bad nursing care rant

[ashleyisawesome]

sdifhaseuifhaeuifhaeui!

Just went with a friend to visit her dad in the hospital. i couldnt believe the conditions there, i was pretty disgusted. we walk in and there is a soiled brief on the floor, his gown is soaked in urine, we had to physically go to the nurses station and ask for someone to come clean him up. He told us he almost fell twice because he was ringing the call bell for help to go to the bedside commode and no one came both times. mind you, this is in an ICU. So I am assuming the nurse: pt ratio is 2:1, MAYBE 3:1 max.. And the girl who finally came in to clean him was wearing an ID badge that said pca, so they had at least one aide..

how is this acceptable? I've never been to this hospital before, and I have heard bad things about it, but seriously? I've never seen anything that bad in the hospitals I've done clinical at, especially on my ICU rotations. Those nurses were usually pretty anal about keeping everything clean, and answering call bells etc. And never have I seen a dirty brief left on the floor, thats just gross.

My friend was pretty upset by this herself. Shes upset enough that her dad is sick enough to be in the ICU, and then to see all this didnt make it any better..

Are we overreacting? sorry for the angry anecdote, just wanted to vent to some people who knew what i was talking about. I told her that if it is possible, she should see about getting him transferred to a better hospital. :heartbeat

[Isabelle49]

I wouldn't give any of my peers the benefit of the doubt. Sorry.

I've cared for patients who told me they asked for help to get up to the bathroom and were told to wet the bed! Completely unacceptable. Patients are still developing decubitus ulcers in the hospitals and also in the ICU's, this is also unacceptable. No benefit of the doubt here!

[Isabelle49]

I have educated my home health patients that when they are in the hospital and they are not getting help with something as simple as needing to go to the bathroom, they can pick up the phone, dial "0" for the operator and ask for the nursing supervisor, who can certainly address their problem.

[Altra, BSN, RN]

Patients are still developing decubitus ulcers in the hospitals and also in the ICU's, this is also unacceptable. No benefit of the doubt here!

For cripes sake ...

My 94-year old patient currently in the ICU is trying hard to die ... but her family's not ready for that. So we keep her heart beating, ventilate her lungs, and dump pressors into her vasculature to perfuse her brain and other organs. She's a tall woman, about 5'8". Her admission weight was 51 kg. She's got decubitii that she came in with, and additional skin breakdown since she's been with us.

You find this "unacceptable" or avoidable? Are you kidding me?

[rn/writer, RN]

It would be nice if at "allnurses" we could try to give our fellow nurses the benefit of the doubt. If I wanted to hear patient and family complaints, I'd go to work and read Press Gainey comments. I don't go to a [insert disease/condition of your choice] patient support forum and whine about patients. It would be nice if people would have the same decency to not come here and whine about our comrades.

Right is right and wrong is wrong. Even when the situation is unclear, I hope we're all adult enough to be able to listen to someone who is unhappy and has some questions without taking it personally or acting as if they have denigrated all of nursing.

Besides that, the OP is a nursing student and has been a PCA, so she is one of our own. She knows how a patient and their room should look, and that isn't what she and the patient's daughter saw.

Those who absolutely object to hearing complaints would probably do well to avoid reading threads labeled, "rant."

This is not to give anyone a hard time. I'm just saying that this girl and her friend were stunned at what they found. We can help her more by providing ideas about why this might have happened and giving her suggestions about how to handle the frustration than by just putting up a hand and saying we don't want to hear anything bad about nurses.

[Altra, BSN, RN]

OP, I'm asking you a serious question, as an experienced PCA:

It never occurred to you that your friend's father had removed his brief, in his confusion, and left it on the floor?

[merlee]

When I was a patient not too long ago, I asked multiple times for my pain meds. The doctor went to the nurses' station to ask that I get my meds. FOUR hours to get 2 pills.

BTW, no one ever asked me if I needed any help washing up.....

[tntrn, ASN, RN]

My husband's niece was in a very bad motorcycle accident about a week ago. She has 4 fractures in her leg and 11 in her hand. Today, her facebook post was about how "bad the staff is treating her." Making her wait until she is screaming with pain for pain meds. My suggestion was to her was to request a PCA for pain, if she didn't already have one, or to request that her pain meds be brought exactly on time.

Her friends were more combative: one wanted to go there and **** up some nurses" and others complained about how they hate nurses and docs. So I again posted, saying that simple courtesies, like please, thank you, I appreciate it, go a long ways to getting good positive attention and that acting like a crazy person, or having your friends act in a violent manner is not the way to get good care. I had to just back off from participating. Decided if I need to talk to her, I'll call her directly.

[applewhitern, BSN, RN]

Go ahead and file a complaint. They are very interested in patient satisfaction scores. But keep in mind you don't know what was going on in the other rooms; ICU patients usually have multiple gtts, maybe a vent, etc., and of course they code. Was this during shift change? Maybe they were getting report, an unstable new admit, anything. A soiled brief and urine take a backseat to many other things. If this was the usual pattern on that unit, then yes, you need to speak up.

[canigraduate]

I see a lot of hostility toward the poster in this thread and it makes me ashamed. This thread is clearly a rant. Let the poster vent her frustrations.

As for all the "you don't know if...." statements. Of course she doesn't know if none of the nurses spoke to her or the family. Someone in the nursing staff should have been there to speak with them at some point and let them know what was going on.

I work with confused patients all the time and some of them do take their briefs off and throw them in the floor. I prefer those to the ones that just dig. But, a nurse or aid should have come in to say, "I'm sorry, I just checked on him 30 mins ago and he was fine. Let me go ahead and clean that up." I've had to say things like that a few times.

The poster may not know what was going on in the unit at the time, but WE don't know either. We can make some educated guesses, but they're just guesses. All we have to go on is what the poster says, and I tend to believe her. In these days of short-staffing and cost-cutting, as much as we hate it, sometimes we can't be on top of the patients' condition.

[Faceinthecrowd]

I wouldn't give any of my peers the benefit of the doubt. Sorry.

I've cared for patients who told me they asked for help to get up to the bathroom and were told to wet the bed! Completely unacceptable.

OMG. Are you kidding??

[bubblymom373]

What you and your friend found in the room is not acceptable. If it bothers you so much by all means report it. Personally I would monitor and just see if this was a one time incident due to emergency on the unit or ?? If it would happen again I would definitely be speaking to mangement.

Does the patient know how to use the call light? I don't mean to sound disrespectful but I have had patients flick the lights on and off in their room thinking it was how they could call for assistance. I learned my standard phrase of "If you need any help, just turn on your light" needed some education for the patient to go with it. Assuming that they already know how is not the best idea especially if they recently were admitted.

[bsyrn, ASN, RN]

This is unacceptable and hopefully not the norm. I am sorry for what you friend and her father experienced. I think I would bring this to the nurse manager's attention but I would make sure to point out the positives of the patient care also. Unfortunately sometimes in caring for patients people get busy and things get overlooked. Not saying this is right, just saying it is what it is...