I love my brother. I really do. Through my talks with my brother about his many hospitalizations, I have come to the conclusion that he is the Worst Patient Ever, heretofore known as a WPE or a "wipper."
In the course of our conversations, he has said or asked the following:
"Is the worst time to ask for something really around 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.?"
"I always ask about all the pills they give me. Nurses make a lot of mistakes."
"How many pillows can each patient have?"
"The nurse never knows when my doctor will be around. Why doesn't she ask him?"
Because I love my brother, and because siblings are allowed to be total jackasses to each other, I have "educated" my brother on his above statements/questions. He hasn't hung up on me...yet.
In one particular ER visit with a family member before I was a nurse, I was probably a wipper-by-proxy as an HCPOA. It started out with her doctor directing us to the ER for a problem that he had known about for a little while, but it had mildly exacerbated. That in itself irritated me. Why didn't I get an office visit and outpatient lab draws when I first brought this up to him a month previous?
Already irritated with the doctor, I became more irritated about the wait. ER nurses, please don't hate me when I tell you that I asked the triage nurse how long it would be, and did we really have to be there for this? Yes, I asked it. Eep!
Everything went smoothly from there on out, but I don't think the triage nurse liked me much.
Share with the world how you or someone you love is a wipper.
my sister is the world's biggest pain in the posterior as a family member, regularly throwing fits about minute matters and assuring everyone that the rules didn't apply to her because she's a nurse executive with a corner office in a well-known west coast hospital system. whatever she wanted, she wanted it right now. one would think, since she had worked at the bedside for two years in the distant past, that she'd have some iota of understanding that the other patient's vt supersedes dad's request for ice, but no. whenever she didn't get what she wanted, or didn't get it with the desired amount of kowtowing or in the desired time frame, she'd call some nurse executive whom she had met at a conference, or who one of her colleagues knew from somewhere and get the offending employee into trouble. the nurse who dealt with the other patient's vt before dad's ice was counseled about "customer service." no one wanted to take care of dad because mom (who had early alzheimer's which perhaps excuses some of her nonsense) and my sister were so difficult.
my sisters-in-law are no better. they all take pride in the size of the fit they can throw, and strive to outdo one another at throwing fits. they don't just have pain, they're in agony. if the call light doesn't get an immediate response, they start moaning and carrying on, the volume escalating until every patient in the wing is complaining. and as soon as they get whatever it is they wanted, they immediately think of something else that is vitally important that they have right away. and so on. one sister in law actually developed a blister on her call light finger. visiting hours? what visiting hours? let's bring eight people in at 7 am and stay all damned day, because "sister needs us to help her." meanwhile, if sister needs her straw bent, all eight visitors are looking up and down the halls for a nurse to bend the straw for her, and they're mad because the nurse didn't anticipate sister's need for the bended straw and bend it for her without being asked.
when one sister-in-law had a hysterectomy for fibroids, only the travelers and the float nurses would take care of her.
when the next sister developed fibroids, i'd get phone calls at all hours of the day and night about how she felt like she had an alien in her belly, and she could feel that thing in there getting ready to devour her. her husband is smart . . . he asked the doctor for a prescription for xanax . . . for himself. and got it. after one appointment, the doctor took him aside and told him he didn't know how he'd put up with the drama.
i have cancer. i haven't thrown a fit. but poor dh -- his wife has cancer!
I can be. I am very watchful of mistakes. I don't like to tell people how to do their job, but I can't sit and watch someone make mistakes either. You never know one day it might be a life threatening mistake. Plus every opportunity is a learning experience for either yourself or the other person. Maybe somebody trained them the wrong way and nobody ever corrected them on how to do the skill properly. I don't take offense if someone corrects me that is how we learn. I do admit that sometimes I can be a bit ridiculous and be very anal to the point of correcting someone on how to take a bp properly. It may not seem like a big deal, but you have to do things correctly to get accurate data. I also tend to run into a lot of rude nurses though so at that point I tend to look for little things to annoy them since they have crappy attitudes. That is a topic for another post though.
For myself, I have tried to be a 'good' patient, but if I ask for something I expect it within a reasonable time. Once it took me over 4 hours to get a pain med.....I was not happy...
But I can be difficult if it is a family member! Many years ago my mom was hospitalized for sepsis - a UTI gone wild. And the doc ordered a different IV ATB to be given ASAP. This was about 10 AM - I was on the phone w/my mom when the doc came inand spoke w/the doc directly. I arrived at 4 pm to find the said ATB hanging but not running; the IV was infiltrated, and my mom had told the nurse it was bothering her.
I put on the call light, waited a while, called the nurses' station directly (the light still chiming), the clerk put me on hold.
When the nurse finally came in she didn't understand my need for urgency, or why I was upset and my mom was embarrassed that I was raising a stink. They stuck my mom multiple times before they called the IV Team, which they only use for 'difficult' patients....It was nearly 6 pm, time for her 2nd dose, and I finally called the house supervisor. I asked that the doc be notified, and why the dayshift nurse didn't notice that the med failed to infuse. This was before every IV was on a pump.
I wasn't pleasant. I plan on being unpleasant whenever I need to.
Specializes in General adult inpatient psychiatry.
I'm actually what I consider to be a polite psych patient. Having worked it for two years, I know the routine. I would ask for a PRN, question new meds, and read up on new meds or dosages. I'd let the nurse know they could come back to me for meds if they needed to and I always made sure to be up front about what I needed. Was it annoying to some? Probably. Oh well. Not everyone's bad patient is a bad patient to someone else.
I've only been difficult once when my mom (who has had multiple surgeries and health issues d/t being injured at work) went to see an NP after surgery. She has to take pain meds, is embarrassed she needs them, and hates taking them. The NP made a mistake when she wrote the script (no way was she supposed to go from 1-2 Lortab q4 PRN to 1 Lortab QD PRN). I told my mom it was probably a mistake and we'd just talk to the NP and get it fixed, no problem. So we asked the secretary to get the NP so we could get it fixed. The secretary starts raising a fuss about how people take meds who don't need them and she was probably trying to wean her off of them and something about how people get addicted. My mom was mortified and wanted to leave but I wouldn't. You can bet I did raise a stink and made the secretary get the NP. The script was a mistake and it was fixed and I turned in the secretary.
Yes there are people who take too many drugs and so on but who the hell was the secretary to say all that and embarrass her and (with her apparently vast level of medical knowledge) decide my mom was wrong? Why not just get the NP and let her sort it out?
Otherwise I don't make a stink usually. I've told my grandmother to tone it down lol. I try to be a good patient. But that's how I am in general.
Every PITA patient that I get, I think that I'm paying penance for a time I was in the hospital years before getting into healthcare. Way back when, I was sent to the hospital for a CT since I'd been having severe abdominal pain. (Turned out many doctors later to be endometriosis, but this was towards the beginning.) Wanted to make sure it wasn't my appendix apparently. For some reason, I got admitted, I think they wanted to do another scan, which was done pretty early in the morning. Well, I was npo in case of surgery. And was left npo, even though my scan was flat out negative until the doctor could decide what to do with me. Which didn't happen until about 8pm. When I got discharged home to follow up with a GYN. So I was npo all day, and grumpy. And I let EVERYONE know. I was screaming and crying. At one point they "gave" me a private room by moving my roommate. Looking back, I'm sure that was at roommate's request. Oh and I started refusing to use the toilet hat. I was peeing hourly because they had me on IVF and decided it was ridiculous and wasn't going to do it anymore. So to the entire staff that day, I'M SO SORRY!!!!
In my defense, when my little sister was in the hospital, I made sure the entire family was VERY polite and not at all annoying. Only used my ability to go from normal person to total b in under 3 seconds when I told off another patient's family member in the waiting room that was with a group of kids that were literally bouncing off the walls that he needed to keep his kids under control as it was a hospital not a Chuck E. Cheese.
My dad is the type who will either A) ask for advice from his nurse daughter and then proceed to not take it because "I know my body". Or B) I will venture up some helpful advice and he'll just roll his eyes. The only time he actually took my advice is when he caually mentioned his one calf really hurt and was kinda puffy and it hurt when he walked and was kinda reddish around the back of his knee. I told him (probably with a hint of alarm in my voice) that he seemed to be describing the signs of a blood clot (my dad is a courier and is driving for a good 10-12 hours a day). So he calls me about 20 minutes later saying he's in the waiting room of the ER...*wait for it*...because he called the nurse advice line and asked A DIFFERENT NURSE her opinion!! Thankfully she said "you'd better listen to your daughter". Turns out he did NOT have a clot, thank you God.
My husband can be stubbron: "Man I have a headache"
"Would you like the hot pack/Ice pack"?
"Ah...maybe later"
An hour passes, he's been staring at the computer: *phfffffff...* rubbing neck "still have that headache"
"Did you try the hot/cold? A Tylenol, perhaps?"
"No."
I TRY not to be difficult. I know after I had my daughter I got a weird reputation because I never wanted my door closed. I also refused to take any percocet. I try to separate "Nurse" from "Mommy" when dealing with my kids and their pediatrician. I try not to talk the talk when I'm calling the triage nurse or talking to the doc "well, she's got expiratory wheezes in all lung fields and she's pretty diminished, but she's afebrile". That just makes me look like I'm trying to be all cool and stuff........and I'm not. I'm so not cool. I'm not "sick"....yes I am. I am sick.
My grandmother n law was a pt on the unit I worked on. Thankfully, I happened to be off on maternity leave. She was horrid, demanding, demeaning,... the fluff my pillow bend my straw type.
I was a CNA at the time and if a pt was really really bad we would take 2-3 pts from a fellow CNA if they would take just that one horrible one. Well, I found out that her entire stay on the rehab unit (which back then was pretty long) was one long time of being traded. The staff who worked with her only had about 2-3 pts once they accepted her and gave theirs away. They told me she ran them all night long and stated she could care less about any of the other pts.
My coworkers asked if she lived in a huge mansion with maids and butlers. Nope, just high maintenance. I'm so glad I was off. I definately would have traded and took any number of pts to not have her.
When I had surgery last year...I was the best patient ever, Brought donuts 3 dozen for the OR staff- never have I met such friendly (sugar high I am sure) happy technicians...
Had a great surgery.
After that I started Rehab. I had had a very complicated (4 hour) hip surgery (not a replacement.) and there had only been 1-2 other people with the surgery to that Physical therapy office. After a while I suspected my PT sucked. and well he did. He Discharged me and within a week, I was injured. Sent back to PT. This time...I was SUCH a pain. The office people did not provide the right documentation to the insurance company. I ended up calling the MD office daily, even twice a day, and also the insurance company. Oddly, the insurance company was more helpful than my MD office. I refused to have PT from anyone by one PT. I have never in my life been such a PITA. I despised myself. BUT... I got better. It was a very tough road. My new PT became a really good friend (went to his wedding recently!!!) and sometimes you know...you have to be the difficult patient.
When I run into a particularly anxious or difficult patient these days, I usually ask them how their experiences with health care have been. They often tell me a story similar to the one above.
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dirtyhippiegirl, BSN, RN
1,571 Posts
you win this thread, hands down.