I am an experienced nurse and the one thing that I just cant seem to handle is narcissist patients. I dont run into them often, but when I do, I crash and seem to fall for their games. At this one hospital I worked for, we had a program that wouldnt let you see the patient's diet until you answered some basic questions about them. There were maybe 10 including their pharmacy. I didnt have to answer them in detail, like if they had a different pharmacy, it allowed me to mark that their pharmacy had changed and get the details later. So I got a narc who was demanding water and I told her we needed to answer the questions for me to see her diet, but that they would be as quick as I could do them. We got to the pharmacy question and she went off because it was not her pharmacy. I could not calm her down, she was screaming. Luckily someone came into the room and stood beside me (unknown to the patient). In the middle of her fit, she asked for her pain button and I handed it to her. She threw it and as I went to get it, she pinched me. I said OUCH! and dropped her pain button onto her chest and backed up (all seen by my witness). The patient started screaming that I hit her. Luckily, she had not seen the other person in the room who had witnessed the entire thing, so her fake accusations got no where. Security was called and she backed down when she found out there was a witness.
So I have started refusing to care for narcissist patients that go after me. Last week, I had one screaming at me that her meds were "late" because it was 10 minutes after 8 and they were due at 8. When I explained that I had an hour to get them to her, she said I was being rude and called our patient advocate. I sent the charge nurse in and I heard her tell him everything was fine, then she got on the phone asking for our manager and an advocate. She then trashed talked me to several other people on the phone loud enough that several nurses asked me about it. I refused to go back into her room and asked for a different patient. I figured at that point, she was after my license and she was going to TRY to get it all day long and it was only 9am. My manager pulled me aside and said I could be written up for refusing to care for her for the entire shift and I said...so write me up, but I am not going back into her room, change the assignment. They also do this thing where they scream at you to get out, then they call you back into the room for something and its a set up so they can cause more problems.
At this point, my only tool is to refuse to care for them and I know there has to be a better way. I am not talking about the hard to deal with patients, I dont really have an issue with them, but these are the worst of the worst and they are too demanding.
