Several months ago, an inappropriately friendly and much older man, whose wife was critically ill, wanted to show me his houses on his tablet. Well you have to be polite so I looked at the picture of this vacation property and the other vacation property. Then he had a life size selfie of his member, no doubt induced by an ED drug, on the tablet and a big grin on his face. There were many things I would have liked to have said or done, but I said nothing and I walked out. Mainly because I was shocked and because I had too much going on to waste time on this creep.
For the rest of that shift, I completely avoided him or had helpers in the room. I did not take that assignment again. We assigned male nurses as much as possible.
His creepy attempts to be friendly continued for weeks. We all knew he used his tablet to "flash" myself and another nurse but for his wife's sake we did our best to tolerate him and be polite.
This situation was very political. The administration would have done nothing if I had reported it. Much later, it occurred to me that if this had happened elsewhere, it might be considered indecent exposure.
It bothers me that we let him get away with this because he could be doing this to staff at other facilities right now.
What would you do? Shrug it off? Notify security? Report it or write an incident report, ask administration to intervene and tell him he is not permitted to use electronic devices in patient care areas?
I guess that I am partially writing this to warn others that if a visitor wants to show you something on a tablet, you might see something that you really don't want to see and that it is hard to erase something like that from your brain.
Some people are going to think it's no big deal and that's fine. I really would like to know what you would have done if this had happened to you.
Specializes in pediatric neurology and neurosurgery.
I'm sorry you had to experience that. I feel like you did the right thing by not reacting in front of him, because as previous posters have said, he wanted a reaction. Any reaction.
I'm even sorrier for you that this is evidently some sort of "VIP" or political situation, and that your management would ignore this abuse. Ordinarily, if this had happened to me, I would have gone directly to my unit managers and they would have called our Risk Manager. This creep would either have lost his visitation privileges, or received a final warning. However, I realize that this is a special case. Honestly, I think I still would have gone to management, in hopes that they would listen to me. And because I would have been furious. What a jerk.
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
I'm gonna agree with those who indicate that you didn't do anything "wrong".
However, I believe that this sort of unhealthy and creepy behavior escalates and that he will likely graduate to more intrusive forms of harassment and sexual abuse if he is not confronted and caused to formally acknowledge his perverse behavior.
There should have been an incident report filed.
Security should have visited him, with risk management and discussed his behavior, the expectations for behavior going forward, and the reality of a police report should he continue.
Please.. stop beating yourself up. It's shocking to have some male genitalia ( you know what I really want to say) stuck in your face. You were focused on providing patient care.
In a perfect world, I would have had him step out of the room , while I called security and notified the nursing supervisor.
Wishing you an Etch-A-Sketch to erase THAT image from your mind.
I asked my husband his thoughts on this and his comments were: "Report this to upper management and make them do their jobs. Report this to your union. This is sexual harassment. Don't be passive; make your management and union act, and, also, put the person that's doing this on notice."
I like both these comments.
Everyone's responses are great. I would like to say though that as a pre-teen I was subject to a man flashing his member and the whole idea made me very uncomfortable because I remembered that incident.
Don't beat yourself up. But next time, I'd report him. He may be doing this to young girls, his grandkids, etc.
Specializes in Family Medicine, Tele/Cardiac, Camp.
I had something similar happen to me once. I think I was working charge that night (either that or the charge nurse was otherwise occupied for most of the night), because several female nurses and female aides were coming to me about a man who had been showing the staff basically animal/bestiality Media. The same thing had happened the night before. I went into his room and asked that he show me the picture he had been showing everyone. He acted all innocent and was all like "what picture?" and I explained to him and eventually he reluctantly showed it to me. I said to him, with several witnesses in the room, "You're making staff very uncomfortable by showing them this photo. It's extremely inappropriate." He got all defensive saying no he wasn't and it was funny and I turned to him and said, "You're also isolating yourself, by insisting that everyone see this photo every time they walk through your door and trying to get a rise out of them. In doing so, you are making more and more staff members less inclined to want to come into your room and give you care. As nurses we are legally, morally, and ethically bound to care for you and we will do so. But you have to ask yourself what kind of care you will be getting from people who aren't able to focus on providing care and are instead distracted by feeling extremely threatened by you every time they come into your room."
He got all angry and said we had to take care of him, blah blah blah, and I reiterated that I certainly wasn't threatening assault or negligence or any of that, but that I was simply pointing out that his behavior was inappropriate to the degree that instead of being able to focus on the care that they were there to provide, everyone would be distracted by his photos and worried that he would make them feel uncomfortable again. He was all very flustered and I informed him that one of the male nurses would be caring for him the rest of the night and I would have the supervisor come in (who also happened to be male that night) and have a chat with him. And so I did. And the behavior stopped for the rest of the time he was in the hospital. Did I handle it badly? Perhaps I could have been a bit more gentle, but none of my colleagues or the supervisor thought my words or actions were over the top, assault-y, or threatening.
In any event, I fully endorse setting limits, informing management/charge/supervisors, and writing up reports. That kind of behavior is absolutely not appropriate and I hope it doesn't happen to you again.
Hindsight's 20/20, there's lot of times I thought of something brilliant to say 24 hours later. Personally I would have gone off on him a little (just a little) After that I would have notified security and administration and tossed around the 'sexual harassment' word only because I would want that person to get in as much trouble as possible. If administration thinks your serious they will treat the situation seriously. I wouldn't actually take any action like with HR or anything but in my fury of a complaint I would be like "this guy need to know this could be sexual harassment" Those words get people moving, staff should not have to tolerate this.
Also (ahhh can of worms here) if his wife got better, like if I was discharging her I would tell her. Now if she was sick still or not going to get better I wouldn't. But if she was going home clean bill of health I would tell her. Workplace or not I wouldn't treat a cheating spouse situation any different. I feel an ethical obligation to tell the victim of the cheating spouse EVERY time no matter what the circumstance, they deserve to know, I would want to know.
I don't know what I would have said to him, but I definitely would have notified my charge RN, who would have then called the police (my hospital has its own police department) and notified management.
Specializes in M/S, LTC, Corrections, PDN & drug rehab.
I would've told him it was inappropriate, reported him to security & my manager. I have learned men like that love to get a rise out of you & if you make a comment like "That's so small"/"Mine is bigger" or whatever they will eat it up. Whereas if you tell them they are wrong & that can get them in trouble, they are bound to stop.
But don't beat yourself up over it. As long as you didn't make a face or any reaction, you did the right thing. :)
Personally, I would have notified my charge nurse and insisted that security come have a friendly conversation with this person. That is highly inappropriate.
I can guarantee you one thing. If he would've shown that to someone in admin they would've had a fit and had him escorted off of the premises.
I am so tired of it being "okay" for people to abuse health care workers. What other professions allow their employees to be treated like this??? I realize that some people are truly sick/out of it and have somewhat of an excuse for their erratic and inappropriate behavior. But come on...a visitor. Nope. He would not be liking me after I got done with his creepy, smiley, perverted (with wife laying right there) self.
I totally agree with the recognize and report, regardless of status of the offender, and I hope you remember the next time this happens in or out of a hospital setting.
But secretly, I thought about making a concerned face and saying, "Gosh, you should really see a doctor about that condition. I hope he can help you."
Glycerine82, LPN
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