What patients/behaviors/illnesses/injuries do you HATE the most?

[JZ_RN]

I'll start with people who say "I went to nursing school" Okay, but are you a nurse?

I need my meds today. Also I can't pay for them.

Moms who let their kids run wild and scream. I get that stuff hurts, go ahead and cry. No need to run like a wile monkey or screech like you're dying, I assure you that if you were dying you'd have no time to yell like that.

And let's not get started on the drug-seekers!

[JMBnurse]

1. Bipolar patients (manic phase) -Just can't deal with them and don't want to. They torture my nerves.

2. Family members of actively dying patients who bring their messed up family drama to the deathbed.

3. Family members of OB patients who bring their messed up baby-daddy drama to the bedside.

[Dezy]

Not here just yet! (starting in the fall) but I think I know what type will bother me the most: Patients I can not make feel better. I hate seeing patients in pain. People in denial (patient or family) and I hate to say this but old people make me terribly uncomfortable. (kinda reminds me of my late greatgrandmother.))

Everything else if just entertaining to me. Yes even the screaming druggies.

[RainMom]

The normally AOx3 who becomes confused (usually pain meds) & you cannot reorient. Had one recently who became incensed that he had a personal alarm on that he wasn't aware of, we were "bugging his home", & he was going to sue everyone for being on his property. Your normal everyday baseline confused is usually not so bad.

Hearing in report that your patient has "anxiety issues". Often for me the pt won't really be that bad, maybe just a little needy, but then sometimes it's someone that is a complete basket case that is convinced they are dying or can't even make simple decisions for themselves for fear of making a bad choice ("Should I turn? It might make it worse...which way do you think I should go?) Trying to decide whether to take one pain pill or two is a monumental decision!

[Aeterna, BSN, RN]

1) End stage lung cancer. They never end well. I've seen people having to tolerate pit bottom O2 sats for days, struggling for breath despite 100% oxygen. I've seen people hemorrhage from severe hemoptysis. It's awful.

2) Fresh strokes. I'm not even trained to deal with them (all the necessary assessments and protocols associated with them) because our specialized "stroke unit" usually takes them but if the stroke unit is full, then we occasionally get a fresh stroke. I just don't feel comfortable with them >_

3) C. diff. Do I need to explain?

4) Psych cases. I'm not cut out to be a psych nurse. I just don't have the patience for it. And, like strokes, we have a psych floor that psych patients usually go to, but if it's full, we occasionally get a psych patient *sigh*

5) Crazy families. I had a woman keep me on a phone for 20 minutes, discussing her husband's (a patient) meds and his clothes and how we weren't taking proper care of him...and he wasn't even my patient and she knew it! She just wouldn't let me go, even to find her husband's nurse.

6) Lazy doctors. For example, one will have me called overhead on the speaker's so he can ask me to look up the patient's lab work. It's right in the chart in front of him or if it's not, it can easily be pulled up on one of our many computers, which he knows how to use (I've seen him on one!)

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

Dead bowel. It can stink up the lounge, even though the nearest OR is at least 50 feet away behind a closed door. Little hard eating lunch in that- at least the people in the room have smeared benzoin on their masks and have a slight filter.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

5) Crazy families. I had a woman keep me on a phone for 20 minutes, discussing her husband's (a patient) meds and his clothes and how we weren't taking proper care of him...and he wasn't even my patient and she knew it! She just wouldn't let me go, even to find her husband's nurse.

I've cut off these types of callers without any hesitation. When they're blathering on about the perceived wrongdoings and want to keep me on the phone at an inopportune time, I'll interrupt and firmly say, "Let me find this patient's nurse so (s)he can talk to you further. Please hold." Then I'll place them on hold, even if they are still talking.

If a caller is screaming obscenities or cursing, I will hang up without hesitation.

[Altra, BSN, RN]

Manipulators who attempt to intimidate by using my name at least twice in each sentence. They are often, but not always, the male significant others of female patients with minor or vague symptomatology.

[Miss Lizzie]

GI bleeds. Especially with dementia patients.

C diff.

Drug seekers.

Borderline personality disorder.

Overbearing, demanding family members.

[msjellybean]

Learned helplessness, and staff who feed into it... give me trach blobs any day over that.

Me too.

I also don't like peritoneal dialysis patients. Mostly because they always have a bunch of other co-morbidities and seem to always be on contact isolation.

Families who have issues & don't talk to each other, thus I get phone calls two to three times a day, from up to five different people, all wanting updates.

[biblepoet]

Teach pt. Suctioning makes me want to hurl. Pts. Who feel the need to show me what they coughed up like I do not believe them.

Spine pts pain control issues.

Lazy pts. Who will not get up and would rather pee on themselves then use the bedside commode.

Pysch pts. For obvious reasons.

[sistasoul]

End stage COPDers. After steroids, O2 and nebs, not much you can do except sedate them or watch them gasp for air.

Poor souls. I know it is terrible.

[VictoriaGayle]

Patients that need to be in a nursing home that are in an assisted living facility. I don't hold it against them, in fact one of my favorite patients falls into his category. But when they are beyond our level of care, it not only makes the job harder, but more dangerous for everyone involved. The workers are risking injury because we don't have the man power, trining and equipment to properly ambulate them if they are dead weight, and there is an added risk to the patient.