Broken spirit....

Been there,done that, ASN, RN · Jul 30, 2012

So, you are doing a spectacular job.

You run across a jerk doctor ( many more to come ) and feel you have a broken spirit.

It is dificult to glance at a medical record and assess if any of the meds are beta blockers. If Dr. Jerk knew his patient, he would have known if they were receiving beta blockers.

Instead , the problem .. and the doctors lack of knowledge was thrown back at the messenger (YOU).

Your facility knows that Dr. Jerk is a jerk. Ask for clarification and support from administration instead of cow-towing to Major Jerk .

Keep your head held high ,you are doing great.

juzme · Jul 30, 2012

first of all; HUGS TO YOU!!!:hug:You are a new grad, you need to give yourself at least a good year to feel even remotely comfortable! Nursing is very hard! You are not going to catch everything or ever stop making mistakes BUT you can minimize them and try to stick to a routine...make up a cheat sheet of questions you know the md may want, know what meds your pt is on, have a set of recent vs, etc.

At the end of every shift, ask what you have learned and what you can improve on and do your best...that's all any of us can do...perfection is impossible but excellence is achievable!, some days..lol but really give yourself some credit, owning up to a mistake is part of the battle! Good luck to you:-)

tokebi · Jul 30, 2012

I know the emotional sting when you're put down by physicians with personality issues because they attack your intelligence and dignity. Time doesn't heal everything, but time will certainly lessen the pain. I remember the times when I felt so discouraged and humiliated when I had similar encounters when I was starting out. It was so painful even to think about it. Now it doesn't bother me anymore. I know I am not as green and constantly improving. When physicians belittle you instead of focusing on patient care, it's their issue. You did your job. Sounds like you're a terrific new grad nurse. Don't let a few nasty people break your spirit.

CrunchRN, ADN, RN · Jul 30, 2012

Buck up. You are doing fine. The docs a jerk. Just try to make sure you have all your ducks in a row when you call them. Oh yeah, you are allowed to be human.

allnurses Guide · Jul 30, 2012

It's hard not to let him get into your head; yes you made a mistake but it wasn't as earthshattering as that idiot made it into. As Beenthere said, why didn't the doc know what HE had ordered already?

I was out of state on a family emergency, my husband flew in but was out of his meds and didn't bring the bottle with him. I called my PCP to see if he would call in a script the next day when he had access to his records for us, he knew off the top of his head what dh needed and called it to a local pharmacy then and there. This guy had a huge family practice!

Eleanor Roosevelt said " no one can make you feel inferior without your permission". I'm impressed you caught both errors as quickly as you did (means you are double checking yourself, and paying attention. Can't ask for for more for in a new grad.).

So, deep breath, give a mental finger to Dr. Imgod'sidiotgiftotheworld, and go on. We've all made mistakes, and some of us wish we had caught them as early as you did. :hug:

Ruby Vee, BSN · Jul 30, 2012

everyone makes mistakes, and newbies make more mistakes. catching the mistake, owning up to it and doing everything possible to mitigate the damage is very important, and it sounds as if that's what you did.

you are right that you need to be more prepared when calling doctors. when calling about a blood pressure issue, you should already have gone through the medication list and be aware of which of them affect blood pressure and in what way. it might have helped to have run that one by a more experienced nurse to make sure you had all your ducks in a row before making the call. now you've learned that, and you've learned it the hard way. which exactly the same way i learned it.

becoming a competent and experienced nurse means getting the experience . . . and going through the phase of being new, inexperienced and, yes, incompetent. we all go through that phase. you're well on your way to getting through it.

classicdame, MSN, EdD · Jul 30, 2012

stay in there. You will always come across jerks, MD and otherwise. Just do the best you can and ALWAYS protect your patient. If needed, initiate chain of command. I would write an incident report on the MD too, since most hospitals have in their policy that employees cannot treat one another that way. Even if he is not an employee, he should be reprimanded. Nights are stressful. Maybe you could get the charge nurse to look over the situation before you make calls. Good luck

uRNmyway, ASN, RN · Jul 30, 2012

Wow, I hear ya on that, but you have to buck up and get a tougher skin. It is awesome that you owned up to your mistake, I've known much more experienced nurses try to slide it under the carpet, and play 'Deny, deny, deny' if someone catches it. So congratulations on being responsible and accountable.

Now about this Dr. Jerk. I'll repeat what others have said. Ignore him. Don't take what he said to heart. You know you are a good nurse. You have listed some of many reasons I'm sure you are a fantastic nurse, and will only become better with time. Some MDs let those little letters get to their heads. They forget that without nurses, they are nothing. Do you think they could handle our shifts? Do you think they could handle being all that we are for the patient, then have them thank someone else when they get better ("Oh thank you so much Dr. So-and-so for taking care of me and curing me!")? Some of them, maybe. Some would be crying in a corner by the end of a shift. Many would go around kissing their RNs feet after a week of it :yeah: .

I've found that some Drs can be major D bags, especially at night. I guess for one, they dont realize if we call them at 3am, its not because we were bored and wanted to talk to someone, its because something is wrong. For two, they get paid to stay home and answer calls. Id love to do that instead of spending it with my sun-downers!

I had one Neurologist who chewed me out once at night. It was 3am, I was covering for a colleague on her break. Her patient had IV hep, had a control PTT, and it was sky high for like the 2nd time in a row. The protocol that this MD had signed said to call him if the results were out of range more than once. So I called. He yells at me for calling at this time, asks "And what do you want me to do about it?!" To which I answered "I don't know, you're the doctor, Im calling you to find out what YOU want ME to do." He proceeded to hang up without any orders. I documented, documented, and documented some more. Helped that my shift manager heard him yell at me over the phone from across the room. She wrote to our head nurse, she wrote to the Dean of the Neurology Department, who chewed him out and made him apologize to me. Moral of the story, dont be a jerk to your nurses, because you are human too, and theres someone above you who can chew you out too!

Do-over, ASN, RN · Jul 30, 2012

How do I mend my broken spirit? Has anything like this happened to you? Please help me keep my chin up.....I feel so bad.

Time and reflection will hopefully mend your spirit. I think reporting an errors can be part of the "mending" process. Don't need to add more guilt onto the guilt of an error. Like you said, own it and learn from it.

One of the things I struggle with (as a matter of fact, its been bugging me this week) is having a patient deteriorate and using hindsight to analyze "I should have/could have done this, that, or the other". I try to remind myself that I can only do the very best I can.

I am fortunate to have a manager that seems to appreciate self-reporting.

Communication with physicians and other nurses/staff is yet another thing, I think, that comes with experience. I am starting to feel much better about my strategies for reporting to docs, but I learn everyday.

NurseDirtyBird · Jul 30, 2012

this reminds me of my first (of few!) medication error, made only a few months into my first job after graduating. it was a very minor thing, i gave a narc a little too early with a patient that was on a pretty heavy load of narcs. no ill effect for the pt. however, i was convinced i was going to be fired and deservedly so, and i was the worst nurse ever and who was i to think i would be good at this job? because omg i could have overdosed the pt. and killed them! i ran crying to my don, told her what happened and told her if she wanted to fire me, i understood. she looked at me and started laughing. she explained the procedure for medication errors (which were a common enough occurence for there to be a pre-printed form for reporting them...), helped me fill out the report and sat with me as i called the md and poa. she told me nurses are human beings, and as such, make mistakes sometimes. as long as we learn from these mistakes, and make a sincere effort to avoid them in the future, then it's part of the learning process. she told me that if i had tried to cover up the error, or denied it if it was caught, then termination would be an option. but since i'd made one mistake, took responsibility for it and made an effort to fix it, all was well. the moral of the story is good nurses make mistakes sometimes too. it's ok. nothing bad happened to the patient, you caught the mistakes and attempted to rectify them. you obviously have learned from them, knowing now that you need to triple-check and be more prepared when calling doctors. this is a lesson many nurses, including myself, have learned the hard way.

also, doctors are humans too. and like any group of humans, some will inevitably be jerks. the doc you talked to is not the first jackass md and will certainly not be the last one. don't take it personally, and don't let one db md with a chip on his shoulder break your spirit. he's probably a turd to his patients too, so they need an especially good nurse to advocate for them! you'll learn how to tiptoe around certain doctor's idiosyncracies, and when to call in your supervisor. all of this is part of the learning process, it does not mean you suck!

orthonurse55 · Jul 30, 2012

Oh my gosh! You sound just like me 30+ years ago! My house sup made me call a doc for a SHOWER order at 3am because a patient was threatening to leave AMA if he didn't get a shower. Of course the doc was rude to me and then he showed up in the morning before I left and asked who the iddiot nurse was that called him. My supervisor was there and never spoke up in my defense! Soon afterwards, I got transferred to ICU, where I never wanted to work. It was myself and another graduate nurse - no license between us yet! One night we almost killed a guy - and I mean it literally.

Just learn from your mistakes, keep your head and your chin up, and a smile on your face. Some day you can look back and laugh at these days. Good luck.