What is your biggest nursing pet peeve?

Nurses General Nursing

Published

Nurses that are brilliant but do not know the difference between contraindication and contradiction! :rotfl:

[video=youtube_share;23NI4OuxB9A]

Nothing made me crazier than following someone who didn't restock at the end of their shift. I can understand if they had a bad shift, but some people consistently refuse to restock. I used to work in long term care and I hated getting the med cart halfway down the hall, only to find that I needed supplies.

I also didn't like it when a nurse was more interested in how her patient and patient room looked, rather than how the patient felt or was doing.

Donna

Second that It's not my patient vote.... also, nurses who say their patient is premedicated for this huge dressing change I am about to do (I work the floors as a skin/wound care nurse often) and I find out they gave them Percocet 10 minutes ago.... Come on, give them the demerol!

Nurses who have the faintest idea when their patient was last turned and appear to not care less....

Loooooooooooooong reports with information I don't need that make me stay away from the patients who need me. Give me the dirt, what I need to do, where they are vital-wise and let me go.

My relief shift showing up 10 minutes late and making me wait until their Pop Tarts are ready before I can give report.

And it's amazing how if you don't participate in the workplace gossip, the gossipers label you as a stuck-up.

and how quickly you become the topic of discussion, since they feel like they don't need to worry about anything getting back to you if you don't listen/participate in the gossip.

I'm new here but have found this site very helpful. Anyway my pet peeves are

1) ill tempered patients - I had a 300+ pound guy who had an MI and was scheduled for bypass surgery, well he was bumped twice for emergency cases. That did not sit well with him and even though he was supposed to be on bedrest he was leaving the floor and walking the halls and when he was told he needed to be in bed his response was well if I have chest pain then I will be an emergency case and they will have to do me next :rolleyes: . Right, because inducing an MI is the best way to preserve your health.

I'm a pre-nursing student , but my biggest pet peeve is listening to RNs $*^#@ about their jobs! If you don't like listening to families or providing a compassionate service that you are trained to do, then do something else. I am an intelligent woman who is working towards my degree in nursing. I'm currently doing volunteer work and loving it. But, I can honestly say I have encountered people who need a reality check themselves. They have bad attitudes and it is a shame they are RNs. You should all be ashamed of talking bad about families and patients. Until you have experienced grief first hand, you have no business &*%^&$! I chose to go into nursing because I lost both my parents by the time I was 27. My dad to a serious car accident and my mom to breast cancer. I saw both extremes of death and illness. I appreciate all the loving doctors and RNs that helped my mom and I was inspired by them. I am mortified to hear that there are RNs out there that hate and despise assisting people. I've worked over 16 years in the Customer Service world so I have seen every wretched human being as much as anyone else has, BUT I have a great outlook on life and I treat people fairly. I will make a great RN one day. I only wish those of you that hate your job so much, do something else!

Tessa~

I couldn't agree more. Also spelling errors which are consistent drive me crazy. We all make mistakes but it's hard to have faith in your nurse when they can't even spell. Also, nurses who say "o2 stat" instead of "o2 sat."

OH!!!!!! I hate that too!!!!!!!!

Specializes in ER.

Well as an LPN who just finished her RN program yesterday, I hate that my classmates who have never been nurses somehow think they are above me because I was an LPN first!! Ha Ha these will be the girls who are eaten alive by there coworkers, I wish I could be a fly on the wall there first day on the unit!! They always acted snotty but if the teacher was not around at clinical they came to me or one of the other LPN's for help, but somehow we were not as smart as them!! But I just told myself everyday, that when i was at work careing for my patients getting paid well I might add, they were working th ecash register at Old Navy for minimum wage!! Sorry this is a years worth of pent up frustration!! :angryfire

Specializes in ICU,ER.
I'm a pre-nursing student , but my biggest pet peeve is listening to RNs $*^#@ about their jobs! If you don't like listening to families or providing a compassionate service that you are trained to do, then do something else. I am an intelligent woman who is working towards my degree in nursing. I'm currently doing volunteer work and loving it. But, I can honestly say I have encountered people who need a reality check themselves. They have bad attitudes and it is a shame they are RNs. You should all be ashamed of talking bad about families and patients. Until you have experienced grief first hand, you have no business &*%^&$! I chose to go into nursing because I lost both my parents by the time I was 27. My dad to a serious car accident and my mom to breast cancer. I saw both extremes of death and illness. I appreciate all the loving doctors and RNs that helped my mom and I was inspired by them. I am mortified to hear that there are RNs out there that hate and despise assisting people. I've worked over 16 years in the Customer Service world so I have seen every wretched human being as much as anyone else has, BUT I have a great outlook on life and I treat people fairly. I will make a great RN one day. I only wish those of you that hate your job so much, do something else!

Tessa~

Well, my my.....aren't you special? :chuckle I know that you don't mean to come off as a self righteous pollyanna type, but well....you sound like a self righteous pollyanna type. As far as nurses that "hate and despise assisting people", yes, they probably are burned out and need to consider something else. But Honey, I don't care how many wretched human beings you have seen in your "customer service" experience....NOTHING and I repeat NOTHING will prepare you for your experiences in nursing. Am I saying that it is OK to be bitter and cold hearted? Absolutely not. I love my job and I would never do anything else. But talk about pts and families? Um...absolutely. I can't even begin to go into what some of these people put you through. Only people who are NURSES can relate. It's not like volunteer work where you pass out magazines to the cute little patients and their sweet families and briefly chit-chat. I am sure you have read other posts where we horrible complaining nurses tell horror stories about families and patients. It's so easy to sit there in your little ivory tower and "tsk tsk" and judge. When I encounter these extremely difficult people, I try to plaster a smile on my face and take care care of the patient. I get in the "Zone". No matter what they are saying, I just smile and say "alrighty then". I work in the ER and people can get very rowdy there. You take unprovoked verbal assaults all the time. So when these people leave, do I vent to a co-worker friend out of earshot of pts/family? You bet your hiney, Tootsie. This posting board is kind of like that co-worker friend. And you'll do the same thing. You have to vent. You can't do it with the pts or family.....unless you are planning on Prozac. If you are still "tsk tsk'ing", you are either super clueless or super human....the only other person I know like that walked the Earth about 2,000 years ago.

Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.

No reason to be condescending.

I would say the biggest pet peave I have in nursing are the nurses who feel they are superior to others, even though they may in fact be wrong many times. If I were to listen to one of those head strong nurses who insisted our private home duty case was in c.h.f, even though there were no new s/s of this and directed all of the other nurses to decrease his water intake, he could have ended up with a significant deadly urinary infection and dehydration which would have probably killed him. Lets leave the orders for the physicians, let them be resposible for the diagnosis. And lets be more excepting of others and not feel we are the "Super Nurse". When you do or say something wrong or wrong somebody, take time and say your sorry, and that you have learned from this. Always set a good example, its when you think no one is paying attention to you, that they are!:balloons: sandy, r.n.
Well, my my.....aren't you special? :chuckle I know that you don't mean to come off as a self righteous pollyanna type, but well....you sound like a self righteous pollyanna type. As far as nurses that "hate and despise assisting people", yes, they probably are burned out and need to consider something else. But Honey, I don't care how many wretched human beings you have seen in your "customer service" experience....NOTHING and I repeat NOTHING will prepare you for your experiences in nursing. Am I saying that it is OK to be bitter and cold hearted? Absolutely not. I love my job and I would never do anything else. But talk about pts and families? Um...absolutely.

Take it easy on the little dude, dude. She's brand spanking new....you know? There's this word.....uh, oh yeah. Inspiration. Could change your life, you know? Maybe invent a machine that showers, de-Marlboros, Motrinizes, and collects urine from all patients as they walk in the door (and wouldn't they think twice about it?)

Specializes in ICU,ER.

OkOK.....maybe I was a bit too harsh. And I do know inspiration. I absolutely love my job and have that rare experience that few do of actually looking forward to going to work. I guess I just slightly overreacted to being chastised re: talking about pts. and families. I think she said that we should "be ashamed" and quit nursing. I guess I should have considered the source. An inspired person without the experience wanting to go into hospice or oncology...yes...I could see how the nurses taking care of those patients should be ashamed if they behaved badly. But I dought you see too many "drug seekers" and abusers of the system in those areas. I encounter those MANY times every night in the ER. I have found that those are the people that give you the most crap and the ones that REALLY need to be there are appreciative...they are the ones that make my job rewarding. The abusers just waste the time I could be spending with those that really need me. So do my co-workers and I talk/vent about this? Again, ummm, yeah. If we all should be ashamed and need to quit, oh well, we'd be short a lot of good nurses.

I do have this advice for the lady considering oncology nursing.....while it's essential to be tender...you also need to develop a tough skin. Maybe being less judgemental about future co-workers would be good too. While it is deplorable to treat patients or family cruelly or without compassion.... try having a little compassion yourself when you hear other nurses talking/venting about bad experiences. Just because their coping mechanism is not living up to your standards....there is no reason to believe they should be ashamed or quit. So, again, I apologize if I came off too harsh. I wish you the best.

+ Add a Comment