Often nurses on the floor, while in their busiest minutes of their day, and sometimes even during a crisis, are hunted down by phlebs, radiology techs, physical therapists, care managers, random consults, dietary aides over innocuous issues or pesty requests. These requests come from a group of staff who generally are not accountable for a patient load, but have one job that they perform over and over on multiple patients throughout the day and are not sensitive to the cloud of responsibility hanging over nurses, who are trying to keep track of 10 other things that people have come by to tell them.
"Your patient in room 4 asked for water."
"There's a dime sized blood stain on your patient's sheet (from when they drew blood)."
"Your patients armband is missing (when its on their ankle)."
"Where's this patient's nurse?"
"Your patient in room 7 wondered if you could help them with the TV."
Meanwhile, you're running around looking trying to get pain medication, or you're settling a fresh post op, or stepping a patient up, or trying to prevent a rapid response. You know that what the person says may be important, but it's not something you aren't already cognizant of or something that needs addressing immediately.
Sometimes these staff want you to tell the doctor this or that, and you just want to say "Leave me alone damn it. Why don't you ******* tell them to order it?"
The best is when they pop on the unit for the 15 minutes they need to do their job, see that something is amiss in the patient's room, and they adopt an attitude suggesting that you haven't been paying attention to your patients.
What is your opinion on pesty ancillary staff? Do you experience it, or this just trumped up? What do you think it stems from?
