I am absolutely livid this morning about comments that a Doctor made to one of my pts families yesterday while he was performing his assessment on a new patient.
Pt was admitted to the floor with severe hypoglycemia and I had spent the better part of three hours monitoring blood sugars while Dr. Plankton, as I refer to him was at church. All the while the spouse is asking me where he is and why it was taking so long for the Doctor to come see the pt.
Anyhoo, when the Doc finally gets there to assess the patient and begins asking basically the same questions from my nursing assessment and the spouse questions him as to why he is asking the same questions and what does the idiot say to her? "I need to get the information from the patient my self b/c I do not trust the nurses."!!!!! :devil: Then what does the spouse do? Comes out to the hall, where I have been listening to the whole conversation and says to me "How I can trust you as his nurse if Doctor doesn't?". Myself and another nurse explained to her that it was not out of the normal to ask the same types of questions and reassured her that we were competent of providing care for her dh.
I am working on filing a complaint to the powers that be regarding the situation and was wanting to know, would it be appropriate or not to state how insulted I was by the comment that he made in the complaint or should I just stick to the facts!! This doctor, who btw, is a hospitalist has many times degraded the nursing staff and the hospital itself with comments such as these.
QUOTE=grinnurse]LOL.................no it is the name of one of the characters on the Sponge Bob cartoon series that is green with one eye, an antenna, and has exreme "short man syndrome". I really should call him catfish b/c he is mostly a bottom dweller!!
With all the cartoon characters and toddler icons I encounter daily via grandkid, I missed this one! Oy!
Specializes in LTC, SCI/TBI Rehab,RX Research, Psych.
Wow.
I would detail the immediate conversation from the patient's spouse--definitely. His comment definitely affected the nurse/client relationship (from the very beginning) --not to mention, their impression of the facility as a whole.
Now,:uhoh21: this family (unless totally reassured) will be watching like hawks throughout the course of stay--looking for things.
Where I work, the Social Worker would most likely be paying a quick visit...and there would be some free family meals forthcoming to attempt to restore the relationship.
Specializes in Med/Surg, ER, L&D, ICU, OR, Educator.
I'm thinking that this patient and his wife must be hospital naive...just wait till they've been there a few days and realize that they will be asked similar questions throughout their stay as nurses do their assessments, and specialist's are called in. We don't reask the same questions because we don't trust our coworkers, but because we want to make our determinations about the patient based on our own assessments.
That said, the doc responded very badly. Makes me wonder how he breaks bad news to families.
Trust me, the hospital will deal with it. Make sure you include the name of that patient's wife and their phone number if you have access to it and any other witnesses's names and numbers.
He'll try to say he was joking. Your answer is that the family certainly didn't see it as a joke and neither do you.
Actually I bet he denies he ever said it. Even if there are witnesses. Please make sure you file that report in case the family decides to find something wrong with your nursing care.
Now if you had said to the patient, "I'm going to make sure I doublecheck your information because your doctor can't be trusted," I'm sure you'd be in serious discipline or fired. The doctor who makes such statements to his patients should worry about being sued by nurses.
I would not approach the doctor, but report this to your nurse manager, as verbatim as possible. Leave emotions out of it, and just state the situation as you recall. Most important would be the patient's comments to you, which is the outcome of the doctor's inappropriate remarks. Sounds like he has some guilt about not being there for his patient when she was admitted, and wanted to show that he was totally in control of her situation. He was a jerk because he put you down in order to achieve this.
since you indicate that this is not unusual behavior for this physician, i would probably write him up.
[color=#ffa500]i have no problem with anyone asking a patient the same questions i may have already asked. perhaps they will discern something different from the patient's response than i have. perhaps the patient will elaborate more to someone else, which may give us some info we need to better treat the patient.
[color=#ffa500]what is not acceptable is for any employee to make a disparaging remark about any other employee's abilities to a patient or their family, and that is what this physician did. he undermined the nurse's professionalism, and he cast doubt and therefore fear into the patient and his family by indicating that perhaps their safety was at risk due to staff incompetence. i don't care why he may have been doing it...to deflect from how long it took him to appear, because he is a bad communicator, whatever. as another poster said, i have neither the time nor the inclination to teach a 40+ year old adult how to behave.
[color=#ffa500]your hospital needs to know that this physician is negatively impacting patients' perceptions of their facility. it is a risk management and a public relations issue. as another poster pointed out...one mistake or even onbe thing that they think is a mistake, or one thing that they don't like, and what is the first thing they are going to think? "well, dr.plankton said he didn't trust the nurses here". he has planted the seed. and that is not good.
I have always found that if you are involved in a work dispute, and you are a woman and that dispute is with a man...you've got a stereo-type set against you already, as an emotionally hyserical female. You could only make yourself look worse if you allow your "feelings" to be brought forth and judged. If you remain strictly on the facts, then all involved will see anyway, how insulting this doctor was to you, and how damaging his statement could be to the patient, and over-all patient satisfaction.
Doc's are not about to answer ""cause I'm just too lazy to read the nursing notes". Ignore it it. If the family spends enough time on the floor, they'll see the good work the nursing staff does, regardless of the nonesense the MDieties spew.
:devil: Then what does the spouse do? Comes out to the hall, where I have been listening to the whole conversation and says to me "How I can trust you as his nurse if Doctor doesn't?". Myself and another nurse explained to her that it was not out of the normal to ask the same types of questions and reassured her that we were competent of providing care for her dh.
chadash
1,429 Posts
QUOTE=grinnurse]LOL.................no it is the name of one of the characters on the Sponge Bob cartoon series that is green with one eye, an antenna, and has exreme "short man syndrome". I really should call him catfish b/c he is mostly a bottom dweller!!
With all the cartoon characters and toddler icons I encounter daily via grandkid, I missed this one! Oy!