Incompetent

[LouisVRN, RN]

I don't know why I am so incompetent when I leave the hospital. At work I'm one of the "go-to-people". I do not feel scared or incapable and when I know I am not trained to handle a situation I know how to get the help I need. At work people come to me for advice and I feel confident in giving it to them. However whenever anything happens with my son I'm a nervous wreck. My son is almost 3 and thankfully has only been injured twice, neither time seriously. But this weekend he stuck his hand in the car door as he was closing it. I am just thankful my husband was home to take care of him while I basically stood in the corner shaking like a leaf. As soon as we determined that his main concern was his train he left in the car I got this wave of nausea and had to sit down. I have never had anything like this happen to me at work. I know its different when its your family but I have never been this incompetent at anything before. Is this normal?

[highlandlass1592, BSN, RN]

Yes, it's completely normal. At home, you're being a parent, not a nurse. There is nothing wrong with that.

[BluegrassRN]

Yup.

One of the *midwives* I worked with actually did faint when her son split his lip. The doc started suturing and down the midwife went. You bet we never let her live that one down. The next 50000 times she had to suture a tear, I always offered to have her lie down so that she wouldn't faint.

Many of us are stupid about loved ones in pain/blood situations. It's okay.

[dudette10, MSN, RN]

You know that other thread where someone asked if nurses care about their patients?

I think this thread is proof that we shouldn't care about them as much as our families. Nurses imitating fainting goats wouldn't be good for business.

[Otessa, BSN, RN]

I don't know why I am so incompetent when I leave the hospital. At work I'm one of the "go-to-people". I do not feel scared or incapable and when I know I am not trained to handle a situation I know how to get the help I need. At work people come to me for advice and I feel confident in giving it to them. However whenever anything happens with my son I'm a nervous wreck. My son is almost 3 and thankfully has only been injured twice, neither time seriously. But this weekend he stuck his hand in the car door as he was closing it. I am just thankful my husband was home to take care of him while I basically stood in the corner shaking like a leaf. As soon as we determined that his main concern was his train he left in the car I got this wave of nausea and had to sit down. I have never had anything like this happen to me at work. I know its different when its your family but I have never been this incompetent at anything before. Is this normal?

My husband commented about this regarding me and when our children are bleeding or hurt. "You're this nurse who deals with everything and your son is bleeding and you can't handle it?"-all said in love , mind you:uhoh3:. I don't want to look because, as a mother, I don't want to see my children that way AND he is right there

When he is not there then I deal with it because I AM the only adult there to handle it.

I have worked in critical care settings and the ER dealing with way worse situations but when it is YOUR child or loved one.......totally different perspecitve.

otessa

[nursemike, ASN, RN]

I've noticed in dealing with some of my father's health problems that it's all but impossible to have the clinical distance to think objectively. A split lip, or even a hand shut in the car door is not likely to be life-threatening--barring shock, of course--but you aren't doing triage when it's someone you love. In my case, it can be the other way 'round: it's hard to accept the possibility that a loved one could be gravely ill. So one spends a few days putting bacitracin on a Stage 4 foot ulcer before finally saying we gotta go to the hospital.

I do suspect, though, that your nurse's training is still there. Had the OP's son gone into shock, you'd have reacted as with any patient. In my case, when my dad was having a CHF exaccerbation, I had to fight to convince him to go to the ED, but when we finally got there, I reported his symptoms on the little complaint card, the triage nurse read it and sent him straight back. I didn't say one word about CHF, because the symptoms said it all. (He's doing better now, I'm happy to add.)

I'm one of those that feels caring about your patients is an important part of caring for them. But I've seen first-hand the necessity to be as objective as you can. On one occassion, Dad was admitted to my floor as an off-service patient because med-surg beds were short. I couldn't take him as part of my assignment, of course, but I was charge some nights he was there. I did take my personal knowledge enough into account not to assign a couple of nurses who are very soft-spoken, since he is very HOH, but I'd try to avoid that with anyone. For a couple of days, he had an orientee as his nurse, and when he asked me later why she had to learn on him, I told him it was because he was one of our easier patients (gangrene of the great toe, that visit). I didn't make that assignment, but I was content with it, especially since her preceptor was one of our best nurses.

I've never requested that Dad be placed on our floor. I figure that the nurses on the cardiac, vascular, and med-surg floors know their docs the way we know our neurologists and neurosurgeons, and a lot of docs are more readily accessible on their home units. A part of me is tempted to believe our nurses are "better," and that may be true if you're having a stroke, but I know I'm not the only one of us who feels a pucker factor when admitting an active MI or a CF patient, where a nurse who is asking, "What the heck is a meningioma?" may find a nitro gtt routine.

[loriangel14, RN]

I find it is totally different when it is your kid. I have dealt with patients fainting or having a vaso vagal response at work but when my teenage daughter passed out at home one day I FREAKED.I was a mess. Thankfully she was ok.

[NurseCard, ADN]

I can deal with a patient that is in severe hypoglycemia. I can also deal quite nicely with a patient that is freaking out on me.

However, when BOTH is happening to my father? Forget it, I can't deal. I guess someday I may have to be his caregiver and then I will have to learn how to deal with it somehow.

[ButterflyNurse30]

The same thing happened to me when my youngest son was around 3...he fell and I thought he had busted out his 2 front teeth! I was freaking out! The nurse in me was gone...and was replaced with the scared mother...people were like "you are a nurse..calm down" but it was my baby and I couldn't.

[SCgrl1]

i feel that way all the time

[itsmejuli]

When its our own family members its normal for us to react differently.

One of my supervisors just may find this out the hard way. She brought her mother into our facility.

[RNMeg]

My mom was in the hospital after a total thyroidectomy, and she wound up staying in the hospital 3 days due to a massive migraine from the morphine because she's really opiate naive. I got a huge lump in my throat, couldn't talk, almost cried when I saw her in the hospital bed. It's so different when it's family.