Enough is Enough

[abbaking]

I have HAD IT with customer service and press-gayney. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! Lately at work , I do the basics and make a nice introduction but anything else I refuse (the backrubs promised in the brochure, the menu seletion, the encouragement of 24 hour visiting). All i want to do is do my job, and go home. This Customer is alway right and Healthy Patients are Happy Patients has burned me out to the point of tears. I snapped at my boss a few weeks ago when she told me of a complaint that I was not Happy enough - I said "Who on EARTH is happy and manic with energy at 4am?"

Patients are PATIENTS! They are not our guests! This is not a hotel. Personally, I would rather the hospital be old school style - that would be encouragement enough for early ambulation post surgery and even quicker d/c.

I have had enough of this customer service mentality - staff deserve better.

[abbaking]

People at Disney World. Happiest Place on Earth.

People at Disneyworld and Disneyland are tweeked out on Meth - I know 4 people who used to work there...and all 4 of them had to resort to drugs

[nicurn001]

Nurses are trained to observe , assess and implement appropriately , the treatment ordered . The good thing about thinking of customer service is that we think about the patient as a person and not as a condition ie. the patient in 234 , should be thought of as mr./ mrs. X who has had a CABG., rather than the CABG in 234 .

Nurses should be encouraged to implement their clinical skills , in a manner that encourages the physical and psychological well being of their patients . If a nurse has been busy with a patient who required care and a needy patient complains that their call bell hasn't been responded to promptly by their nurse . When management gets involved it should be to explain to that patient , that although their need may not have been responded to quickly , the nurse was acting in the best interest of her patients .

I know if I had a choice , when I was being admitted to a hospital , of either going to a hospital with a 5 star reputation for it's Clients customer care , or one with a 5 star reputation for it's patients clinical care , I would always choose the one with the better clinical reputation .

If a hospital wants a 5 star customer care reputation it should not be built up cheaply by putting more and more services upon the nurses back , they should staff those services appropriately, maybe if they did so nurses would have more time to interact with their patients in a manner that would promote genuine customer satisfaction .

[flightnurse2b, LPN]

Nurses are trained to observe , assess and implement appropriately , the treatment ordered . The good thing about thinking of customer service is that we think about the patient as a person and not as a condition ie. the patient in 234 , should be thought of as mr./ mrs. X who has had a CABG., rather than the CABG in 234 .

Nurses should be encouraged to implement their clinical skills , in a manner that encourages the physical and psychological well being of their patients . If a nurse has been busy with a patient who required care and a needy patient complains that their call bell hasn't been responded to promptly by their nurse . When management gets involved it should be to explain to that patient , that although their need may not have been responded to quickly , the nurse was acting in the best interest of her patients .

I know if I had a choice , when I was being admitted to a hospital , of either going to a hospital with a 5 star reputation for it's Clients customer care , or one with a 5 star reputation for it's patients clinical care , I would always choose the one with the better clinical reputation .

If a hospital wants a 5 star customer care reputation it should not be built up cheaply by putting more and more services upon the nurses back , they should staff those services appropriately, maybe if they did so nurses would have more time to interact with their patients in a manner that would promote genuine customer satisfaction .

thank you for that. i think we so often are the ones thrown under the bus (along with the nurse's aide) for the call bell not being answered. our director is actually notorious for walking by them, and then finding us and saying "so and so's call bell is ringing, what are you doing that you can't answer it?".

i got reported last time i worked by a patient who wanted a chocolate milk, bottled water and a turkey sandwich at 0200 (which we don't keep on the floor, i had to call the supervisor for it). she was AAOx3 and after only 5 minutes of waiting for it, screamed and yelled at me and the nurse's aide for her food. she then began screaming so loudly that it woke up other patients on the hall. i excused myself from the room and said i would be back when i had the food she wanted.

well, my patient down the hallway (a 24 hour obs for chest pain) crashed. i went to check on him and he didn't look right, he was all cold and clammy... BS was normal. he was essentially a negative assessment previously and his labs were all excellent--was scheduled for D/C in the AM! i was in his room for almost 2 1/2 hours. his BP was tanked and he was sitting in a pool of black tarry stool (and he was not incontinent before)... so i called a rapid response, stat labs drawn showed an H&H dropping rapidly with a rising INR, and i was frantically waiting for the trauma surgeon in house to return my pages. HR was flopping up in the 140's-180's and we knew he was bleeding somewhere... but had no GI history. when MD finally arrived (he was working a stroke alert with the ER doc and the ICU nurses), patient required 4 units of FFP, 2 units of blood, a massive fluid bolus because he had to go to exploratory surgery... but we had to get him intubated, halfway stable and a central line placed first--every nurse on the wing was helping me. he had an undiagnosed ulcer in his stomach which started bleeding out of nowhere. there was myself and 3 other nurses working that night, one charge and one supervisor, and one CNA. guess where we all were?

so sunshine didn't get her midnight snack until this man was on the OR table. no amount of apologizing from me or the supervisor appeased her. so administration was in her room apologizing profusely and telling me that i should have delegated to someone to get this lady her snack because she was not a satisfied customer.... they said it would have only taken a minute to get the keys from the supervisor and walk down to the kitchen to get it. all she could say was "if my nurse can't come someone else should be there to take her place! i'm hungry and i shouldn't have to wait! i don't care if you had a so-called emergency! i'm ****** off! i'm not ever coming back here!"

all i cared about was saving my patient's life. i think saving a life is much more important than having a satisfaction score. isn't that why people go to the hospital? i don't go there to be waited on hand and foot--i'd go because i thought my life was in danger. good thing i don't work for tips.

and to whoever said we must not have ever worked in a field besides nursing---i was a waitress for a long, long time. my customers at the barrel were much more patient and appreciative.

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

I got reported last time i worked by a patient...........

I do hope that whomever get the complaint backed you up. We get patient complaints all the time, we try to resolve them, but most of them get tossed in the garbage can....such as when someone complains they don't get food when an emergency is occuring. How can you possibly take someone serious that is that stupid and selfish. If I worked for a place that did, I'd have to quit.

The irritating thing is that those are the ones whom are getting the surveys weeks after they are discharged and give you a bad score. Suppose it's a slow return and that person is one of four respondants...so the score is lowered and suits get upset.

[honeykrown, MSN, NP]

I'm sorry, I totally, 100% disagree with you.

Many people that have ONLY worked nursing as a career, and have never worked another job, don't really understand, nor comprehend, that there is not a job on the planet, where there is no customer service aspect to the job.

This was the second question that was asked of me in my interview...and it is emphasized so much in my hospital, that seasoned nurses are getting fired that refuse to comply....b/c there are two major hospital systems in my area...people can choose to go to either....they want people to CHOOSE to come here.

Picking a healthcare provider is a choice...and just like some of us won't drive a certain brand of car, won't frequent a certain restaurant...won't fly on a certain airline, because of negative experiences we have....people CHOOSE NOT to frequent certain hospitals, physicians, clinics for the same reason.

I have stopped going to more physicians because of front-line staff..the gate-keeping receptionists...that have the "my way or the highway" attitude.

We have nurses in our department that have been asked by families not to take care of their infants anymore...not because of medical care, because they are rude to the families. I have personally witnessed more than one nurse practically snap a family member's head off as if their patient was a piece of property that they owned, rather than a human being.

I have never, ever had a job in my life where I could "just do my job and go home."

Ever.

Some people call it a "pain". I call it "pride in your work".

There is a massive, Pediatrician's practice that is getting ready to go under in my area...because they "prided" themselves in doing things their way, they were completely inflexible...so much so that parents found other places to take their children.

In my lifetime, I saw a hospital get shut down...hundreds of staff members lose their jobs, because they didn't think that "service" mattered.

It matters.

I think u have gotten the whole issue wrong here. There is nothing wrong wrong with the OP's venting. if u have ever worked in customer service u would know that the population has taken the issue of customer service to a whole different level.

Take the issue of flightnurse2b (Some few posts above), the pt was selfish and self serving not giving a d*mn abt the emergency. who does that.

Hospitals should take into account the Nurse-patient ratio and hire peopel to actually do this jobs or put them under volunteer. There is nothing wrong with the occasional back rub, but some pt do take them to the extreme most especially the obnoxious ones.

The issue with the old nurses is that they have been programed in a way to help them get by in their jobs and it is very difficult to change. Nurses are human beings not servants and should not be worked till they drop dead or are burnt out.

[cjcerrn]

I'm sorry, I totally, 100% disagree with you.

Many people that have ONLY worked nursing as a career, and have never worked another job, don't really understand, nor comprehend, that there is not a job on the planet, where there is no customer service aspect to the job.

The problem is not with nurses not understanding the concept of customer service, it is with the priority placed on the much needed service. Each person posting here understands the need for pleasing the client/patient. It is more that we know it is not the promary reason people are in the hospital. That need is reserved for the requirement of advanced nursing skills, not menu planning and errand running.

Would you truly understand if you were crashing, my explanation that I could not come to your assistance because I was baking cookies so another patient would understand my compassion and feel more at home? What if it was your mother? father? sister? etc?

Many times I have had to apologize to a patient for not meeting their immediate need for pillow-fluffing because I was in a Code situation. A very large part of nursing has been and always will be priority setting. My priority is your health and recovery, as it should be.

[redhotzz]

BRAVO for your honesty! I, too, think that this hotel mentality has gone waaaay over to the other side of insanity! I've done surveys...in many ERs and asked about people going elsewhere if they didn't like the treatment and for the most part...98% aren't going anywhere! They will verbalize to a patient rep who constantly circulates the ER and I believe often instigates complaints instead of snuffing them out when they can easily do so.

I was sick to death of tripping over family sitting on the floor to get to Granny to start an IV and even angry when the 4 family members had made a "group decision" as to WHERE I could put the IV line. I HAVE crappy fragile veins and I always listen to patients who also have them, but I'm talking about family deciding for other reasons where I am going to be allowed to start the IV. It got me to leave the ER after 40 yrs! I have not one regret!

I am happily doing another kind of nursing altogether and the people seek ME out, are happy to be there, and do not try to tell me how to do my work! So far, in 2 yrs, I've had not one complaint about my work and I actually love going to work again. :clphnds::redpinkhe:redbeathe

[lizziebeth157]

I understand that we do want to provide good customer service to our patients so they continue to come to our hospital and therefore we maintain our jobs, but there are definitely those people who go crazy with their demands.

I remember an incident about a year ago when we had a patient (a very selfish, entitled son of a gun) who was ****** off because our towels weren't soft enough. That's right, the towels were not soft enough. This man had a nasty pericardial effusion verging on cardiac tamponade, but he was ****** off about the TOWELS! He spent an entire shift calling the operator and requesting to be transferred to various higher ups in the system (nursing supervisor, director of nursing, head of environmental services, and the CEO of the company)... eventually the nursing supervisor left the building, went to the wal-mart down the street and paid out of pocket for fresh new towels and other nicer toiletries, put them in a basket with a ribbon around it and gave it to the patient just to shut him up. I think it's absolutely ridiculous that it came to that. Like our nursing supervisor has nothing better to do than spend her own money out of pocket to buy towels for a whiny patient?

And just yesterday I had a patient crash on me very suddenly. Me, my charge nurse, the rapid response team and two docs were in the room trying to stabilize my patient when one of my other patients (a complete walkie talkie just waiting for the doc to discharge her home) came INTO THE ROOM and asked why i was taking so long to get her a glass of water!!! Are you freaking kidding me!?!?! Could she not see that there was something slightly more important that a glass of water going on right then? And just to make it a little better, there was a water fountain not 2 feet from the room. I'm still amazed that I kept my cool and didn't rip her head off.

[redhotzz]

In 1989 I had a woman come in c/o abd pain...I put her in the room and a trauma came in...diagonal to her room, so she could see why I left and see me RUNNING back and forth to obtain 2 bags of warmed fluids at a time. The kid was 20 yrs old, helping a stranded motorist change a tire and an 18 wheeler came too close and took his leg off at the hip. The medics brought the leg in with the kid and we were readying him for transport to a level 1 center via chopper. That woman had the cajones to come INTO that trauma room and yell, "I been here 2 hrs and wanna know WHEN I'm gonna be seen???" When we all were speechless and didn't know what to say, as she could now SEE how bad this kid was....I asked her when her abd pain started and she told me 1967...and she didn't mean military time! I could NOT help myself and laughed...and of course that made her mad, but I just don't get people like that! If I hadn't had 7 others in the trauma room see it all come down I'd been the one to pay for her ignorance.

[crispy1213]

One hospital I worked at we were suppose to say "thank you for choosing to come here"! unreal!

[sunluver]

I SO agree with your thoughts about customers and patients. We are currently in a world where "instant gratification" is the expectation! I have been an RN for 22 years and have remained at the bedside. Computers and physicians (not wanting to speak to each other) have decreased the time we have to spend with patients. Hospitals and managers wanting that almighty bonus decrease staffing ratios thinking we can teach, give meds, and critically think plus perform clerical duties such as answer the phone and fax information to the new consult do not realize that we really love spending time with our patients. Where is this time? I for one cannot find it. I do not walk around with this silly smile they want. I am thinking about my next move... passing meds and interpreting the latest lab results to decide if I should call the physician and report the results. Should I also call the consults and report, because as we know the doc's will not call each other . They expect the nurse to do it. I am sure patients feel left out and abandoned. Being the bedside nurse has ceased to be because you are performing clerical duties. I was a secretary before a nurse. That is why I left being a secretary. I wanted to be a hands on nurse but my "hands " are more involved in paperwork or computers than performing hands on at the bedside. I moss old fashioned nursing . I understand times change and so should staffing levels change, in order to give the nurse the time, energy, and love of nursing that we went to school for! I too have had enough! My patients deserve my time, and management deserves to get their regular paycheck without a BONUS!

[subee, MSN, CRNA]

Why do you detest that word?

They are there to seek a service. They are paying for that service...so what if it's an insurance company...they pay the premiums.

We aren't doing them a favor by treating them.

Hookers have clients...I have patients.