I work in the icu where family members are given certain visiting hours but almost always fail to acknowledge them. My patient had spiked a fever while recieving ffp prior to a scheduled open lung biopsy for the next day. His wife, sister and mother were all in the already small room swooning over him rubbing his legs, up in his face. They were driving me crazy too, coming out the nurses station to tell me/ask me something every two minutes. I was getting so far behind, I had barely payed much attention to my other patient. I called the doc to notify him of the spiked temp and he instructed me to continue the infusion (given he had spiked temps all day and he was admitted for neutropenic sepsis secondary to leukemia) but I was just doing the cya thing in case of a possible rxn. I just could not concentrate with this family up in my face and up in my patient's face. I was fed up, walked in the room looked at my patient and asked him if he would like to sleep, he looked up at me like a sick child would look at his mother and shook his head yes, I felt so bad for him. How could he realize the situation was not conducive to his healing, his pulse was up in the 130's partially d/t his fever, but also his anxiety from these three women hovering. I looked at the wife and said- maybe it's time for you to leave. She looked at me like- how could you say that! But i guess something clicked in her head and she immediately complied with my request. So they gathered up thier things and the sister asked me 3 times if I would come get them if anything happened, as if i'm retarded or something. UGGGH! I just thought to myself if this guy codes you will not be the first thing on my mind! Shortly after they left his temp came down from a whopping 39.5 back down to 37 within two hours.....hmmmm... I wonder why. He actually got to get some sleep.
I just think it is fascinating how a reasonably stable situation can worsen tenfold when you are struggling with the family. Maybe I was harsh in asking them to leave but it was certainly in the best interest of my patient.
I understand looking at it from their perspective how the majority of their actions were emotional, however I can't get over how angry it made me.
