Getting yelled at by a doctor for the first time....

Nurses General Nursing

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So, I've been a nurse for about 6 months now and have been off orientation since the end of October, so I'm still pretty new and still learning new things. Today, I had a doctor yell at me for the first time.

Long story short, the attending dr and the consulting dr both agreed to discharge my patient. However, none of them were able to write a pain script for discharge. When brought to the attention of the attending that rounded that day, he basically said, "oh, well, she'll just have to stay another night and then go home tomorrow. I'm home now and won't come in to write a script."

The patient was devastated and stated her frustration with this. She also lives hours away and told me about having to get her son back home so he can get back to school. As her advocate, I did my best to try to make her discharge happen, because I feel like staying another night for just a pain script is a pretty poor reason to have to stay. I had called a partner of the attending who was also rounding that day, but was not the "on-call" dr. I didn't think anything of this because this dr was rounding with the on-call dr that day, and made the mistake of thinking that he too was on-call for that group. He was more than happy to help discharge the patient. The patient was so happy and thankful that I was able to get her out that day and I felt good that I was able to help her and her son.

At at the end of my shift, I had received a call from the on-call dr who had called me just to yell at me over the phone about the patients discharge. He said things like "How DARE you go behind my back and call another dr!!!" and "you better NEVER let this happen again." I've never had anyone speak to me the way he did and I kind of froze on the phone. I apologized to him for any mistakes that I had made and he hung up on me.

Has as anyone else experienced this? How do you deal with this? I was feeling so good and finally starting to feel like I'm doing a good job at work, now I feel like a horrible nurse....

No, you are okay and the doctor was being a jerk. I would let it go and move on, but yes health care staff can be jerks and not reasonable. I wouldn't take it personally and he should not be yelling at you like this.

If it's a narcotic RX, that cannot be done electronically anywhere I've lived. Wow, Texas, that is craaazy you can send them from home!

You did not do anything wrong, first-off.

My guess is that you feel bad bc you are angry that this Dr behaved so poorly and you were too shocked to respond.

Next time, try to shut that down. It took me a while do this, but my favorite way to approach situations like that are, "Excuse me, but I believe I'm hearing animosity coming from you towards me. I'm simply requesting your help with ____; if i could manage this myself, i would. Please calm down and let's help this patient."

Oh, and apologize once--if at all--for inconveniencing them. They are paid a Dr's salary, presumably. And they know how to turn their pagers off if they need to!

Yes, I didn't mean it wasn't.

However, there are some countries in Europe, like Germany, where nurses can not refuse doctor's orders/prescriptions, like we can in Portugal or USA, or other countries.

I can not even imagine how unsafety are to work in such countries.

Hi macawake, I think you totally misinterpreted my message. I am not suggesting that we should accept the angry behavior, but instead try to understand the reason behind it. We all like to be treated in a respectfully way, but you will be miserable if you expect others to be nice and respectful all the time. There will be times when people will lose their temper either at work or privately. We are human. Unfortunately, there are many who don't have the emotional intelligence to control their anger, but this does not mean they are bad people. They simply don't know how to express themselves without yelling or using hurtful words. To answer aggression with aggression isn't the best solution to fix the issue, instead try to talk to the person calmly face to face and express your needs for respect and professional behavior. And if this does not help and the person continues to dehumanize YOU then I suggest bringing it up to another person on the stuff. This is a personal view based on my 7 years experiences in the medical field. We don't have to agree. I respect your opinion and I expect you to respect mine.

I don't care one hair why they can't act right. They need to grow up. OP solved the problem created by this disorganized doctor. OP should get a promotion and a raise. Doctor should be dunked in the river a time or two and put in the stocks. Ready the rotten tomatoes!

You did nothing wrong,but you should have called him back and tell him either he does right by the patient or you will escalate the problem.Never apologize.Who knows what got his goat today I am sure it has nothing to do with you.Doctors are a very unhappy lot these days,but no excuse fo boorish behavior.I had object thrown at me ,kept my cool and reported his ass.

Happy or not, they don't get to yell at anyone. I hope you filed a police report.

Specializes in NICU.

When I was a new nurse - I may have cried. But I don't put up with that anymore. Luckily our docs are super nice and I have never seen them yell at anyone. But a doctor isn't better or more important than me, and their time is not more valuable. I would say, excuse me - the way you are speaking to me is unacceptable. They are your colleague and have no more right to speak to you this way that anyone else.

Specializes in primary care, holistic health, integrated medicine.

Not to mention, keeping this patient another night could constitute WASTE - as in "Fraud, waste and abuse". Unfortunately, it is a nurse's job to advocate for not only the patient, but also the healthcare system and the profession as well.

Some doctors are bullies. I would always remind myself I was not married to them and did not have to live with them. That and where I come from in life (as a street kid) I had encountered so much worse than someone yelling on the phone that angry doctors are childs' play in comparison.

There are real threats and perceived threats. Angry doctors fall into the category of perceived threats. The same doctors who yelled at me would wither in fear if they met up with some of the scum I encountered as a young hitch-hiker. I'd just ignore their rants and ask what they wanted to do about whatever situation after they settled down.

Specializes in Cardiac ICU.

I wouldn't let it bring you down. Doctors have such a ridiculous level of responsibility so naturally, their stress levels are pretty high. Don't take it personally. Try to learn their personalities, what makes them tic, so you can avoid the unpleasantries in the future. But seriously, he probably forgot about it the moment he hung up and so should you.

As others have said, you didn't do anything wrong. Yes- you could have kept the doc in the loop a bit more by letting him know his colleague would take care of the script for discharge but since you thought they were working together, and were communicating about these things, this likely would not have occurred to you. This is part of being new and figuring out the inner-workings of your hospital.

I also have been yelled at a few times by MDs. One was over the phone and I will take some of the responsibility for it (a long story but essentially I was pestering the doc- in the name of pt advocacy- and didn't realize he was in the middle of a surgery). However, that was also a systems problem and there should have been someone covering his service while he was undertaking an 8+ hour surgery.

Another memorable incident was with an attending who felt I should not have called an RRT for a patient with new onset uncontrolled afib and desaturation (with cyanosis!). The MD was on the floor at the time (I had alerted him to my assessment findings prior to calling the RRT) and he tore a strip off of me in front of everyone (i.e. Do you know who I am, I can manage this episode, etc). I calmly explained to him that an RRT was a nursing resource (true) and that as a newer RN I wanted the support of experienced staff with critical care backgrounds who could help me care for the patient (true). I wasn't questioning any of his orders but he seemed to take my initiative as an indication of this. I later found out that a nurse had recently called a code on a patient he was attempting to manage on the floor (I was on a med-surg, not critical care floor at this time) and he seemed to be deeply insecure about this. His outrage at me didn't change the fact that I felt I made the right call for my patient at that time. And if I was in the same situation now, I would do it again.

Remind yourself that this episode had more to do with the MD than it did with you. Yelling at a coworker is not acceptable behaviour and should not be tolerated. Don't be afraid to stand up for yourself. As others have said, find a way to deal with this behaviour that works for you and your personality. Unfortunately, we work in stressful environments and chances are it will happen to you again at some point in your career. It's a human response to be upset that you were yelled at and I felt the same way in both episodes I mentioned. However, don't let this interaction shake your confidence in your capacity as a nurse.

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