I've been a nurse in the SICU for a lil more than a year now. yesterday, while I was helping another nurse with her pt who was agitated and going through alcohol withdrawal. The pt spit (or more like splashed) the medication and water that he was holding in his mouth, all over my face, on purpose. His spit got in my eyes & mouth. I went to occupational health to get baseline labs taken, just in case.
As nurses, we are suppose to keep our pts away from harm, keep them from harming themselves, but who is suppose to keep them from harming us.
This incident just made me really depressed about nursing. I try my best to take the best care of my pts...I put their needs in front of my own. I love bedside nursing...but honestly I have no idea how long i can deal with things like this.
I'm sorry you are going through a hard time right now. It is difficult to be mistreated by patients we work so hard for.
I also work in SICU and am familiar with the difficulties of patients in withdrawl. As said already, try not to take this personally. He probably does not remember you, probably does not remember the incident, he would have spat on any other nurse at the time.
Sad to say but these things do happen. You have to develop a thick skin! I learned that my first year in nursing and I'm only in my second year! Don't give up!
I agree with Josiah. Pray about it. My faith in God is one of the things that keeps me going.
I do not love bedside nursing. But prescription Zoloft, Adderall, and Klonopin have been helping me to survive working full time as a nurse. My ARNP has prescribed them for me over this past year, since being employeed as an RN really takes its toll on my emotional health. Counseling helps a lot. Sometimes after a really bad shift, I need to sit down with my therapist and talk it all out in counseling.
And purplehockeymom, I totally understand where you are coming from.
sadRN, my sympathies are with you. I hope all the labs they ran in Ocupational Health turn up negative. Best of luck to you.
I have worked in the hospital for 20 years. The last few years I've been severely depressed and more recently on the verge of starting antidepressants (several of my co workers already are). Two months ago I quit the hospital scene. I can honestly say that my depression has completely lifted. I get on better with my hubby, I'm losing weight and I am even tolerating winter, which I hate.
I don't think it's possible to develop a thick skin if you are a sensitive person. I worked in the ED and would feel awful each time I was abused by a pt (and sometimes a doc), whereas other nurses would just shrug it off.
I don't want to tell you what to do sadRN, but just know that there are other opportunities for nurses that don't involve hospitals or even having to see patients. Explore your options so you don't have to be miserable for the next 20 years.
i am really depressed about nursing too, though for a totally different reason.
i am a good nurse, and very smart and knowledgeable, and i really care for my patients. i enjoy my job, except that i am continually criticized for my end of shift overtime.
i spend a lot of time preventing problems with my patients:
-gettting that incredibly distended colectomy pt with impending ileus better pain control, so that she can increase her mobility- by the end of the night, she was passing gas again;
-calling for a lasix order, when the 6 day post op patient, who has had lr running at 125 cc/h the whole six days, looks like a tick about to pop, has o2 sats just starting to decline into the low 90's, and is mildly tachypneic (do they teach surgeons about any other iv fluid?)
but because no emergency emerges (because of my excellent nursing care) my efforts go completely unrecognized. i feel like i am about to be fired for being a good nurse...
I've been a nurse in the SICU for a lil more than a year now. yesterday, while I was helping another nurse with her pt who was agitated and going through alcohol withdrawal. The pt spit (or more like splashed) the medication and water that he was holding in his mouth, all over my face, on purpose. His spit got in my eyes & mouth. I went to occupational health to get baseline labs taken, just in case.
As nurses, we are suppose to keep our pts away from harm, keep them from harming themselves, but who is suppose to keep them from harming us.
This incident just made me really depressed about nursing. I try my best to take the best care of my pts...I put their needs in front of my own. I love bedside nursing...but honestly I have no idea how long i can deal with things like this.
I'm sad and frustrated.
here's what we do with those types . . . ativan Q1, dexmedetomidine gtt, restraints . . . and if that don't work, call security! You don't have to take that kind of abuse!!
Get over it. The patient (especially psych or dual diagnosis) is not there to treat you well. Not only is addiction a condition frought with behavioral problems, but if the guy is detoxing, he's probably in a heckuva lot of agitation. Alcohol withdrawal is a b****.
Whenever you're working with someone who may be a spitter, wear a face shield. If you think there's a chance there may have been blood in his mouth (a great trick to freak out nurses), see EH for exposure followup. If not, wash your face and your hair (I've had to do this at work a number of times), take five, and don't take it personally.
This is why good psych experience should be a requirement for all nurses...
Specializes in Clinicals in Med-Surg., OB, CCU, ICU.
Lord... I think you are taking this a little too personal. Nursing is dealing with patients who are very ill, and have no idea what they are doing. Police officers are also subject to such moments. If you can't handle these kinds of moments, you might decide to work at the Urgent Care Center, but there is still no guarantee that such events will not happen. Not everyone can be a nurse.....................!
I'm sorry this happened to you and I hope you are feeling a little better by now. I'm sure you realize this kind of thing happens in nursing, but it's still hard when it happens to you.
It's true that when you are in the midst of dealing with the patient you have to put their interests first and ignore your own feelings to some degree. Probably easier when it's clear the patient has no idea what they're doing, which may or may not have been the case with your patient. Howev er, once away from the immediate situation, I think it's OK to acknowledge any feelings of anger, fear, etc. You're human--you're not a saint--and it is perfectly OK to have negative feelings about being assaulted (and this is a form of assault). In fact you are more likely to have trouble dealing effectively with patients like this in the future if you don't allow yourself to feel some not-so-nice feelings now. Better to get the hurt and anger out so you can deal with them honestly and think things through than pretend everything is OK, only to find them slipping out unconsciously the next time you have to deal with a similar patient.
It would be great if you could talk it over with an understanding nurse buddy. Unfortunately, many nurses have the attitude that you should just "man up" and learn to deal with it, somewhat like police officers and military folks.
What they forget is that a number of people in those careers end up with PTSD or something similar because of "the code"(I do my job, I see things that civilians couldn't bear seeing, and nothing gets to me). Now in the midst of a firefight or when dealing with a patient you DO have to put your feelings aside in order to effectively do your job. I just want to emphasize that once you're out of the stressful situation, it is OK and necessary to have feelings about what happened. You then have to figure out how you want to handle unpleasant truths such as: fair or not, the patient is the one in the position of vulnerability and their right to humane treatment in spite of their behaviors trumps my right to expect civility from them. Can I work in a job where I have to accept this?(By the way, this is the traditional view. Some nurses are now saying that working as a nurse shouldn't have to mean being a punching bag and that it's high time nurses received more protection. They liken the traditional view that abuse is part of the job to the battered partner syndrome.) What is your view? How are you going to handle yourself next time this occurs? You need to think this out now.
I know I've used the terms "assault" and "abuse" and a lot of you are thinking, good grief, he just spit on her--what's the big deal? I've had worse than that! I know, so have I--but I think that it can still call up the same emotions as more extensive mistreatment and I also think that nurses traditionally have minimized how stressful the profession can be. Maybe this downplaying of what happens to us prevents us from acknowledging how much stress we are under and contributes to the number of nurses being treated for depression and anxiety. So I use words that perhaps overstate the situation because the reality of what happens to us has been understated for so long.
Lord... I think you are taking this a little too personal. Nursing is dealing with patients who are very ill, and have no idea what they are doing. Police officers are also subject to such moments. If you can't handle these kinds of moments, you might decide to work at the Urgent Care Center, but there is still no guarantee that such events will not happen. Not everyone can be a nurse.....................!
Yeah but the police are allowed to defend themselves and you better believe the people who try to hurt them will get in so much trouble and possible jail time.
As yes, the majority of the patients know what they are doing. They just know most of the time they won't have to deal with the consequences of assault on a nurse then if they took out their aggression on any other person.
...the majority of the patients know what they are doing. They just know most of the time they won't have to deal with the consequences of assault on a nurse then if they took out their aggression on any other person.
If a nurse is truly injured by a patient, you can press charges. Happens all the time at my work, especially if one can show it was done with malicious intent, i.e. the time a nurse got punched in the face and ended up with two black eyes. However, the OP got saliva splashed in her face. Who would try to pursue that? It's just absurd, and given the scenario, the patient can hardly be liable for his actions. Nurses need to develop a thicker skin - it wasn't a personal attack. Can you take it personally every time a patient calls you mean names, too?
RNperdiem, RN
4,592 Posts
I'm sorry you are going through a hard time right now. It is difficult to be mistreated by patients we work so hard for.
I also work in SICU and am familiar with the difficulties of patients in withdrawl. As said already, try not to take this personally. He probably does not remember you, probably does not remember the incident, he would have spat on any other nurse at the time.