Have You Ever Had to Take Care of Someone You Knew?

[NewGradRN114]

I work in a small town hospital so it is not uncommon for me to see people I know as patients in the hospital. However, I have never had to take care of someone I knew until last night. I got an admission and it turned out to be my sister's co-worker. I've only met her once before but I've heard a lot about her. When I realized I would be taking care of her it kind of threw me off guard and I felt flustered. I wasn't expecting my admission to be someone I knew. I know in a small town hospital it can be unavoidable to have to care for someone I know.

Has anyone else had to care for someone they knew? In this situation it wasn't someone I was close to but if it was a family member or friend I think it might be a little more awkward.

[AliNajaCat]

I was doing utilization review in our small community hospital for an HMO and found my father on my list of cases one morning. I called the office and said I would be more comfortable having somebody else do his chart review and they told me to do it anyway. I asked him and he said it was ok...and that's when I found out the small-town surgeon was clueless about what was the matter with him. This anagram hit the fan soon after.

[Been there,done that, ASN, RN]

I have taken care of the governor of the state I was living in, my nursing director, and co-worker's families. It was not a problem, as I was not uncomfortable with it.

I asked for a change of assignment one time. It was a former boyfriend, that I still had feelings for.

If you do not have a personal relationship with the patient, it shouldn't be a problem for you.

[RainMom]

I also live in a close knit community & take care of people I know regularly. One day in pre op recently, 4 of the 5 pts I prepped were from my same small town 30 minutes away & I knew them personally or were somehow connected to their families.

[NurseLife88, ADN, RN]

I have never personally cared for someone I know, but during the birth of my second child my nurse turns out to be a girl I had went to high school with. We never spoke in high school....so let's just say those peri checks and assessments were awkward to say the least!

[Sweetheart2005, ASN]

I took care of a former coworker. We worked together about 8 years prior at a non nursing job and friends on Facebook. I saw the name, went in the room and let him know they had assigned me as his nurse before anyone started on report in case we needed to switch things up and asked if he was ok with that. We weren't close, so I was comfortable being his nurse and he was agreeable.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

I took care of my cousin's best friend -- a kid that was always invited to family picnics, holiday celebrations, etc. I also took care of my grandmother's first cousin, a man I had heard a LOT about via the family grapevine but had never met. It was hard to notify the next of kin when he died -- he had listed my grandmother. She liked him, even if no one else did. (Seriously, one of those patients we all hate -- and then I had to admit that the reason his next of kin had the same last name as mine was because we were related!)

A close friend was the admitting doc when her teenaged son was brought to the ER following an episode of severe stupid. Fortunately the kid turned out OK, but it was touch and go for a bit. And a colleague had an admission from ER whose name she didn't recognize -- the woman had a bad case of "falling down the stairs". It wasn't until hours later when her boyfriend came out of surgery and the detectives came around to interview everyone involved that she got the whole story. The woman was in bed with her boyfriend when her husband came home and found them. He shot the boyfriend and beat up his wife. Then he went to turn himself in to the police . . . it seems he was a uniformed officer and the boyfriend he had shot was his partner. The boyfriend also turned out to be my colleague's HUSBAND, she had been taking care of his lover for hours. We quickly switched assignments.

[T-Bird78]

Yep. I had a former manager, two former coworkers, dozens of former pts from my previous employer (overlapping fields of specialty), neighbors, friends from church, my husband's coworkers, and even the owner of a well-known local car dealership the week after I got my new car. You know how to handle it? HIPAA--keep your mouth shut. It's so easy to tell my husband that I saw his employee but you can't.