I am full time on a home health pediatric case. It's physically demanding--there are frequent dirty diapers and the kid weighs 150 pounds or so. So it's transfer him to bed, change him, back to wheelchair--five times in five hours yesterday.
Anyways, the family expects the nurses to be always interacting with their child. I understand their point of view--they want maximum stimulation with this child so hopefully the comatose state goes away.
But they want me massaging, doing range of motion, talking, reading to, rubbing the head of, singing to, stretching...something all the time. For 12 hrs. Yes, they let me eat and have bathroom breaks but that's about it.
I'd just transferred the patient to bed, undressed him, inserted suppository, started tube feeding, put splints on feet... And I sat down and was catching my breath. Mom comes in with a fat stack of papers for me to read to her kid, "instead of sitting idle" because "nurse so and so would do this!" she cheerily suggested. She demanded my cell number. She didn't even ask if I was comfortable with it. Since she will get it anyway--I'll have to call her on my cell sometime, I gave it to her. And I read to her kid.
I don't want to tick her off, but I can't do this all day. I feel the family has unreasonable expectations; plus I'm not good at one-sided conversations. And my throat gets sore talking so much.
How can I tactfully set boundaries and appropriate expectations?
