh the positives of the British NHS!

We do get this, but people are usually very English and very grateful for everything that we do for them!

But then i am sure that an English nurse will come on here shortly to tell me that i am mad and that this IS what they get all of the time!!!!

Did we miss something? I've seen posters from OZ and Canada but don't recall any UK comments...

[sharpeimom]

crud monkeys???

help!! the dreaded crud monkeys are coming! they're gaining on me... yikes.... good... bye... [color=sandybrown]chomp.. chomp...chomp...

[talaxandra]

Did we miss something? I've seen posters from OZ and Canada but don't recall any UK comments...

I think dizzle was sying she has appreciative patients and works in the NHS but expects that, now she posted that, another British nurse will come along and contradict her by saying that her (or his) NHS patients are horrible, ungrateful, rude hideousities.

That was my reading,at any rate

[HvnSntRN]

i just love the "i'm a doctor" or "i'm his doctor" one when they're a phd in rocket science or nanotechnology. i'm sure you're very smart, but you aren't a medical doctor, so hand that chart back!

i received a long distance call from a patient's relative who claimed to be a nurse in another province. she wanted to know specifics about how the patient was doing, like diagnosis, bloodwork results and so on. i was very annoyed when she pulled the old we're-both-nurses-you-can-tell-me routine.

instead i told her "well, i'm sorry to disappoint you, but i have absolutely no way of verifying what you're telling me, and i have a legal responsibility to not disclose confidential patient information over the phone to anyone. if you are a nurse, you should already know that, and know better than to ask another nurse to break the law to satisfy your curiosity about your cousin. i'm actually quite offended that you would cross the line like that with another nurse. i can take your name and phone number and have the patient call you when she wants to fill you in about her condition."

she hung up the phone, after calling me a "rude b*tch".

when i mentioned to the patient what had happened, she was very grateful that i hadn't disclosed anything to the caller. i found out that this "nurse" had lost her license to practice and the patient described her as a nosy relative who just wanted the scoop so she could gossip to other relatives.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

i love it that they're the one in the wrong, but they call you a "rude b*tch"!

[SoundofMusic]

Why don't I make your bed up everyday? Well, ask the administrators who have now decided that this hospital is "going green." We won't change those sheets everyday unless, of course, you pee and poop all over the bed. Which you are not doing. You are walking, talking, and not incontinent. Be thankful for that.

And, oh, I guess this just isn't the Hilton. It's a hospital. Do you honestly change your sheets at home every single day?

:shrugs:

[imanedrn]

To me, it doesn't sound like a backfire. It sounds like you did exactly the right thing. Had you not been there just for a quick check, who knows what could have happened. Those quick checks are sometimes all a patient needs.

I'm in ED now, coming from the floor. I will ALWAYS be a floor nurse at heart. I've also been a patient in the ED, while working as a nurse. Even then, I couldn't understand *** things were taking so long! Sitting on the other side of the desk, I now know why. It's not that we're not doing anything. It's that we're waiting on results, so we can wait for further orders from the doc.

Some hospitals use the acronym TOAD - tell of all delays. Even if someone isn't in acute distress, it's still reassuring for them to know *** they're waiting for what seems like FOR-EV-ER! Waiting an hour for labs to us is normal; to a patient, it's tiresome. I try to remind the ED patients that they came in for a reason, and, although they will probably be waiting for a while, it's better to know than not know and go home wondering, perhaps ending up in worse shape than what brought them in. That's the floor nurse in me. I also go in just for simple things, like asking if I can get the patient (if they're not NPO) or family even just something to drink. That little bit goes a long way. That's also a sly way to do a quick visual assessment on anything that seems out of place -- like the line you saw! Good catch on that quick round!

THANK YOU!!

Very few people TRULY understand this.

On the flipside, that can also backfire. I checked on a patient of someone else's the other night, as they were in report at 7p (I work until 11p). She had called to say her IV was leaking and her arm felt heavy (she had a subclavian line), so I went to go check it. Sure enough, it was leaking from around it, and I measured it (external length now 12.5 cm, had been zero!). Not sure how that happened, but anyway. I went back to the nurses in report and told them what was up. They both went down to look at it, since the day RN knew what it looked like before, and the night RN was going to have to deal with whatever we had to do (which was obviously take it out). CNA was also in there, changing the wet gown, and I peeked my head in to see if I could help since I knew they were in the process of changing over. The patient was looking at all the faces in the room and going, "is this really bad? Why are there so many people in here, am I OK?"

I felt bad for making her worry just because I offered a helping hand! We explained why there WERE so many faces, and she understood but was still nervous.

[imanedrn]

Congrats on being a GOOD nurse!

I had a similar situation, thought not a family "nurse." Just a "close" relative calling for information. I went and asked the patient if she wanted X family member to know. She said she'd call her back later. On second thought, the pt's daughter came out and said, no, X family member is her ex-daughter-in-law who's going through an ugly divorce with her son, and she doesn't have any business knowing her health information. I just told her that I couldn't give out any information, and the pt would call her back later. She must have known that she shouldn't have been calling because she never called back!

I received a long distance call from a patient's relative who claimed to be a nurse in another province. She wanted to know specifics about how the patient was doing, like diagnosis, bloodwork results and so on. I was very annoyed when she pulled the old we're-both-nurses-you-can-tell-me routine.

Instead I told her "Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I have absolutely no way of verifying what you're telling me, and I have a legal responsibility to not disclose confidential patient information over the phone to anyone. If you are a nurse, you should already know that, and know better than to ask another nurse to break the law to satisfy your curiosity about your cousin. I'm actually quite offended that you would cross the line like that with another nurse. I can take your name and phone number and have the patient call you when she wants to fill you in about her condition."

She hung up the phone, after calling me a "rude b*tch".

When I mentioned to the patient what had happened, she was very grateful that I hadn't disclosed anything to the caller. I found out that this "nurse" had lost her license to practice and the patient described her as a nosy relative who just wanted the scoop so she could gossip to other relatives.

[imanedrn]

I had 1 CNA tell me that while I was in nursing school. Then another asked me if I actually spend 20-some-odd hours in bed when at home. Both very relevant points. The "clean" pt may not "need" his linens changed daily, but I think it's a psychological comfort to know they're not laying in dead skin cells for so many hours. If I have the time, considering it only takes minutes to change sheets, I'll do it. Again, I think the psychological factor is enough to comfort the patient and even, hopefully, chill 'em out enough, so they don't bother you about everything else.

Why don't I make your bed up everyday? Well, ask the administrators who have now decided that this hospital is "going green." We won't change those sheets everyday unless, of course, you pee and poop all over the bed. Which you are not doing. You are walking, talking, and not incontinent. Be thankful for that.

And, oh, I guess this just isn't the Hilton. It's a hospital. Do you honestly change your sheets at home every single day?

:shrugs: