Occasionally, I'll have a patient who is speaking on the phone when I enter the room with meds for them. Some will tell the person they're speaking with that the nurse just came in and that they have to go. Others, just keep chatting away and pretty much ignore me. If I can, I'll let them be and come back later, but it sometimes puts me behind on my med pass. I recently had one woman who I was able to assess on one of her short breaks between phone calls but other than that, she was pretty much on the phone constantly the whole day (and then complained about having a sore throat and hoorificeness).
I realize that sometimes the phone call is really important but I feel that most of the time, it's just rude to continue the call while the nurse waits to give you your medications and treatments. I feel like I need to be more assertive in asking people to get off the phone but worry about them complaining to management. And you know how focused we are on patient satisfaction scores
Do other nurses out there have the same problem. How do you handle it? Do you bother asking the pt to put down the phone? Are there repercussions?
