Almost lost my cool at work

[0.adamantite]

I am a very calm, patient person. But the pressures of the hospital are enough to drive even me over the deep end sometimes. I was being pulled in 20 different directions and had to deal with another department who was being totally unhelpful. (Why do they never want to do their jobs?!) After a frustrating conversation on the phone, I felt my temper flare and I quickly finished the conversation "Okay, thanks, bye" and hung up on the person before I got too angry.

I immediately regretted it, it is totally out of character for me. I think the stress sometimes gets to me. We as nurses are expected to get the job done,we can't just foist it off on someone else or try to weasel our way out of it. I hope I'm not turning into nurse ratchet.

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

Gotta love that land line!

[0.adamantite]

So many lol worthy posts here.

[datalore]

That sounded like a really frustrating day! The most patient, even-keeled people I know still lose their cool once in awhile (we're all human!) -- and sometimes, because they are so much calmer than your average person, their "outburst" is still below the rudeness threshold of the person on the receiving end. The patient person apologizes for the outburst, and the other person has no idea what they're apologizing for -- they didn't notice anything "rude" about it! It's all relative, I guess!

[gcupid]

Gotta be careful! I've seen someone get fired ON THE SPOT. The patient pulled out a tube that they just spent 3 hours putting in. The nurse just caught the act as she turned around and in a knee-jerk reaction exclaimed: *****??!

The manager said: "OUT! Security will clean out your locker for you."

LOL! this is hilarious....but it's not.

[SubSippi]

I don't like to think of it as losing my cool, I prefer to see it as setting my cool aside for a minute to get my point across.

[OhLookASquirrel]

Ok, I'm getting sick of this.

Nurses: calm down and stop being so hard on yourselves!

I don't think the problem is that we are all secretly "Nurse Ratchet". I think the problem is that many nurses are really nice people who are extremely stressed out.

I saw a nurse almost in tears the other day because she felt bad for "being a *****" to someone who was being blatantly disrespectful to her. Everyone who saw what happened looked at her like she was crazy because she didn't actually say anything rude to them at all.

If "Ok, thanks, bye" is out of character for you, you must be a saint.

[HappyWife77, BSN, RN]

I swear some days I think.. .this is only a test. A test of whether or not I react the way I want to, or how I should. There will always be those button pushing moments.

[Mr. Murse]

First of all, to the OP, judging by the way you described the situation, I doubt anyone but you noticed you were even frustrated. ha. but I know what you're talking about.

I'm also a very calm, controlled person and had a near "loss of cool" the other day. I came in on very little sleep anyway, and dealing with some stuff in my personal life, which I'm usually very good about leaving at the door but occasionally it oozes in behind me. All that combined with a very busy start to the shift kind of had me on edge anyway, then a patient receiving 1.5mg of Dilaudid every 2 hours accused me of not giving him the medication although I had pushed it 10 minutes prior. It was really the way he said it that pushed my buttons. After he asked the tech to let me know he needed his pain meds, I walked in and politely explained that I had just given it to him, then he aggressively responded that I had NOT given it to him and that I had just messed with the IV bag but not pushed anything. I maintained composure but was so frustrated I was probably turning red. He said something about seeing the house supervisor then said "never mind, I'll talk to my doctor". So I insisted the house supervisor come talk to him and watch me pull the next dose in his room, explaining each step and the dilution, etc.........I tried to make amends and apologize for any discomfort or misunderstanding but he was just convinced I had taken his Dilaudid. So I ended up trading patients with another nurse. Turns out he had accused a couple other people of the same thing, but I didn't know it at the time. Seemed like a decent, sane, and reasonable patient at first.

That's the only time I've ever asked to not have a patient. Just bad timing more than anything because normally I would have reacted differently, but my limit had been reached. Those are the times you have to step off somewhere alone and take a few breaths and refocus. It happens to all of us in different ways and it's usually a combination of many different things that leads up to it.