A Generation of Wimps?

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Is is just me, or is anyone else seeing more and more patients in their late teens to early 30's that are a bunch of wusses? I mean relatively minor ailments (nausea/vomiting for 1 day, headache, cough/congestion, back pain) and these pts act like they are at death's door! Enough drama for a year's worth of Broadway shows. I'm not referring to any pt with serious or chronic illnesses. I mean stuff that is really minor, that should be addressed with a routine PCP visit, but instead they end up in the ER. Inevitably they get the million $ workup (labs, Xray, CT, etc.) only to be discharged with DX of "gastritis" or "muscle strain." I just worked a 4 day stretch and easily half of my pts fit this category. What's going on?!:uhoh3:

Specializes in being a Credible Source.

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Specializes in Med-Surg/Peds/O.R./Legal/cardiology.

jlsRN,

Oops!!! You got me on the Lamaze thing!:lol2: Tried it--couldn't do it! Thank GOD for epidurals!!!!

ebear

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Specializes in Hemodialysis, Home Health.
jlsRN,

Oops!!! You got me on the Lamaze thing!:lol2: Tried it--couldn't do it! Thank GOD for epidurals!!!!

ebear

Wuss.

:rotfl:

(j/k..couldn't resist!) :D

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Specializes in Med-Surg/Peds/O.R./Legal/cardiology.

HEY!!!!! I never said that I did the "natural childbirth" thing! Both my chaps were almost 10lb and my pre-pregancy wt. was 107. Sometimes there's just "no room at the Inn"! :lol2: If that makes me a wuss then I guess I am...

ebear

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Specializes in Med-Surg.
I am noticing more MEN being WHIMPS. Ooooooooooo the pain...

(But can go smoke.....) Come back in tears to the floor"Oh the pain......"

What ever happened to Men being Men, have wussed them too these days?

Most of the guys I see doing this are baby boomers. Not the younger generation. The younger generation of guys are a bit more stoic.

Just my experience.

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Specializes in ITU/Emergency.
My kids can attest to the fact that you aren't going to die if you have a fever of 100.8. My kids have lived through the flu, nasty colds, and normal childhood aches and pains. The fact that I'm a nurse really bugs my kids because they can't get the note from ER saying they can stay home from school. The saying in our house goes, "If it ain't fallin' off, you can still breathe, there isn't major blood spillage,or your not dead...it will be OK."

:lol2:

I kind of worry about this!! I am pregnant with my first and am worried that my kids will be walking around with broken arms because I am not easily impressed with drama queen antics. I am of the....'if your not dying or if your arm isn't hanging off, you will be ok' persausion. My neices and nephews drive me mad as they just need to fall over or stub a toe and they are screaming blue murder and you would think they were dying. Unfortantly, their moms respond with ice-packs and lots of attention, so its not surprising that they do make fuss. They know not to come running to me though as I am partcularly unsympathetic!

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Specializes in FNP, Peds, Epilepsy, Mgt., Occ. Ed.
I kind of worry about this!! I am pregnant with my first and am worried that my kids will be walking around with broken arms because I am not easily impressed with drama queen antics.

I wouldn't worry about it. I was of the "no visible bones, no spurting blood, you're fine" school and my two have, so far, survived to 21 and almost 18.

Funny thing is, my younger son is a bit of a hypochondriac, but when he's been actually injured, he's very calm about it. He's broken both a collarbone and an arm and, both times, I knew as soon as I looked at his face he'd broken something. Very calm face, I just saw it there somewhere (the arm was nondisplaced).

While they've had their fair share of childhood illnesses, they've had only about 4 or 5 ER visits apiece. Grunting respirations, broken bones, lacerations, and an accidentally self-inflicted gunshot wound all pretty much qualify as emergencies in anybody's book. (The GSW wasn't serious, Barney Fife grazed the side of his foot).

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

Oh, good..........so it's not just me! My specialty is geriatrics now, and part of the reason for that is having worked with so many whiney twenty- and thirty-somethings during my Med/Surg and OB days. They couldn't stand pain---oh, dear God, how they could NOT stand pain. I can't count the number of times I've run into the room of a post-op appy who was literally screaming his head off because of..........gas. There also have been folks like the nineteen-year-old preggo with a faceful of piercings who jerked her hand away just as I prepared to insert the IV because she "didn't like needles".........the females with recurrent abdominal pain for which no cause was ever found, who'd retch miserably and moan for two hours while waiting for their next shot of morphine, and then be on their cell phones pushing their IV poles around the smoking area.......the injured athletes who could play video games and entertain visitors for hours on end, but needed me to fetch their urinal from the bedside table.

Then there are nurses' kids. Granted, my own had to grow up tough because I wasn't the least bit impressed with 99-degree temps or head colds, and would pack 'em right off to school. But not one is a whiner, even though three are asthmatics and the other has a knee whose cartilage is virtually nonexistent. My oldest accidentally put a knife through her hand when she was ten, and never told me about it until years after the fact; this is the same one who had two Cesareans and was up walking the halls the same night each time. My 19-year-old son lost part of a finger in the gears of an exercise bike when he was 2 and barely even cried, not even in the ER, while a doctor told a rather inebriated gentleman in the next cubicle to 'man up' because he was doing more hollering than Christopher was!

Like many here, I tend to think 'wimpiness' is something of a generational thing, made possible only because a) Madison Avenue has sold America's parents a bill of goods---"a pill for every ill"---and b) so many young folks were raised with a sense of entitlement: their needs and wants are paramount, and they don't have to put up with the common discomforts (e.g., sprained ankles, the flu, bad skin, headaches and so on). By contrast, you have the Greatest Generation, which was made of whipcord stuff........yes, there are some 'wusses', to be sure, but the vast majority of these people are the sort who won't even take Tylenol half the time because they know that whatever is bothering them will pass, preferring instead to let Mother Nature take her course (except, of course, when it comes to their bowels, which is a whole 'nother thread;).

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Specializes in FNP, Peds, Epilepsy, Mgt., Occ. Ed.

I had a very histrionic college student not long ago. You could hear her out in the hallway, sounding as if she were in labor. Including the "Just put me to sleeeeeep!!" Mom was holding her hand and fanning her face.

She had gastroenteritis. :trout:

Then, too, there are exceptions. I put stitches into the finger of a 14 year old girl recently. She watched the whole thing and thought it was "cool!" I could see her foot bobbing if it got a little touchy, but no tears nor complaints. I told her that if she has not given any consideration to some sort of a healthcare career, she should!!

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Specializes in Emergency & Trauma/Adult ICU.

I wholeheartedly agree with the overall sentiment here ...

The worst, from my point of view, is young adult men in the ER with their mothers. Listen buddy, unless you're dying, your mommy does not need to come to the ER with you, wrap your body in blankets, and generally hover over you in such a way that it makes me wanna hurl. :barf01:

It's just wrong on so many levels.

Man up, indeed.

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Specializes in FNP, Peds, Epilepsy, Mgt., Occ. Ed.
I

The worst, from my point of view, is young adult men in the ER with their mothers. Listen buddy, unless you're dying, your mommy does not need to come to the ER with you, wrap your body in blankets, and generally hover over you in such a way that it makes me wanna hurl. :barf01:

Man up, indeed.

Not long ago I had a guy come in with his mother. He was nauseated and vomiting.

The nurse had just given a Phenergan injection and I had given very explicit home care instructions, starting with "rest the stomach at least an hour- nothing to eat or drink."

While we were doing the discharge paperwork, the mom comes flying around the corner, eyes wide and looking worried. "Can he have some ice chips? He's thrown up again!!"

"No ma'am, nothing by mouth for an hour!!!"

The patient was over 30 years old. Gastroenteritis, for a few hours.

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Thanks everyone for posting all these replies! I don't know, I just had one of those days... Despite my screen name, I am no longer an "EDNewbie" - made that name up when I first started ED. I have worked at several different hospitals in two different states and the one I currently work at has the worst offenders. Maybe it has something to do with being in the 'burbs with all the pampered people. The wimpiness didn't seem so prevalent at the county hospital where I started out or the urban hospital in the ghetto that I left about 6 months ago. I just needed to vent.. But I do sometimes worry about the "younger" generation. They truly do not know how good they have it these days. Back in MY day.. oh no, now I sound like my parents!!:lol2::lol2:

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