behaviors vs. reality?

[indierock]

On my hall we seem to have a lot of behaviors. Not just people with medical problems that make things difficult but people who want special time with us...almost demand attention but in a negative way. At first it started out as one person asking for special attention. well now its up to about six. And now if we don't have the time to sit down and chat or do whatever it is that they want when they want it, we get terrible attitudes. We are trying to break this cycle of rewarding negative attention. We are understaffed and we don't have the time due to new admits that are more extensive than the ones that were in their beds previously. So i guess my question is: what do you do about this? Not rewarding these behaviors causes difficulties (for example one resident will refuse to eat) but catering to them causes more behaviors and difficulties...

[chadash]

On my hall we seem to have a lot of behaviors. Not just people with medical problems that make things difficult but people who want special time with us...almost demand attention but in a negative way. At first it started out as one person asking for special attention. well now its up to about six. And now if we don't have the time to sit down and chat or do whatever it is that they want when they want it, we get terrible attitudes. We are trying to break this cycle of rewarding negative attention. We are understaffed and we don't have the time due to new admits that are more extensive than the ones that were in their beds previously. So i guess my question is: what do you do about this? Not rewarding these behaviors causes difficulties (for example one resident will refuse to eat) but catering to them causes more behaviors and difficulties...

This is a real real tough one.

One thing that works is to preempt their demands. If you have predictable needs/wants, beat them to the punch. Schedule it into the day. I have found that "beat the call bell" take less time then "answer the call bell".

You mentioned that understaffing is a problem. I would go as far to say that understaffing IS THE problem. Folks get pretty creative in manipulating to get their piece of the attention pie when they realize there might not be enough pie to go around.