Miss Thing visitor

[abbaking]

Let me begin by saying I am NOT sexist.

That said, almost all the problematic visitors are women - why they have a stick up their GI tract is beyond me.

The other night i was taking care of a younger woman (40's-ish, generally healthy, admitted to rlo IBS or crohns).

While my patient was pleasent and easy to assess, her female visitor (looked 35 max) was hell on wheels from the start.

You know the type - eye rolling, sarcasm, sighing, and arms crossed. Okay, whatever - maybe she has had a bad day.

Cut to 9pm. Miss thing comes charging out of the room at me, yelling "They said she can't eat but she is hungry....get her food NOW"

Me : "She is allowed to eat , she has a regular diet. Its after midnight that she is not allowed to eat because she needs to have an empty stomach for her surgery in the morning".

Miss Thing : "Well nobody bothered to tell me that! (eyes rolling, sarcastic rude comments)

Me : "Okay, so I will order her a regular meal tray from the dietary department. Are you Mrs. _______ next of kin?"

Miss Thing : "This place is full of incompetant idiots and you are one of them. I am not her decision maker but I am her advocate - its the nurses who kill people and i am making sure you dont kill her. All ready I see plenty of mistakes and this is terrible. If anything else happens that i think is inappropriate, I will make your life a misery"

On and on this went for maybe 5 minutes. I had enough after yet more comments about my integrity and my professionalism being attacked, so I told Miss Thing to leave becuase she was disrupting the unit. Long story short, she and all her soap opera drama left.

The patient was apologetic to me - basically she said her friend was a big baby and a drama queen.

No harm done

But, Miss thing isn't going to like me or the hospital again becuase our NM is LIMITING her visitation to her friend because this happened with all the other nurses the patient was assigned to.

Yeah - Karma sucks Miss Thing!

[Brea LPN]

miss thing needed to get her panties out of a wad, stat!

[NurseOnAMotorcycle, ASN, RN]

Be very thankful for a NM who has your back.

Amen to that!! Most would cite "Customer Service" and abandon you after telling Miss Thing she could have whatever she wanted.

[Tait, MSN, RN]

Amen to that!! Most would cite "Customer Service" and abandon you after telling Miss Thing she could have whatever she wanted.

I would be hard pressed to believe that "most" NM's would tolerate verbal abuse of their staff.

[psu_213, BSN, RN]

I would be hard pressed to believe that "most" NM's would tolerate verbal abuse of their staff.

The problem is that NMs are only going to get the bad half of the story from management (the half that shows poor customer service, not the half that show the visitor was verbally abusive and that the floor RN handled the situation with tact all things considered), and in management's defense they are only getting half the story from the disgruntled family member (again, the half of the story where they did nothing yet this horrible RN just 'went off' on them). A good NM will listen to their staff member's side of the story before making judgement, not just hang that staff member out to dry on the words of a P-Oed visitor/customer.

[thelema13]

Code green- manpower needed!!!

[anotherone, BSN, RN]

Good for your nm and coworkers. My idiot nm woudl probably apologize to the friend. I suspect soon these antics will be pulled and "stays" will be comped, just like in restaurants/hotels/clubs when people hell and scream enough .lol

[Altra, BSN, RN]

I would have walked away and called security about 8 seconds into her rant ...

[redhead_NURSE98!, ADN, BSN]

I'm already jaded by pts' non-relative visitors who want to pull rank on you and p!ss and moan about how crappy a facility is. They aren't going to file a complaint on behalf of their friend. They just want to feel like they're doing something.

My fave line is "I don't get paid enough to be talked to that way." Alternately, in the right situation, I like to act as dumb and airheaded as possible, if it's a pt's visitor or boyfriend/girlfriend/someone that's not even related to them. Might as well entertain yourself, it's not like you're going to change their opinion. Especially since I switched to a facility that doesn't refer to its patients as "customers."