A vent thread for patients- what can we do better?

Im a nurse, but like almost everyone i've been a patient.

When i was 12 i went into anaphylactic shock from a bee sting. I was taken to ER via Ambulance. I had NO clue what anaphylaxis was, but i knew something wasn't right.

i was covered in hives, my eyes were bulging out of my head, every breath i took was getting harder and harder. I knew it was a deadly condition, and i was terrified. Everyone was running around me like chickens with their heads cut off.

They kept calling me "the patient" or "jennifer" not knowing i liked to be called Jenni. Never asked ME questions, i felt like they were treating my condition and not me.

I started crying once i saw my mom and dad start crying.

It took a NURSE in the emergency room, who wasn't even assigned to me to come into my room. She sat at the edge of my bed and held my hand. Then she asked me what i wanted to hear all along "Do you go by Jennifer? or can we call you seomthing else?" i could hardly talk and my dad replied "She goes by Jenni" and everytime someone said "the patient" i could hear her correct them "Jenni!!!!". She was the ONLY person (other than my parents) that i remember in this situation, and she wasn't even my nurse. i don't remember my doctor even. I remember her telling me everything that was going on

"They are now giving you something that will help your breathing"

"They have to take some blood. it might hurt, but if you close your eyes and think about your puppy at home it will be over soon"

She explained to me what they were talking about in terms a 12 year old could understand.

I remember her, her face, her voice everything. She was a traveling nurse from Las Vegas (Maybe she is out there somewhere?) who knows.

OK, I'll join you Canoe.

A hundred years ago before I became a nurse (or was even interested in the medical field), I had a dx lap. I wasn't prepared for the meat-locker temperature, the noise, laughter, joking around and banter amongst the OR staff. I truly felt like an afterthought to the staff in the room. I was terrified to begin with, and this feeling compounded my anxiety to the nth degree. I was induced to the jarring sound of metal hitting metal as the circulating nurse carelessly threw a container in the case cart. The Versed that I was given didn't seem to help my anxiety.

Upon emergence, I was greeted with MORE noise. The anesthesiologist was talking trash to the surgeon about the upcoming college basketball game. I don't mind that (and actually wanted to participate), but he wasn't paying attention to what he was doing, and the O2 mask was damned near poking me in the eye. Sounds, temperature, and pain all seemed very heightened during this time. I think the cold was the worst of it; the pain was secondary. It also unnerved me that I was naked and that my arms were still strapped down. I guess they kept me pretty light since I can remember all of this.

Now that I am an OR nurse, I am VERY vigilant regarding the noise level, the temperature, and the lighting in the room both during induction and upon emergence. It still shocks me to see the OR lights still shining on the pt upon emergence because the circulator is too busy to notice. I absolutely lose my temper when a pt emerges without SOMETHING covering their body.

So yes Canoe, being on the other side of the stretcher has no doubt made me a better nurse.

Thanks for starting this thread. I am interested to see further posts.

I had very similar experience upon enterence. I do not remember anything procedurally. I remember cold, being unclothed with many many people around and left like that. I did not like that and I just remember everyone going bonkers around me. The nakid thing really really made me not comfortable.

When my son was il (AML and eventual BMT)l, I was tremendously grateful for the nurses who acknowledged he had Asperger's Syndrome, came to me to ask about how to make things easier on him and get my recommendations and then who respected the limitations that health condition put on him re: having an arm band on (he could not tolerate the feel of it against his skin), who understood he wasn't going to look at them when they talked to him but it didn't mean he wasn't listening, and those who understood that as worried parents, we wanted to provide as much care for him as possible ourselves and minimize the impact of the hospitalization on him however we could.

I also appreciated those nurses who were organized enough to cluster care at night, who would turn on the bathroom light to do meds/fluids during the night instead of the overhead and who understood the incredible stress and strain we were under. We were there for months on end, still trying to work at least part time, etc. Sleep was the only time the stress lifted and only came in three to four hour bursts.

I hope you get to read this. I am a new nurse and I have asperger's. A lot of the things that I struggled with as a kid, I found ways to make work in my favor as an adult. As with asperger's, I have the high intelligence. I scored crazy scores in nursing school, not too many people liked me because of that and because I am eccentric. However, just know that things will get better with time. Help your son adapt the environment within the environment he has. Meaning, do not create circumstances that he cannot create to cope as an adult. To really enter the real world, there are no accomodations for people like us yet. Until, we are considered normal in that we are normal among one another.

That was nice that staff knew about the disorder and helped you find ways to help him cope. My nursing class was not so nice and I just blatently tell people this is who I am up front. They disliked me for being smart, so they used my eccentrics of my disorder against me. It was sad.

Sorry to say, your son will have to face the same unless I can change the world as I am trying so hard to do. I have two son's, and one is lesser and one is greater like me. I have one son that turns the TV volume probably to normal levels, my other son and I cant think. You can most often hear a pin drop in my house. My daughter too. I have to keep buying her different clothes because they are all itchy. All of my kids have different aspects, and I have like everyone of them.

I am SOOO glad the staff did what they did to help. I guess in the kid world its much more understood than it is in the adult world today.

My advice is....please be sensitive to your patient's religious or non-religious views. I'm an atheist. Last year when I had my daughter, the L&D nurse asked me what my religion was. I was in pain and didn't want to debate (telling people you're an atheist is always an invitation to debate) so I told her non-denominational. That wasn't good enough for her, she kept going on and on. Jewish, Muslim, Jehovah's Witness. Finally I said I'm atheist.

Well, you would have thought I told her I had a body under my bed by the way she reacted. She asked me what do my parents and my husband think...I told her I'm a grown a$$ woman and don't need their permission to be atheist. Then she asked me what my husband is...he's Christian. She asked me do I believe in Adam/Eve and all the other biblical stories...I don't. When my husband came back up to the room, she kept giving him dirty looks. I told him it's because he's married to a sinner atheist.

The next morning, there was no progress with my labor. Guess who was my nurse again? She told me that god would protect me. Then she said "oh that's right, you don't believe in god." If it weren't for my husband calming me down, I would have ripped her a new one.

That's my message to other nurses...your religion may not be someone else's. Please be tolerant as I am when I did bedside. I had patients of ALL religions and respected every one of them.

Umm, second that on the athiest thing. Try interviewing at a bunch of religious based hospitals. Agree, agree, yep, and whatever you say.

I do not like this thread and was trying to figure out exactly why when I read the above. That is how I feel about this...nurses bashing other nurses and health professionals. Great way to lift up the profession. And we do not need to have a patient complaint thread to understand how to provide good care we all know how to do that. Its just that those mentioned in the above vents didn't strive to. This isn't meant in a mean-spirited way, but if this type of thread is the way Allnurses is headed, I will be very sad. So count me out.[/quote']

I seriously don't get what some people are so upset about with this thread. Not everyone knows how to provide good care. Some people don't realize they aren't providing good care and that is when a thread like this comes in handy. Most of the "Patients" on here venting are nurses themselves.

It's not about bashing other nurses, it's about people learning from the mistakes of others. No one is perfect, absolutely. People vent about their co-workers all the time on here, bash patients, bash fellow posters. Shoot we had a whole thread making fun of other posters.

I would rather someone come here and vent anonymously then go into a patients room and trash talk their fellow nurse.

You know people don't HESITATE to complain about bad care they get in just about every other professions. A lot of companies will take those complaints and try to make changes. (Domino's did that and now they make a fantastic pizza). Why is it taboo to talk about bad nursing care received in the hopes that one can get it off their chest and one can learn from it. It's ONE THREAD on a board with thousands of threads. Those that want to read and learn from it can, those that are so offended by it can not read it. I can't believe someone would leave an entire forum because they were offended by one thread.