As a Nurse and a Patient

[KenH]

As a nurse and a patient, who would you want taking care of you, let's be honest we all have Doctors, co-workers, AND Nurses who we would never want to touch us or our family.

Personally I would want the toughest, smartest, assertive, grumpy old army Nurse (sadly they are a dying breed) taking care of me and my loved ones. NOT the Nurse who gets all the patient satisfaction awards.

Sadly today it's all about patient satisfaction, not patient care or outcomes, most patients don't know what they are missing, but they love their nice NURSE.

Part of this is, I keep reading how mean some people can be, and how we need to be more accepting and supporting of each other.

What do you think?

[SleeepyRN]

As a nurse and a patient, who would you want taking care of you, let’s be honest we all have Doctors, co-workers, AND Nurses who we would never want to touch us or our family.

Personally I would want the toughest, smartest, assertive, grumpy old army Nurse (sadly they are a dying breed) taking care of me and my loved ones. NOT the Nurse who gets all the patient satisfaction awards.

Sadly today it’s all about patient satisfaction, not patient care or outcomes, most patients don’t know what they are missing, but they love their nice NURSE.

Part of this is, I keep reading how mean some people can be, and how we need to be more accepting and supporting of each other.

What do you think?

I think you can be competent and not mean at the same time. There's no need to be competent and mean. Now FIRM is different than mean. Many times you have to be firm

[imintrouble, BSN, RN]

Patients are just people, and hospitals are businesses with something to sell.

In order to sell your product, you want the most attractive, personable person you can get to be the salesman. Why do you think RN drug reps all all extremely attractive?

I would want the tough old battle weary nurse for myself, but it amazes me how your garden variety pt prefers the nurse who is the friendliest.

[SoldierNurse22, BSN, RN]

Personally I would want the toughest, smartest, assertive, grumpy old army Nurse (sadly they are a dying breed) taking care of me and my loved ones.

Well, we're not all dead. I suppose I'll count my blessings.

And we're not all grumpy, either. :)

[LVN2RNMom, ASN, BSN, LVN]

I would want me as a nurse & I am one of the assertive, strong one's. I am not mean but I'm straight forward. Yes, I smile & laugh but sometimes that isn't appropriate. I recently had my own health issues & I was embarrassed to find myself stunned at the healthcare I was receiving. I was too out of it & embarrassed to complain, so my sweet roommate complained on my behalf. I doubt anything was done but those nurses should be embarrassed of their actions. They knew I was a nurse (long story) & I was left to nurse myself during most of my hospital stay. I woke up from surgery with a nurse standing above me yelling. I will never forget that face & I would love to one day have a chance to tell her off. I work in surgery & would NEVER approach a patient that way, even if worst case they were pulling out their IV. There are something's you don't say or do to people coming out of surgery. Well, I hope she doesn't need a nurse one day.

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

I'm not dead yet either and I am not usually grumpy either. But I have to admit as a frequent patient these days I am concerned for my care more often than I am not....there is so much missing and so much lack of responsibility...I don't know something is definitely missing.

The stress on that staff is palpable. However, I see a lot of "Whatever..." attitude. There are days if i see one more gum smacking, eye rolling nurse.... it makes me want to scream.

I had one recently tell me it was no big deal the med he/she hung on me didn't have my name on it...and I quote in between the gum snapping and rolled eyes..."What difference does THAT make..... it's the right med isn't it?" I was ready to spit nails! Really? At 10 am you can't find another label or the right med with my name on it when pharmacy is in the house on a non stat med???? I was stunned.

Did I complain? Yes. Will they talk about that "female dog" in outpatient IV? Yes. Do I care? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

[loriangel14, RN]

I would want my charge nurse to care for me if I was the patient. She is funny, kind, smart and compassionate. Firm without being mean and really cares about all of her patients.Even as the Charge Nurse she will still answer bells and sings while she is giving a patient a shower.She's an awesome CN but she lights up when she is doing patient care.

[KenH]

I’m not talking about being mean, on our open hearts you can track the progress they make, how long it takes them to come off the vent, how fast they progress, how soon they walk and so on, by the Nurses that care for them, Nice is not better.

Yes something is missing, I overheard a conversation of a couple medserg RN's, newer nurse asking mature nurse if the BON audits her Edu hours, would she have time to do them then, she didn't think it was a big deal.

Yes I know Hospitals are now a service industry, a few years ago our Hospital got rid of all the LVN's, good nurses lots of experience they mentored a lot of new RN's (some felt offended to be oriented by a LVN). So they hired a bunch of new grad RN's so could say all patient care was by RN's and patient care suffered.

WE used to have a critical mass of those that CARED and now we have just the opposite, nothing is a big deal. There used to be a positive peer pressure to be on top of your game, now they call it bullying, most just don't care, they don’t get "NOT on MY Shift", But our hospital mostly only hires new grads. But there are some that take off running and rise to the top.

We have this one newer RN, I call her Momma, she's nice , firm, and in control, you can tell which patients she takes care of, you don't mess with Momma.

Patient care is more than being nice.

[CrunchRN, ADN, RN]

The most competent and the best patient advocate. Bedside manner is gravy.

[V-Neck T-Shirt]

I totally agree that competence, experience, and patient advocacy matter more than anything else when it comes to nursing care. However, I think it would be a mistake to assume that nurses who win patient satisfaction awards are only providing "good customer service" and aren't great nurses. People who have that personable way of presenting themselves and showing interest in patients might be wonderful nurses, or they might be very incompentent. It could go either way.

[V-Neck T-Shirt]

CrunchRN, I think we were writing at the same time, and we both said competence and advocacy. Guess those are pretty important!

[SoldierNurse22, BSN, RN]

Agreed: just because you're good at "customer serivce" or you're friendly (as they used to say in the old days!) doesn't mean you're not assertive or unintelligent, etc.

Another way to look at it is: if you're intimidating as a caregiver, you shut down communication lines with patients. That, in and of itself, is more dangerous than MANY of the "big scare" things that are hyped up in our profession.

If your patient isn't feeling the rapport and won't voluntarily tell you what's if something's wrong/changing, you'd better pray your assessment skills are on point and working like a psychic's crystal ball. There were many times in my previous field (oncology) where patients were able to tell me that something was "weird" before anything was actually wrong. I'd call the doc, we'd do an assessment, and a few hours later, when their mental status changed or a lab value went wonky, we hat least had some warning and some description on the patient's part as to what didn't feel right.