called me a maid

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one of my patients called me a maid this weekend. umph.. the lady was a 40 year old very rich lady who just gave birth to a cute baby boy. i think she had to much epidural. she put on her call light and said to the unit clerk " send my maid in please, i need a lortab" . i went in and explained i was not a maid i was a RN , she said to me " whatever, can i get something for pain?" i float to surgical next week and it will be nice for the change. anyone else ever called something other than your job? lol

was this patient from a country where nurses are actually called "maids"? if not, i think you could have truthfully told her that you'd send the maid (housekeeper) and gone to hide out for awhile. :devil:or not. after all, maids do not carry keys to the narcotic cabinet. or why not ask her why she called you that? what does "maid" mean to her? did she mean "maiden", as in

"young girl, unmarried, pre-pubescent" or something like that?

or just tell her straight out that being called a maid is very insulting and ask if she meant to insult you. yeah, she might be hormonally off, having just had a baby, but she needs to be set straight and needs to be courteous, if not totally sick and out of her mind. this is a battle that i would fight. i did not obtain my nurse job by being a maid. don't get me wrong - maids are great, maids are essential, maids can come get you when there's need for a nurse, maids do vitally important work, for a pittance and for little glory. but they do not administer pain meds and it's the height of ignorance for a patient who knows how to bring forth a baby to not even realize that she was attended not by maids but by nurses. this little chickadee needs some serious education. :argue:

nope. definitely not a battle i would bother fighting. i've been mistaken for quite a few things that i am not on the job including receptionist and copy room gal. not a thing wrong with either but those were not my job functions and i have a graduate degree. i've also worked retail and you'd be surprised what customers want out of you in that element. :) as long as i'm getting paid rn wages i won't worry too much if half conscious patients think i'm the maid.

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Specializes in Trauma, Teaching.

OK about Oedipus but what about the insult MFR you refer to? Are you calling me a MFR? :confused: Please clarify.

Good heavens no!! Someone else asked what the reference was in an earlier post! I was using alternative terms as a joke about things I have been called! As in "implied I had an Oedipus complex".

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Specializes in ICU/Critical Care.

Hmm, they can call me what they want, they will still get told. I think it will be a long time before people realize that, YES, they can get what they want without getting an attitude and being demeaning.

They giveth, I giveth back.

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Specializes in ORTHOPAEDICS-CERTIFIED SINCE 89.

Ohmy! This southern belle is just aghast! LOL

Let's keep to the topic OK?

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nope. definitely not a battle i would bother fighting. i've been mistaken for quite a few things that i am not on the job including receptionist and copy room gal. not a thing wrong with either but those were not my job functions and i have a graduate degree. i've also worked retail and you'd be surprised what customers want out of you in that element. :) as long as i'm getting paid rn wages i won't worry too much if half conscious patients think i'm the maid.

this is why nurses will never be viewed as true professionals. some nurses are just too willing to do whatever it takes at the moment, not realizing that a physician, a dentist, a psychologist, or anyone else who is already viewed as a true professional would never allow him- or herself to be called anything other than "doctor". if you are not the copy room person or the maid or receptionist, just say so. period. nicely but definitely. say you're the nurse ant tell the person you do not know where the other person is but that they can pick up the phone, dial "0", and ask for help locating whoever it is they need. we''re also not locators or keeper-trackers of others, we;'re way too busy keeping people alive to deal with all that other stuff. seriously.

i used to do anything and everything, figuring i was helping the patient. then my eyes were opened and i realized that i was my own worst enemy. i will always help someone in an emergency. i will never be cruel or haughty. but i will set people straight, verbally and by my actions, about what constitutes my rn role.

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Good heavens no!! Someone else asked what the reference was in an earlier post! I was using alternative terms as a joke about things I have been called! As in "implied I had an Oedipus complex".

Oh, OK, got it. I didn't really think you were. I was just confused. still am, truth to tell. :confused: I don't know why they thought you had an Oedipus thing or were an MFR but whatever. Thanks for clarifying. :chuckle

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I always laugh when patients put their trays on the floor outside the room, like it was room service or something.:smokin:

I don't laugh and I don't pick them up. The trays should have been removed by the appropriate personnel earlier, I figure. Not my job to break my back lifting them up. I do note the I&O if I see this happen.

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I don't laugh and I don't pick them up. The trays should have been removed by the appropriate personnel earlier, I figure. Not my job to break my back lifting them up. I do note the I&O if I see this happen.

I don't remember saying that I picked them up, although, my "high horse" isn't that high. As for any help that I give compromising mt professionality, we can just agree to disagree and I will keep making my patient's beds and teaching my students to be bedside nurses. I am sure they will develop their own way of nursing, I just hope they will always help out if needed and not develop the "I'm too good for that attitude."

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Some nurses are just too willing to do whatever it takes at the moment.

Is that really a bad thing????

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Specializes in Ortho, Case Management, blabla.
I don't know whether to laugh or be horrified.

As a future male nurse, I wonder what they'll call me: "Doctor"? "Orderly"? "Janitor"? "Al Gore"?(I kind of resemble him). One can only imagine...

Sometimes I have older patients insist on calling me "doctor." I correct them.

I did have one very nice overly dramatic elderly southern lady (think Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind) say, "Sir, I know you're not a doctor, but you're just like a doctor to me. So you're my doctor. So that's what I'm gonna call you." I stopped correcting her after that and let it slide. Everytime I'd go in her room though, she'd sweep her hand to her forehead and say, "OHHHHHHHHH Doctor! I am so sick! What are we going to do? Oh my! I can't live like this!" It was pretty amusing...she really played the sick patient role to the hilt.

Otherwise, I've been called a lot of things...never maid though. I did have one patient call me "Waiter" one time but he was off in lala-land. Otherwise it's usually just nasty stuff that it'd be against the TOS to write here!

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Hmm, Ive been called Doctor, bellhop, doorman and many of the colorful names. I will do whatever I can to help my patients except for cleaning up biological spills. Yes I will get a towel, washcloth etc to surface clean but Environmental service has to do the rest. A facility I worked at previously tried to write me up for it so i called OSHA and informed them that this facility was trying to mandate me use hazardous chemicals that I was not proplerly trained on nor would i use frequently enough to maintain an acceptable competancy of and low and behold the facility dropped the writeup. Needless to say I dont work there anymore by my choice.

But back to the maid stuff, when I get called anything but a nurse I gently remind them that I am a nurse and would appreciate them either asking for me by name or my title for any of their needs.

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I don't remember saying that I picked them up, although, my "high horse" isn't that high. As for any help that I give compromising mt professionality, we can just agree to disagree and I will keep making my patient's beds and teaching my students to be bedside nurses. I am sure they will develop their own way of nursing, I just hope they will always help out if needed and not develop the "I'm too good for that attitude."

It's not about being too good. It's about the right person doing their job. I'm too busy to do stuff that's not specifically assigned to me - meds, charting, admits and discharges, you know, the RN stuff that aides and LPN's are not allowed by law to do.

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