Dealing with difficult families

[hookyarnandblanket]

We have all come across those families who are difficult to please, no matter what you do to go above and beyond the call of duty while meeting the needs of your other patients/residents.

This is the time of year when emotions and demands run high, so what do you all do to deal with family members who are demanding, particular, or obsessed with controlling every aspect of their loved one's care?

[mindofmidwifery, ADN]

Keep a smile on my face and do it :)

[BBboy]

2 very big keys to success with anyone in this field: Empathy and being able to put yourself in another person's shoes. If you employ both of those you should be able to keep a calm and collected manner while carefully choosing your words as you encounter difficult situations.

[hookyarnandblanket]

I am a very intense empath; currently, we are dealing with a family member who is in complete denial that her father is dying. I personally have been there; I watched my own mother die of cancer and I know how difficult it is. However, I was rooted in the strong reality of what was happening even though I was relatively young.

This person believes that her father's cancer is going to be magically cured and he is going to go home cancer free. He is now totally unresponsive, not able to eat or drink, yet she continues to try to get him to take sips of water. She has to be in control of everything and has a conniption fit if the nurses are not there precisely on the dot of the hour to give his meds. She has humiliated more than a few staff members and wants her father to be the only priority of our shift. She fired hospice because, in her words and beliefs, hospice is only about dying and even though he father has stage 4 metastatic, terminal cancer, he isn't dying. She is so out of touch with reality that it makes work miserable for nearly all of us.

We have gone above and beyond the call of duty for this woman, yet nothing is good enough. She wants me to do his restorative exercises with him everyday, but he is so weak, he can't even lift a finger now. It is extremely frustrating when you have sacrificed time and care with other patients to make him the priority only to be told that you aren't doing enough or what you have done is unacceptable (and she did say this to a coworker who went out of her way to spend an hour longer than she needed to to care for the man).