There are situations that arise at work when I respond professionally, but there is often things running through my head that I want to say but I don't. I'm only thinking it! I want to start this thread to express some things that I wanted to say at work, whether it be to a patient, doctor, visitor, or other person. Some of the things are funny and some are passionate! Please share :)
I am a new nurse on the unit, not familiar with the residents, and not familiar with their family members. The family members are also not familiar with me! A visitor that I have never seen in my life came up to me while I was passing medications to a patient and said: "How much did Mom eat today?"
What I wanted to say: "We don't have any patient here named Mom."
I have absolutely no tolerance for "status dramaticus" and game-playing manipulative drug seeking frequent flyers.
After several nights in a row with a non-compliant drug-seeking slob of a frequent flyer in my assignment, I was somewhat fed up. This person was ambulatory with a walker (he had his Rollator from home there in the room), but now "needed" a wheelchair. As I was handing him off to the next shift that morning with bedside report, he was commenting about how he'd need a wheelchair to be provided for home in order to discharge that day.
I may or may not have actually said, out loud and to his face, "What, you've been sitting in that hospital bed for so long now that you can't walk anymore?" Mind you, I would never have said that if he actually NEEDED the wheelchair.
The day shift nurse managed to make it out into the hallway before busting up laughing.
We had a drug seeker in the ER who, when denied his fix, proceeded to deliberately bang his head into a wall and threw himself on the floor.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
I've been in your shoes. I introduce myself; and, say I new here. Then I ask Who is your Mom, Dad , until ,etc. (depending on who they ask about). Then after they Iidentify; I say Give me a moment and I'll be happy to find out for you.
Oh, WOW! Why didn't I think of that? Forty years I've been a nurse and it never occurred to me to introduce myself, say I was new and then ask who their Mom is! Thank you for the great idea.
This is a vent thread. Possibly you thought we were all looking for advice.
Oh, WOW! Why didn't I think of that? Forty years I've been a nurse and it never occurred to me to introduce myself, say I was new and then ask who their Mom is! Thank you for the great idea.
This is a vent thread. Possibly you thought we were all looking for advice.
And OP states this occurred while she was passing meds to a different patient. Do visitors seriously not realize it is rude, and possibly dangerous to interrupt a med pass? (Obviously not, but it still annoys me)
A FF that is always admitted for DKA was being discharged home and he was not happy about it. He told me, "Well I'll just go home and drink a bunch of sugar water and be back in the morning. Can you hold this room for me?"
And OP states this occurred while she was passing meds to a different patient. Do visitors seriously not realize it is rude, and possibly dangerous to interrupt a med pass? (Obviously not, but it still annoys me)
I had a visitor follow me into another patient's room to tell me her mother was unhappy about her meal selections. Really!?!?!?
I've often pondered the serendipity of the fact that my own mother was insightful enough to have actually named me "Mom" too! (((LOL))) in fact, I commented to my son only just last week what an amazing coincidence that turned out to be. :)
Many times [so. Many. Times.] I've wanted nothing more (even more so than the very oxygen in the air I breathe) than to verbally return the favor of snark and rudeness in kind to a provider.
Oh, that and to get a souvenir snapshot of his or her face at that self same instant (like the kind they take at Six Flags Magic Mountain during the single most terrifying moment while on those extreme rides - then try to you for like a million dollars). Yeah, that of kind …
In fact, as long as we're being honest here, at times I even want to up the ante and give them a tongue-lashing verbal beat down they'll never forget - reminding them in future to treat nurses - ALL NURSES - with the respect and dignity just about everyone of us learned at our mother's knee.
Specializes in Complex pedi to LTC/SA & now a manager.
Want to drive me crazy, call me mom. My son's assistant principal would say "Well mom, I had to call you about son today because..." After 3 night shifts and awoken for the second time for a ridiculous reason by school that is too incompetent to handle my teen I lost it. "I'm not your mother, you are not my child..." I think we broke that habit that very day.
Fortunately Ive not had that issue with providers.
I can handle parents of pediatric kids with devastating neurological conditions holding out the last nanogram of hope for progress or recovery even though half the brain was obliterated and a new incident caused further damage.
What I can not handle is delusional nurses seeking to be the parents' new BFF feeding into the pipe dreams.
I'm not there to destroy the parents hopes for the impossible recovery (this one parent would probably pray for limb regrowth if an amputation reoccurred) but I will do reality orientation.
Then the realistic nurses and therapists are evil because delusional nurse thinks random, unreproducable in any setting by anyone else twitches & blinks are morse code sentences that coincide with what answer the nurse wants.
Sorry those are involuntary myoclonus spasms not answers.
The only reason the button got pressed is gravity because the teacher held the hand over a button.
Then there was the parent who was upset at the results of labs & genetic tests shows the twins DO NOT have fatal form of MD. I'm sorry you are upset your children DO NOT have a fatal, life shortening genetic disease? Really? Your upset that they just have low tone because of prematurity? Ok then. I left that case a week later
Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.
Patient, who happened to be a wealthy oil executive: "This place is horrible. I've never met such a stupid group of people before I came to this place!"
What I wanted to say: "If you don't like it here, there's the door. Your money affords you the option of selecting another facility for your health needs."
Specializes in Palliative, Onc, Med-Surg, Home Hospice.
I had a patient who was in her 90's, son lived out of state (like clear across the country) who happened to be her DPOA. He refused to change her code status from Full to DNR. The patient was unresponsive, septic, and had lost about 20lbs in the past month. Her son kept insisting we could make her better. The kicker, this man is a physician. I had about a week off and I kept saying I was going to drive up to get him, bring his sorry carcass to the hospital to actually see his mother. I never spoke with him, thank the goddess, because I would have gotten fired.
I also had a doc who would freak out on us if we didn't cluster our calls. (Emergency or not). I called him for a nurse may assess order on an imminent death. He yelled at me, finally gave me the order. What I really wanted to say was: Okay, next time we are in this situation, I'll just wait until after the patient dies to call you so you have to come down to declare. Would that be better than my calling you? Again, I probably would have been fired.
I was doing something for the patient - won't say what as to not give myself away- and the patient's *sweet* family member fired me. I was like, "Thanks, you *sweet* man! I didn't want to do it anyway!"
I got fired from a patient because her ice cream was originally too cold, then it was too soft....I had also put ice in their water pitcher and water in the ice pitcher. So the wife poured a Coke into the water. No labels, I just was handed 2 pitchers & SHE put the lids on them....I wanted to say, "YOU put the lids on wrong. It was Coke for the patients, NOT families."
I was on the phone one night with the doctor, discussing a critical patient that I had called rapid response team for (& they were transferring patient). He wanted a play-by-play on what had happened. During this, I was approached by family members. The LPN came to them and moved them down the hall, tried to help them. She worked closely with me and is very knowledgeable. They started yelling at her, demanding to speak to their mom's RN (me). She wasn't able to explain to them I was on the phone with their mom's Doctor. We both wanted to say, "give us a chance to talk to the doctor and let a NURSE who's been at mom's side talk to you."
I know a lady on Lantus 150 units daily, Glucophage 1000 mg 3 times per day, and 3 other diabetic meds. But, she's adamant shes not diabetic. Even with her blood sugars over 350. She says she doesn't have a BP problem either, but she's on 5 BP meds, 2 diuretics besides, and her BP was 168/112. Yep....so that chest pain, headache, swollen legs, leathery skin....CKD stage 4, and deterioration of vision are???
Oh My God - re: 'how much did Mom eat today?' - it's just unbelievable how 'out of it' some people's mindsets are. I'm in a 150+ bed facility, and sometimes I'll randomly answer the phone and someone will ask if they can talk to their mother (without giving a name). What happens a lot more commonly is that they'll come in and ask to see so-and-so, and are invariably surprised that I don't immediately know who they are, which unit & room they're on, etc. I often say, as I'm looking their person up, "there are 150 beds here, and I know my unit, a lot of the next one, but not everyone".
RunnerNurse09, BSN, RN
185 Posts
We had a drug seeker in the ER who, when denied his fix, proceeded to deliberately bang his head into a wall and threw himself on the floor.