I can't believe the hootzpah of some people!

[ShayRN]

Conversation goes like this:

granddaughter of patient: Excuse me, do you have a suture removal kit.

me: Yes, we do. Is something wrong? (For the life of me I cannot remember patient having any sutures)

granddaughter of patient: Well, no. I have sutures that need to come out and since my mom is a nurse, she is going to take them out for me. I live out of town and can't get to my doctor.

me: I am sorry, I cannot give you one.

granddaughter of patient: Well, is there anyone else around here I can ask?

me: no

granddaughter of patient: Where is the doctor? I want to talk to him. My mom IS a nurse. I don't understand what the problem is.

me: sorry, there is no doctor here tonight

granddaughter of patient: My mom is a nurse, I can't understand why you won't give me a suture removal kit. I am stuck here and you have one.

me: Oh, I am sorry. I didn't realize you were from out of town. If you leave the parking lot and take that road straight up there is a Walgreens that you can get everything you need to have your mom take your stiches out. But I am sorry, I cannot give you our supplies.

granddaughter of patient: Well, if I was going to leave, I would just go to my mom's home and get what I need. I don't understand what the problem is...after all my mom IS a nurse.

I sincerely cannot imagine walking onto a nursing unit and asking for supplies to remove my stiches. Then being offended when the answer is No. What I really wanted to say was "since your mom is a nurse, go speak with her and she can explain to you how completely inappropriate it is for you to ask for this" but I highly suspect it was mother who told her to come out and ask for them. Really people are just getting more and more rude.

[swirlything]

I would have told her simply that taking supplies that have not been paid for is stealing. That circumvents all the other issues.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

people are oh-so-entitled these days!

patient asked me to toilet his elderly mother, who was sitting in her wheelchair next to his wife (who had appropriated my chair -- the one i use for charting on the bedside computer -- while her piles of stuff were sitting on the chair i had with great difficulty obtained for her use). i explained that toileting visitors was the responsibility of the other visitors who had brought them. "yeah," he said. "but my wife, she don't like to do that."

i've been left with toddlers sitting on the bed of my 65 year old, actively infarcting ccu patient because their mother "always leaves 'em with granny when she goes out to party."

a physician left his elderly mother at his hospitalized father's bedside to visit for three days. mom had some form of dementia. she'd wander into other patient's rooms and take the food off their trays, use their bedside commodes (we have no patient bathrooms) or borrow blankets off their beds. once she tried to get into bed with a patient. the physician returned to his home 200 miles away, assuming that the nursing staff would "just take care of mom." (our manager seemed to think this was an ok thing -- it was our medical director who called social services).

and then there are the families that steal all the medical supplies from the bedside table, all of the snacks from the nutrition room, and walk out with enough pillows and blankets to stock our entire icu.