How Dare You Say That To My Patient!!!

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Specializes in Geriatrics and emergency medicine.

i am in an absolute rage. i work on a subacute floor in ltc. we have a number of vent, trach patients. the techs that take care of them are contracted out, not our employees...

last evening, one of my patients was in some serious pain. he was calling out, and i had medicated him and made him as comfortable as possible, he had a recent run of hospital stays, the most recent one was a bka.

the resp office is directly up from him, and the tech that was on duty came out of his office and told me to "shut him the **** up or he would. called him a no good worthless garbage pile and said alot of other cruel and senseless remarks.

at the time, i just stood there,,not believing what i had just heard. i was just so :angryfire steaming mad, i just had to walk away.

i am so tempted to call his supervisor, but then retaliation is a problem, but i can not and will not let this unfeeling jerk get away with this.

i plan to go to my don tomorrow and fill her in. but, it is his word against mine,,,,but i will stand up for myself and for my patient......wish me luck!!!!

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Specializes in ER, Acute care.

Stay strong, I would have documented that. There may be other outburst from this person you may not know about. Good for you being a pt advocate.............just my opinion, but that is very verbally abusive to you and the pt. what a piece of work......................I hope your DON is supportive.:)

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Specializes in ICU/ER.

I had a very similar situation with a patient of mine and a fellow staff nurse, my pt was moaning more like chanting "help me help me" in pain--the pt could not be logiced with or consoled and I was trying to best to keep his pain under control, this staff nurse told me "we may have to play good nurse bad nurse, but I am not listening to this all night". When I was in another patients room this staff nurse actually went into my patients rooms and unplugged his bed, so that his call light would not work!!! I told him the problem was not the pt yelling, it was that the pt was in pain, control the pain and the yelling will cease.

FYI I documented everything( not what the staff nurse said--but that the pt was chanting/ moaning in pain and all the meds I used to try and relive the pain and the calls to the Dr etc etc etc.) I did though also write up a statement concerning the staff nurse and took that to my boss. I took the best of care of my pt as I could and God Bless my mgr as 3 weeks later this staff nurse was fired due to poor patient care. This was not the 1st time this staff nurse was like this towards patients.

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Specializes in Cardiac/Neuro.

How awful. Do you have an anon complaint line? If you do I would try doing that. That way he can't prove it was you (even though I'm sure he will suspect it was.)

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Specializes in Operating Room.

Not only should the tech not talk about your patient that way, you should not allow yourself to be talked to in that manner.

I find that abusive, and I think you need to file a formal complaint if you are offended.

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Specializes in Geriatrics.
i called him a no good worthless garbage pile and said alot of other cruel and senseless remarks.

i plan to go to my don tomorrow and fill her in. but, it is his word against mine,,,,but i will stand up for myself and for my patient......wish me luck!!!!

seems to me this tech was looking in the mirror when he said that! that is abuse, harrassment, and just plain stupidity. :down: good luck with the don, i hope she has the courage to stand up for you, you obviously have what it takes to stand up for your pt.:yeah::bowingpur

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Specializes in Tele, Acute.

Please let us know the outcome and what the DON does about it. I am asking this because lately I have seen so much stuff like this swept under the rug. Managers that promise to "talk to the person" or whatever and nothing comes out of it. The person you reported is still there, still doing the same things. If your DON does not do anything about this, please, please follow chain of command.

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Good for you for following through! Keep us informed of the outcome... You did not ask for any opinion but...if you do not feel comfortable putting this event in writing to officially hand in, you may consider just documenting for your own records...you may need it down the road if this behavior continues and/or to support other staff members/patients this jerk has/will offend.

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Please let us know the outcome and what the DON does about it. I am asking this because lately I have seen so much stuff like this swept under the rug. Managers that promise to "talk to the person" or whatever and nothing comes out of it. The person you reported is still there, still doing the same things. If your DON does not do anything about this, please, please follow chain of command.

You are correct. I recently worked in a facility (for all of 2 weeks) and teh surgeon was a BULLY! Cussed everyone, threw instruments, and get this-- threatened to choke a CST, and to punch another. He called me a B-word, and I reported and documented everything. NOTHING was done-- in fact, I was called in and "Talked to" by my supervisor explaining that this creep "brings in alot of revenue for the hospital" and that "He's just that way-- Ignore it." To heck with them. I quit.

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"contracted out", if that means what I think it means it may be the source of your problem. I just recently listened to a two hour rant by a friend who was fed up with the housekeeping dept at her LTC unit. It seems housekeeping is "contracted out" as you say and it is causing a lot of problems. Nurses, NA, patients and families are frequently treated rudely, not to mention how hard it is to get any cleaning done.

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Specializes in ICU, telemetry, LTAC.
I had a very similar situation with a patient of mine and a fellow staff nurse, my pt was moaning more like chanting "help me help me" in pain--the pt could not be logiced with or consoled and I was trying to best to keep his pain under control, this staff nurse told me "we may have to play good nurse bad nurse, but I am not listening to this all night". When I was in another patients room this staff nurse actually went into my patients rooms and unplugged his bed, so that his call light would not work!!! I told him the problem was not the pt yelling, it was that the pt was in pain, control the pain and the yelling will cease.

FYI I documented everything( not what the staff nurse said--but that the pt was chanting/ moaning in pain and all the meds I used to try and relive the pain and the calls to the Dr etc etc etc.) I did though also write up a statement concerning the staff nurse and took that to my boss. I took the best of care of my pt as I could and God Bless my mgr as 3 weeks later this staff nurse was fired due to poor patient care. This was not the 1st time this staff nurse was like this towards patients.

The last patient I saw who did that... well actually the only one... moaned like that for two days while he was dying. It drove us nuts. No one dared to treat him badly but we did just about lose it ourselves. It struck me as kind of a self-soothing mechanism on the pt's part- either that or possibly he wasn't in physical pain so much (he had a truckload of pain meds) as in agony over the fact that he was really dying. I'll never know, since we couldn't get him to say anything else. It's really hard to watch someone go through that.

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What a testament that not everyone belongs in the healthcare field. Over the past five years I have worked with so many people that have no compassion or empathy. (Young and Old) Why in the world they choose healthcare as their profession is beyond me!:twocents:

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