Clients? Are they no longer patients?

Nursing Students General Students

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Just curious about this...all my literature refers to the patients as clients now, has this turned into more of a business? When I think client, I think business, customer, etc.

While, as a I said before, I think that the term client is best reserved for speaking of those served by nurses in general while "patient" and "resident" are more appropriate to use in clinical and residential care settings respectively, I would like to point out that the word client doesn't necessarily denote a relationship between a person who pays for a service and the person who pays for it (even if that is the case most of the time). My mother is a social-worker who spent her career working mostly with low income families who were not paying for her services at all- but she always referred to the people she served as "clients," which is pretty standard among social workers.

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Specializes in Retired OR nurse/Tissue bank technician.

They were already clients when I started nursing school in 1991-or at least, that was about when the move started to make the change.

My one instructor refused to use the word client, snorting, "Hookers have clients; nurses have patients". :eek: If anyone was dozing in class, they were wide awake after she said that.

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I disagree very strongly to calling patients clients. I have worked as a psychiatric nurse for 30 years, and

refuse to use the term client with my patients. bad.png

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I just completed introduction to nursing with an A. We were taught to use patient. My textbook cited the ANA Code of Ethics for Nurses. It was last updated in 2001. According to my textbook, the 2001 revision is when client was changed back to patient. You can read the Code of Ethics here.

If I'm sick, I want to be your patient, not your client.

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Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.

Our nursing school my first semester was told to start using clients, old habits die hard though and the instructors still say patients. I always say patient too. I don't like the term "client".

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If I'm sick, I want to be your patient, not your client.

Yes- but not all nurses work with people who are sick. Using patient as the catch-all term for people who are cared for by nurses implies that a person who needs the care of a nurse is sick- which is why I believe using 'client' when the care setting is not defined (as in a textbook), or when neither of the terms patient or resident applies (as in in-home care) is more appropriate.

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If a person depends on a nurse to administer medication and monitor vital signs, he/she is a patient.

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Specializes in neuro, ortho, peds, home, home cardiac.

There are, as is usually the case, (at least) two sides to this issue. While "client" admittedly has the connotation of a business relationship, there is also the perspective of control in the therapeutic relationship. Some writers have discussed the appropriateness of the use of the term "client" for out-patients/community health, etcetera, mentioning that hospitalized PATIENTS are sick. I believe that a higher degree of dependency is appropriate in the nurse-patient relationship in the hospital than would be desirable in the community, where it is important to empower those for whom we're providing nursing care. I recall resisting the use of "client" for hospitalized patients, and though I still am somewhat negative about it, I can live with this much more easily than I could calling those for whom we're caring in the community "patients". If you've ever worked in a medical practice (or, for that matter, been a PATIENT of one!), you know that it is not desirable for us to emulate the practitioner-patient relationship of the medical model!!!

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If a person depends on a nurse to administer medication and monitor vital signs, he/she is a patient.

I think there are a lot of people out there who depend on others to do these things for them who would not want to be referred to that way. The word patient has not been used to refer to people living in any of the LTC facilities in which I've worked, yet many of them required medication services. The word resident is used because the facility is their home. Just because people are aging and unable to fully care for themselves does not mean they are sick. And even when they are sick, they are only patients in relation to the clinical personnel who provide their care- they are not patients in relation to their home and the people who work there.

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Sorry, but I have been on both sides of the isle and I don't care for the word client. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.:nurse:

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Specializes in Med-Surg.

well in a sense, because people pay for it. they pay the hospital to get health services. so they are considered as "clients" i guess. but im not a fan of it as well. i feel like this term has blocked me from building a rapport relationship w/ my "patients"... oh well:confused:

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Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

Sorry for going all "history teacher" earlier...this board doesn't have a delete function after a while so, realizing later that my comment wasn't particularly apropos or analogous to the sense in which nurses use "client" today did very little good...

...The one about hookers having clients and nurses having patients gave me a snort though...

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