Title says it all . Second semester baby nurse in clinicals at a major hospital.
Patients = Awesome
Most Nurses = Very sweet and helpful
Some nurses are rude, terse, horrible with patients, horrible with students and horrible with each other.
To those nurses I say this, please retire.
Its only a matter of time before management figures out they can live without you and hire some very hungry and very competent new grads that want to be there to fill your dusty shoes....
word...
sadly the vast majority of the time these happen to also be charge nurses....in charge of what? Misery?
and that service would be assisting pt in recovering...not coffee, not cleaning, not kissing ass.
but then again, i wouldn't mind a cop (another service profession) giving me some wine with that ticket.
leslie
Sounds like you have an issue with your place of work and what's required of you because I never indicated that a nurses service should include any of the things you referred to but it's a service career, so is cop, secretary, bank teller, cashier etc. You provide a service of caring for another human when they can't care for themselves. Geesh, if people would read the actual post and stop reading into perhaps this would have ended hundreds of posts ago.
Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.
Mi9 Vita Loca Rn - I double you have paid into social security and medicare nearly the same as some one who hasw worked 30-40 yrs at the ripe old age of 31!. As for trina and mindlor- maybe nursing is not for the 2 of you. Rolling over and playing dead for the management is not going to keep your patients alive. Your attitude of' my way or the highway' is something less than desireable- it's tyranical.
Well no obviously not since I am not old enough to have worked that long. I did start working at 15 as did my husband,so he has 17 years in so far at the ripe old age of 32. But had you read my post no where did I say that I have. If someone starts working at 15 and stays working then by age 45 they have paid into SS for 30 years. There is a very good chance though it won't be available for my generation at the rate things are going.
The rest of your newest post is absurd. You can't reason with someone that is hellbent on generalizing every single person that fits an age group with such anger and hostility. Your generalizations might apply to a few but they come no where near applying towards the majority of people age 30-50. Btw I just got hired to my first nursing job. It's a 12 HR night shift and on weekends. Amazing at 31 I took the first job I was offered even if that meant nights and weekends. Such a sense of entitlement I have :rolleyes:
and that service would be assisting pt in recovering...not coffee, not cleaning, not kissing ass.
but then again, i wouldn't mind a cop (another service profession) giving me some wine with that ticket.
leslie
Hi Leslie, much respect to you, however, have you been staying up with the latest nursing research? Is your finger still on the pulse of what is happening in nursing education....
You seem to be about 10 years or so behind in your philosophy regarding nursing....
Times are changing and I will say it again, our nursing leadership and nurse educators are encouraging us to drop the word patient from our vocabulary....the new word is client....
Client Client Client
Anyway, I aint gonna change ya, I cant change ya.....you gotsta change your self lol well providing you wish to change
Nursing has been, should be/is and will always be a profession that provides services to clients
There is nothing that any of you can say that can refute that, try as you might.....soooooo there it is
Hi Leslie, much respect to you, however, have you been staying up with the latest nursing research? Is your finger still on the pulse of what is happening in nursing education....
You seem to be about 10 years or so behind in your philosophy regarding nursing....
Times are changing and I will say it again, our nursing leadership and nurse educators are encouraging us to drop the word patient from our vocabulary....the new word is client....
you may be right...
that this is the arrival of 'stepford nursing'...i.e., responding to commands like mindless sheep.
no thank you.
ftr, in the 90's they also tried to market "client" but it failed then, and will likely fail now.
changing a word usually infers they're trying to change the psychological perception...
and in my mind, my pts are just that: patient, patient, patient.
my job as a nurse...as a PROFESSIONAL nurse, is to focus on their body, mind, spirit...
which automatically implicates a standard of decency that further negates "client".
Sigh, I think you are falling rapidly down the slippery slope leslie....
No one is stating that we should follow commands like mindless sheep
All we can do is our best to accomodate client requests....and sometimes that is going to result in the request not being met.
assessments must be done, Meds must be passed and so on for all of the required nursing interventions. That is common sense yes?
However, I saw it when i was a patient and I see it now in clinicals.....the nurses many times seem to find time to chat it up at the station or in the break room while they could have been busy treating their clients in the manner that they would like to be treated if the roles were reversed......
Hi Leslie, much respect to you, however, have you been staying up with the latest nursing research? Is your finger still on the pulse of what is happening in nursing education....
You seem to be about 10 years or so behind in your philosophy regarding nursing....
Times are changing and I will say it again, our nursing leadership and nurse educators are encouraging us to drop the word patient from our vocabulary....the new word is client....
Client Client Client
Anyway, I aint gonna change ya, I cant change ya.....you gotsta change your self lol well providing you wish to change
Nursing has been, should be/is and will always be a profession that provides services to clients
There is nothing that any of you can say that can refute that, try as you might.....soooooo there it is
you may be right...
that this is the arrival of 'stepford nursing'...i.e., responding to commands like mindless sheep.
no thank you.
ftr, in the 90's they also tried to market "client" but it failed then, and will likely fail now.
changing a word usually infers they're trying to change the psychological perception...
and in my mind, my pts are just that: patient, patient, patient.
my job as a nurse...as a PROFESSIONAL nurse, is to focus on their body, mind, spirit...
which automatically implicates a standard of decency that further negates "client".
i sir, refuse to be a stepford nurse.
but thanks for asking.
leslie
I'm reminded of the push to let for-profits into health care ... the PR was that the profit motive would lead to lower costs through free-market incentives. We can see how far that got us.
I actually get the point of the change in nomenclature ... it's coming about 40 years after we "fringies" started challenging the disempowerment of patients/clients/consumers/whatever and the overweening arrogance of professionals.
What isn't appropriate is the uncritical approach to "customer satisfaction" we see in present-day managers ... unless, of course, dissatisfaction leads to malpractice suits. Managers who don't understand the minutiae of nursing responsibiliities tend to overrate the superficial smiley-faces of good customer survey results. They overlook the unique factors affecting the attitudes and responses they are seeing in those surveys.
The wholesale and uncritical transplanting of business practices and buzzwords such as "customer service" has led to a situation in which most of the providers feel demeaned, disempowered and resentful. It has, IMHO, actually created the kinds of attitudes to which the OP and others object.
To heron and the other veterans in nursing I ask a question.....
If you were a high acuity patient in the hospital how would you want to be treated?
Maybe a better question is what if one of your very special loved ones were in that hospital bed? Would you be hovering to make sure the nurses responsible for their care were doing so properly?
I suggest that everyone should always try to look at things from as many perspectives as possible.....myself included!!!
To heron and the other veterans in nursing I ask a question.....
If you were a high acuity patient in the hospital how would you want to be treated?
Maybe a better question is what if one of your very special loved ones were in that hospital bed? Would you be hovering to make sure the nurses responsible for their care were doing so properly?
I suggest that everyone should always try to look at things from as many perspectives as possible.....myself included!!!
Exactly ... which is why the current obsession with "customer service" has seriously backfired.
If management wants to be sure that pts are looked after properly, then they need to look at some of the unintended consequences of their own philosophies and mandates ... including the unspoken mandates intended to maximize profits and maintain a properly subserviant workforce.
Specializes in Trauma Surgery, Nursing Management.
Sounds like you have an issue with your place of work and what's required of you because I never indicated that a nurses service should include any of the things you referred to but it's a service career, so is cop, secretary, bank teller, cashier etc. You provide a service of caring for another human when they can't care for themselves. Geesh, if people would read the actual post and stop reading into perhaps this would have ended hundreds of posts ago.
OK, back up on that yellow brick road, Dorothy. Leslie has years of experience in numerous fields. I can't figure out why you would attack her by stating that she has an "issue with her place of work". She loves what she does, and if you would take the time to read her (very insightful) posts, you would know that she doesn't have an issue with her place of work. She is a hospice nurse, and you can bet the farm that she provides every conceivable service to her patients. It seems to me that you were the one misinterpreting her words.
Leslie is referring to "back to basics" nursing, in which the Press Ganey Gods did not rule over our practice as nurses. She is simply stating that we should focus on getting our patients back to baseline by implementing evidence based interventions. She understands that our practice has changed from focusing on the medical aspects of nursing, and is now evolving into a "customer satisfaction" focus. Leslie, please correct me if I am wrong in my assumptions.
I agree that the patients that we serve should be satisfied with the care that we give them. However, I do not believe that hospital administration should cow-tow to the pt who was admitted with acute abd pain, subsequently scheduled for an ex-lap the next day, doc writes an NPO order and the patient throws a fit. She calls Patient Relations because she is demanding a milkshake. (This was an actual scenario described by another poster on this forum.) The pt got her milkshake, and the surgery had to be postponed. Is this really what we are heading toward in the health care industry? Patient satisfaction before patient safety?
Trina, I know that you are not a nurse yet, although you have had some great experiences in clinicals. I commend you for having the intestinal fortitude to state your opinions. We need that trait in nursing. I would like to add that once you are on your own and you feel the weight of your decisions, the stress of absolute timelines, the panic you will encounter when a pt states "I just don't feel right" while watching their sats plummet, the families of pt's that demand another pillow for their loved one while your fresh post op pt in the next room has unstable vitals and is bleeding through the surgical dressing, the chemo pt who is constantly vomiting and is asking for ice chips, coupled with the constant fires you must put out while caring for 5-8 pts, you may understand more clearly why nurses seem frazzled. You are absolutely right that there is NO excuse for rudeness. At all. I am with you there.
I think that if we break all of this down to the least common denominator, the end result is that we are in need of more staff and more resources on our units. The above scenario was a description of one of my shifts a few years ago. I was working night shift; I suppose there was a full moon-it was chaos! We were short staffed that night, and the charge nurse was helping everyone. None of us had dinner that night, but we got through it because we worked as a team. We put our patients first, as we should have. After the shift was over, we all went out to breakfast and then went into a carbohydrate coma!
This scenario should be the EXCEPTION. All too often, I am reading that this is par for the course. Our practice has been relegated to working with less resources while still being held to "customer satisfaction" scores. Many hospitals will withhold raises if the overall satisfaction scores are under par. You can count on the workhorses of the unit, and any charge nurse will tell you that they rely on a few strong nurses to get the job done. This leads to burn out. Subsequently, these workhorses will become bitter. Do they have reason to be bitter? Yes. Should they communicate that to their peers or patients? Of course not. But now you see WHY they get to that point. I agree that there is no excuse for rudeness. Perhaps one way to combat this mindset would be to offer help to nurses that have a heavy workload. Another way might be to champion administration for hiring more staff. There are many ways that we can think outside of the box to change and streamline our practice to make our jobs more efficient. We just have to take the first steps, and be very persistent in seeing it through.
Canesdukegirl, if you read an attack in my response then perhaps you should re-read the posts. I made reference to a comment that SHE posted, which sounds as if she has a problem with things that are being asked of her in her current role as a hospice nurse correct? Which for me segue to another question, if a terminally ill patient asks for a soda, cup of coffee should I have a problem with granting their request? As far as the hospital policies etc...take it from someone who is very corporate America, every company has the same issues with their employees when changes are being implemented and the employee opinions are not included but does that make me bitter and rude to my fellow employees? No because as I see it we are all in the same boat....one of the most common issues I have heard from nurses that I encounter on my unit is patient load, well if the administration is hiring new nurses to help with minimizing the load for goodness sake don't chase away your help with bitterness and rude behavior because again, all those policies being implemented are affecting or will affect not only the more seasoned nurse but the newbie as well....band together and effect change all the other stuff to me is just rhetoric, things will and are going to change, we can embrace it and seek to make it better or choose to be bitter and angry and make the work week just that much longer.
it's not only bitter and dried up, that needs to retire.
there are many more 'just plain ignorant' nurses/students, who should have never been there in the first place.
this is the big picture of what our truth is.
let's do something about that.
leslie
Now, I totally agree with that....actually I had a respiratory therapist who started as a nurse tell me to take a look at my class size of 39 and know that half of them will have dropped out of the profession all together by their second year because of various reasons...most (about 18 students) are in their early twenties and I will admit some of these conversations on this thread sound similar in nature....... that the more "adult" over 30 students have about our younger counterparts....on the floor it shouldn't be us (seasoned) against them (newbies) because in the end we are all striving towards the end result...patient wellness (well most of us) and to be honest I don't want to be that bitter and rude nurse.....if I feel a remorse for my job, I'll make another change there are to many different avenues for nursing to remain some place angry. This is my ministry as I see it and until it feels otherwise, I'll stay the course.
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:rolleyes:
trina9230
41 Posts
Sounds like you have an issue with your place of work and what's required of you because I never indicated that a nurses service should include any of the things you referred to but it's a service career, so is cop, secretary, bank teller, cashier etc. You provide a service of caring for another human when they can't care for themselves. Geesh, if people would read the actual post and stop reading into perhaps this would have ended hundreds of posts ago.