Family "Rage" toward nurses

[sawbuck]

Any thoghts on the way nurses/staff are abused verbally, mentally, and even physically by the patients' family or even the patients?

Does your institution have a crisis team for on the spot support for nursing personel going through this abuse?

[LPN1974, LPN]

Any thoghts on the way nurses/staff are abused verbally, mentally, and even physically by the patients' family or even the patients?

Does your institution have a crisis team for on the spot support for nursing personel going through this abuse?

I haven't seen any verbal, physical or mental abuse by families at my institution.

However, I have seen some irate parents when they think something wasn't done like it should have been done.{I work with the mentally, physically challenged people.}

I recently observed a sister come in and just right out accuse the nurses that we weren't giving her sister her eye drops for glaucoma.

And I know that accusation doesn't have any merit, because the nights I'm there she gets her eye drops, and the other nurses in the room that day, said they were giving them.

The sister thinks that the person's eyes were having dark cirlces, and some irritation beneath the eyes, and when she had her at home she "worked" on her for several days by giving her these glaucoma eye drops and the symptoms started clearing up. Yeah, right!

ANYwho..................stuff like that is what we encounter at my facility, altho even that kind of stuff is rare.

[Cute_CNA, CNA]

I work at a psychiatric facility, so sometimes it just kind of goes w/the territory. Something you don't take too personally.

[Typhoid Mary]

Hi, I work on an oncology unit where we nearly always have "one of those" family memebers around...over the years, I have learned to chaulk this up to the fact that families are feeling anxious, helpless- and sometimes resentful...I say resentful because I imagine that it is difficult for some of them to watch us take care of thier loved one- providing comfort with nausea and pain meds and so on...when they are likely wishing that they themselves were able to do something that provided that same level of relief and comfort. Does that make sense? I don't mean to suggest that a family member being verbally abusive to an nurse is ever acceptable, but I don't take it personally and I try to remember that we are not seeing these people at thier best, and that goes for the patients as well. Of course, some people are just down right obnoxious no matter where they are or what is happening around them. We had someone on our floor recently for whom we had to work in pairs...that is, a nurse never entered the room alone, as we found that he was a little intimidated by the presence of a third person and tended not to run his mouth as much as he would when there were no witnesses.

As far as the physical abuse of a nurse...I have no experience with this personally, but I know of a situation in my hospital where a nurse was punched by a patient...a patient with a known history of physically and verbally abusing care givers. Well, she called the police and pressed charges, and from what I hear- this is not going over well with hospital management at all...not sure yet how this will turn out. I don't kow that we have any type of services in place for a nurse who feels as though she needs support after an incident with a patient or family member- I will have to look into that.