Home care nurse experiencing verbal abuse by family member of patient.

Specialties Private Duty

Published

Hi everyone. I really need your help as I am so distraught and dont really know what to do anymore. I am a married mom of 5 and I have finally achieved my lifelong dream of becoming an RN. I graduated 8 months ago and applied for several jobs with no luck.

Anyway, in July I was hired as a home care nurse working nights and caring for a young boy in his home. At first it was going well, but over time the boys mother has been unbearable. She is terribly rude to me and for no apparent reason. I have bent over backwards to help her out, including moving around hours to take her and her son to a NFL game. I have purchased flowers for the boy to give his mom, and even purchased a personalized jersey as a christmas gift to her son. I have taken their dog out in the middle of the night and cleaned up the floors when she goes in the house. All of this and much more without even a thank you!! Did I mention that my husband fixed her car for free because we felt bad and have huge hearts?

Anyway, lately this woman has treated me like dirt. She is constantly giving me dirty looks and slamming doors. Her son called me "slow" the other night and she did not say a word. I looked at him and said that was not nice, and she completely flew off the handle saying that she is going to start locking the doors and that I need to learn my role. She screams at me so loud I shake. I went into the bathroom and took a few deep breaths to gather myself. When I walked back out I asked her if I could speak to her and she asked me what I wanted. I asked her if I am doing something wrong that she is not communicating to me and she began screaming again telling me that if I dont like it then there is the door. She said that I let her son get away with **** that he wouldnt be getting away with with her or she would knock his head off! Huh??? I'm sorry but what does she really want me to do?

hen she continued to say that she doesnt want me playing around with her son and that I am his nurse and nothing more. If I were to write everything I have been through then I would be here forever. She is also always screaming and telling me that she is my boss and that she gets bills from the insurance company for 6000 dollars for 10 day periods and she thinks it is crazy. Well, she is getting an RN in her home up to 7 days a week for 9 hours each night. She acts like I am responsible. Sometimes I feel like standing my ground because I am a grown woman and I have never in my whole life been treated this way! I feel like my hands are tied because I have had no luck finding anything else and I do have 5 children.

Please give me some advice! I have talked to my boss about this repeatedly but she just says that she knows because she had dealt with her before...but the agency has no other RN cases open. This is not what I wanted in nursing and now I dread going to work. Please help!

I am going to do that just in case. Ugh I really need to get out of the agency all together!!

I told my boss on several occasions what was going on. I hope that is enough? I dont really know what else to say. You would think that they would look at it and wonder why she would want me back if these things were actually true? This scares me to death knowing that she can pretty much say anything she wants.

Although it is recommended to keep things in writing to the agency through the use of incident reports or communication notes, if you do not do this on a consistent basis, as a minimum, you should write a "Memorandum for Record" and sign it. Keep this for yourself. If the situation is particularly dicey, you may want to mail the written record to yourself and do not open the envelope, so that you can prove, with the postmark date, that you did the writeup on such and such a date, or time frame.

All this record keeping sounds pretty involved and is a PITA, but you can never do too much to cover your license.

I write up a summary of the night every night and send it into the agency in which they keep in a large binder at the agency. I would think keeping copies would be a violation?

Specializes in Peds(PICU, NICU float), PDN, ICU.
I write up a summary of the night every night and send it into the agency in which they keep in a large binder at the agency. I would think keeping copies would be a violation?

Do you really think the agency is going to look out for you? You can write it and keep it locked up. Use initials. Or if you're that uncomfortable, you could write it and hope your atty can get the records of where you worked with dates and times when you go to court. Nobody cares for your license as much as you do.

My previous post was not referring to the nursing summary/shift note for any particular shift. I was referring to situations in general, or specific incidents, for which you want to keep a written record. You need to speak to your supervisor about use of the form "communication note". These are statements where, in general, you notify your supervisors about situations in more detail than you would mention in the daily shift note. For an example: if you note that the father of the patient came home in a state of inebriation during the middle of the shift and proceeded to verbally abuse the mother; you might want to tell your supervisor about this, so you put it in writing, but you aren't going to address it in the nursing note for the day. This is background info for the agency supervisors. The nursing note is written for the patient record and is not to contain sidebar information that is not directly related to your care for the patient. Hope I made this more clear. If not, you can get more specific guidance from your supervisors when the time comes.

I get what you are saying. I really wish my supervisor would have recommended this! I am done with the case now so lets hope she just leaves me alone. Thank you for the advice!

Specializes in Pediatric Private Duty; Camp Nursing.

Supervisors work in their employer's best interests, and we don't have many opportunities to parlay with "co-workers" within the company. That's why I love this PDN board, we're all in the trenches together! I'm an overnighter, so when I'm here chatting w you fine folks, it's like a virtual watercooler!

Specializes in Pediatric.

I really hope you called CPS; did you?

Sent from my iPhone using allnurses.com

Yes myself and my employer reported the problems together.

Yes myself and my employer reported the problems together.

Huge bonus that the agency reported WITH you. We have a very, very good nurse (skills wise and personality wise) that was fired from an agency for reporting dangerous conditions to CPS even though the call was considered "founded" and CPS did intervene.

Omg! That is awful! I would have hired a lawyer! Nurses are mandated reporters!

Specializes in Peds(PICU, NICU float), PDN, ICU.
Omg! That is awful! I would have hired a lawyer! Nurses are mandated reporters!

Don't be so surprised. Happens all the time. And if you fight it, don't expect for anyone to hire you. These agencies are shady. An honest agency is rare...if it exists.

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