I work rotating days/nights Cardio-Thoracic stepdown and we have a nurse on the night shift who is in her late 60's who regularly mis-treats patients and who is a very toxic and disfunctional personality w/in the staff. First of all, noone likes her b/c she is loud, obnoxious, over-opinionated, argumentative, she talks down to everyone, she accuses everyone of being an alcoholic or drug addict, and she calls out sick ALL the time . I refuse to speak to her /x in report b/c whenever I try to talk to her she argues w/ me or laughs @ me as if I know nothing ( I am a male c/ one year experience, she has been on the unit a little over a year after being a traveler). The difference between working w/ her or not on nights is emmence. When she works everyone is tense and stressed and depressed, and when she doesn't work it's much looser, more fun, more teamwork. We have this one male noc nurse who has the charisma of 10 charasmatic people who is knowledgable beyond beleive and this evil nurse has latched on to him and is sucking the life out of him. He has learned to deal w/ her and deals really well (if I was on speaking terms w/ her, none of the words would be kind ones). She's just simply toxic to the Nth degree.
So I picked up a patient from her this AM who had an emboli to her spine and who can't really move her legs. She also has Breast CA, receiving Chemo and all. She is the sweetest thing you'd ever want to meet. I had had her for a couple of days so evil nurse starts telling me how she used to be an alcoholic and that she can really move her legs fine, she just needs encouragment. I go to see her (the pt) and for the hell of it (I don't usually do this) I asked her what she thought of her nurse during the night. Apparently the pt had asked for the bedpan a couple of times and didn't have to go, so evil nurse tells her that since she had a couple of false alarms she wasn't going to give her the bedpan anymore and she stuck a towel between her legs. So when I went to see her in the morning she was crying and soaking wet w/ urine. Her 2 small stage 2 ulcers on her bottom that I had put dressings on the day before were undressed. So I got her cleaned up, told her to call for the bedpan and not listen to what evil nurse had told her, and I arranged w/ the charge nurse for her to get an actual qualified RN to care for her tonight, otherwise evil nurse would have had her again. I also told her to have her family write a letter to our manager to tell how she was mis-treated by evil nurse. She needs to retire, end of story! This sort of thing is a regular occurance.
