Client or patient?

[nursemike]

I was looking at another thread and thinking about the amazing intimacy of nursing, and it occured to me that I really don't like refering to patients as clients. Hey, I'm not helping them pick out a set of drapes, here! This is way more serious than business.

I know administrations would like us to be more aware of customer relations--sometimes to the point that it interferes with good nursing, IMHO--and I know nursing leaders want us to get away from a paternalistic/maternalistic attitude toward those for whom we care, but I tend to see nurse-patient as more than a relationship. To me, it's a covenant. (Yes, I am still in nursing school, and yes, I will become jaded and cynical, but I hope I never lose that belief, even if it does have to adapt a bit to daily reality.)

So, what do people think? Can we call people patients and still encourage them to be participants in the process, or am I just old-fashioned?

[grannynurse FNP student]

I believe it depends on the setting and situation. I referred to my WC patients as my clients. I referred to my hospital patients as patients. They are two seperate and distinct groups of individuals.

Grannynurse :balloons:

[PMHNP10]

You take a client to lunch or set up a business meeting with client. I'm pretty sure it's unethical to take a person you are caring for out to lunch and that's how I justify my feeling about how rediculous it is to call a sick or injured individual a client. I'm all about some rationalizatiion.

[carolinapooh, BSN, RN]

attorneys, insurance companies, stock brokers, real estate brokers, and (by the way) prostitutes , etc. have clients!!! they have client/agency relationships, which are fiduciary responsibility to their client and owe their clients certain actions, deeds, loyalties, and services through their fiduciary responsibility to their client! aaaarrruggghhh! :angryfire this just makes me hot under the collar, for heavens sake!

cleaning companies, grocery stores, department stores, restaurants, gas stations, and (by the way) prostitutes (again), etc. have customers. they have no agency relationship with the customer, nor any legal contractual arrangement with their customer which makes the customer their client in an agency relationship. they have no fiduciary responsiblilty to the customer. they provide a product or service and their customer has an assumed (non verbal or written) legal responsiblility to pay for the product or service. it is an at will relationship with no agency or fiduciary responsiblilty attached to it.

health care professionals as nurses, doctors, therapists, etc., have patients!!! they care for the sick, educate the well, and provide care to heal, to maintain wellness, and to prevent illness. their relationship is not a fiduciary/agency relationship. it is a patient/care giver relationship. they are not an agent of the patient, and do not in any way have an agency agreement with a patient. a health care professional's employer may have an agency agreement and relationship with his/her patient. then the relationship between your employer and your patient may be an agency relationship, with fiduciary responsiblities to your patient, who then is your employer's client. but your employer's client is your patient.

your employer also is a provider of health care professionals, but a health care professional is not a provider. (this dummied up term came from the insurance companies, hmos and ppos, in their attempt to degrade the importance of physician and nurses by having "provider relations" instead of the doctor and nurses being their clients they were dubbed their providers, but in an agency relationship, through contracted agreements with the doctor or nurse!

sorry, but this is 1980s/90s, smoke and mirrors, put there by some 30 year old, mba advertising executive who had a bright marketing idea, for his clients in the health care provider industry, with no concept that a legal agency relationship with a fiduciary and a client would be an improper relationship for a doctor or nurse to have with a patient.

yes, the health care industry must be run like a business with a profit center or it would cease to exist, but there is another dimension to the health care giver relationship with the patient, that other businesses do not have. that is a patient who needs care and health care professionals who have taken moral oaths which make the patient/doctor, patient/nurse an entirely different kind of relationship than customer or client type relationship.

i had customers and sold them groceries, home furnishings, equipment for their businesses. i also had clients. i sold them houses, farms, ranches, and businesses! i now have patients!

i don't give perineal care to clients or customers!!! and never will!!! i will never give injections, baths, or insert rectal thermometers into a client or a customer. i will only do that for my patient.

on residents: if they are in a ltc because they are not well enough to live on their own, they are a patient of the medical care giver and a resident of the facility. to the management of the facility they may be residents, but to the medical care giver they should be they patient.

when i'm sick and need health care, i had better be the patient, and not treated like a customer, client, or resident!

good grief! where does this phony pseudo sophisticated "carp" come from? the consumer thinks it is as stupid as the nurses and doctors do. especially the older ones who are the largest segment needing health care anyway!

ooooooh! rant! rant! :angryfire

:angryfire

just brings out the worst in me!

all these politically correct, dummied-down, euphemistic phrases have whipped and beaten our language into meaningless sludge. drives me nuts.

edited to add: and this really burned me up: referring to nurses as "serving" people (to the poster who said she's now being told to refer to residents of her ltc as "person served") - i find that very condescending and handmaidenesque...

rave on, my friend! :roll

[lpnstudentin2010, LPN]

from the flip sides pov...patient.