I once worked with a nurse who was immediately fired after a patient complained about something extremely petty. His complaint was how he felt burdensome to her because she told him he needs to stop calling every 5 minutes. Nurses are always getting reprimanded for little things, and oftentimes the BON gets called about the nurse, putting our license at risk for oftentimes petty complaints.
I’ve been in situations where the patients realllllly challenged my patience, hit me, acted violent, cussed me out. I know all of you have, too. And we handle it, it takes teamwork and sometimes chemical or physical restraints, but at the end of the shift, we did it and we did it well. And then we’re called about some BS complaint or minor documentation error.
Never once have I worked with a nurse who needed to put a knee on someone’s neck to get “em under control. Hell, George Floyd would’ve been one of my easy patients from the footage I’ve seen. I could’ve handled him with some soothing but stern words. Can you imagine what the nurse would go thru if we put our knee on someone’s neck? OMG.
Or recently in my town, a cop body-slammed a person and caused a seizure after being told by the person to STFU. And it’s been that cops 4th major offense in 5 years, with the first three offenses requiring anger management and counseling. How many of you had patients call you every name under the sun and you still kept your composure? It really doesn’t even phase me when it happens. But can you imagine what would happen to us if we got in that patients face? Or body slammed that patient? Most of us endure some form of physical abuse from patients if we work the bedside, especially ED nurses. Yet, we handle it, and rarely file police reports ourselves, and we certainly never flip out and go ape ***.
Why double standards? Why aren’t police officers held to the same standards as nurses? It’s sickening.
