HELP! Nosy pt family member driving me crazy

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Bear with me while I try to explain this.....never encountered anything like this before and not sure how to deal with it. My hospice covers several very small rural towns that are all about 8 - 10 miles apart. In these little towns, everyone knows everyone and probably knows folks from the surrounding towns as well. I have 1 patient in particular that makes me insane. Well it isn't really the pt but rather his wife. She is very nosy!! I call her "neighborhood watch". The neighbors on either side of these people are on service as well as their daughter and the daughter's mother-in-law. When I arrive the wife always asks if I've been to the neighbors or if I'm going to the daughters etc. I've explained until I'm blue in the face that I can't discuss it with her. She just looks at me like I'm being mean or lying and continues to ask. Tuesday one of my co-workers had a very serious car accident on her way home from work. Yesterday, I had to call this patient and the wife was asking me about my co-worker's accident (not sure how she found out about it unless it was from the front page of the local news paper......they showed a lovely picture of the accident with my friend being cut out of the car!!) I told her I wasn't able to discuss it with her and she continued to gossip about it. I am to the point that I hate going to this home!! What would you/should I do?? Any ideas on how to handle this would be great!! Thanks!!

Something I learned as a student was, "For what purpose do you need this information?" Usually makes them back off.

That's an interesting tactic -- I'll have to try that one.

Something that works for me is silence. After I've told someone once or twice quite nicely that I can't discuss the information, the next series of unanswerable questions are met with a smile and silence. I just smile and stare. It usually winds up with the person actually saying out loud "you can't discuss that information."

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Specializes in pedi-onc, Adult Acute care, LTC, more.

Maybe she had some mild dementia...

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