My recent experience as a "family member" in the hospital

[ainz]

Being a RN, hospital administrator, and relatively healthy, it has been quite some time since I experienced being in the hospital as a family member where no one knew me or what I did.

What an eye-opener!! I just spent 3 days with my wife while she was a patient. I sat back and observed and was the "family member." I could go on and on but will make some general statements about this experience. It started with the nurse who was starting my wife's IV and dropped the sterile IV site dressing on the floor, she picked it up and proceeded to place it on my wife's IV site. When I kindly and gently asked her not to do that her reply was "well we do clean our floors." I thought she was joking but she was not.

Generally, the nursing staff was rude. All but 2 of the nursing staff that worked with us behaved in a way that communicated to us that we were an irritant and a bother. I was appalled and disappointed in my chosen profession. Everything was about the nurse, how busy they were, how overworked they were, how short staffed they were, how they insisted we must follow the hospital policies that no one bothered to explain, etc. etc.

During the few explanation of procedures that we received, when we attempted to ask a question the nurses would talk over us and seemed annoyed that we had interrupted their lesson to us. They talked down to us. I could go on and on.

Nurses--it is not about us, it is about the patient. It costs nothing to smile, have a good attitude, and focus on your PATIENT'S needs and not your OWN while you are at work. What is going on with healthcare in this country?

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

Okay - if he is the administrator of the hospital - people would know him and he would get above and beyond service, I would think. Sorry for the poor experience. BTW - if everyone was so rude, you should report it.

[ZydekoSue]

As a nursing student I have observed nurses I am working with as a tech. or in clinicals, behave in ways that I have learned are "inappropriate for nursing" and then turn to me and say, "They won't teach you that in nursing school." It's very confusing and frightening to me. What's going to happen when I graduate and just dont't know how to act, what's right and what's wrong, and who is going to tell me? There seems to be a serious lack of communication where this is concerned.

[fergus51]

I think every patient deserves good care, just like you deserve to have your car repaired properly. I just also think the source of the problem needs to be dealt with. If they are all just a bunch of rude lazy losers that's one thing and should be dealt with.

If they are looking after an innapropriate number of patients and being disrespected daily, that's another. You shouldn't yell at the mechanic for not fixing your car if his boss made him repair 14 of them in an hour. What else would a rational person expect?

[CCU NRS]

OK I will toss my hat in, although ainz has not been bakc since OP.

I don't think any nurse should ever tell any Pt about staffing problems or any kind of insufficiency in the dept. I feel that as a Nurse you should be pleasant, couteous, informative and follow correct procedure. I am glad that he did not allow the nurse to place a dirty op-site from the floor on the Pt and the nurse should have never done so in the first place, Time can never be a factor in delivery healthcare such as time to go get a clean drsg VS source of infection. I have worked many very busy med surg floors and had heavy Pt loads and I always manage to be pleasant and do not complain to the Pts about conditions or staffing, or for that matter that my feet hurt or my back aches etc. The Pt has their own set of problems and should expect an acceptrable level of care and should recieve it. If your med-surg floor is too busy and you can not provide safe care then I suggest you either refuse to work D/T insafe staffing conditions and make them change or look for a safer place to work. NO nurse should ever be rude for any reason, not even to persons abusing them verbally you should be mature about situations and leave without saying anything.

I would say that unfortunately there are many "bitter" nurses in the profession that can or will not refrain from dumping their problems in the lap of the Pt. One instance a nurse I work comes in and starts telling her Pts all about how she had been for r root canal that day and was still having and if she was a little slow that night she apologizes in advance, then goes right into telling the entire grusome story. Thsi should not happen.

Sorry you had a bad experience in the futrue mayber you will follow what happens in your facility a little closer.

[chris_at_lucas_RN, RN]

ainz isn't (ain't?? small lol) reading or answering PM's either.

Hope nothing happened to his wife (the patient in the OP). He was pretty busy on the BB--from July 2003 to this thread, he had more than 400 posts, then nothing.

Hmmmm.

[MizzPrettyPilz]

I think, ainz, this should be a wake-up call to you as an Administrator the amount of stress nurses go through on a daily basis. A typical day for me is a 12 hour shift that sometimes turns into longer. I frequently come across family members that sit at the bedside of the patient "all day long" calling for the nurse as though they are in a hotel. From such items as towels, picante sauce, what's for dinner downstairs etc... Some family members do not lift a finger to be involved in the patients care. Furthermore nurses are blamed for what other departments do....we are blamed if the doctor does not call back in a timely manner, if the dinner tray is not delivered. And me as a nurse of color am frequenly "tested" to see if am knowledgable of their illness and medication. Where am I from? What school did I attend? Or I am mistaken for houskeeping or an aide. With a badge on clearly stating my title. Or there are the family members that are constantly "taking notes" on a notepad as though they are going to sue you or the facility. You have a family member that just cant understand that the nurse they called for is giving a patient a bath in another room. Or that we have only four nurses on the floor today and were supposed to have 7. And one cna. People like you always blame the nurses. I'll bet you are an Administrator that doesn't support your nurses at all! Flame on you!

[MG-NotANurse]

I'm not a nurse, but, if you don't mind, I'd like to put in my two cents.

(By way of background, my mother-in-law had a massive CVA on January 1, and I found this site while researching strokes, analgesics and hospices on line. As I say, I'm not a nurse, but a number of my family members are doctors, nurses or pharmacists. I'm 43, and I've been to college and grad school).

That being said, I'm afraid that I had a similar experience with the first posting, in a well-regarded hospital in New York City.

I tried very hard to be respectful of the hospital staff, but they were consistently non-supportive and non-communicative, often to the point of rudeness. Questions about my mother-in-law's care or meds, or even asking the nurse's name, were met with suspicion, and this posed a serious problem when the hospice staff later asked the most basic questions which we could not answer.

As a previous post said, it wouldn't have taken one extra second to have been polite, or to have let us see the file (my wife and I are familiar with medical records and my wife was the health care proxy and entitled to know the facts in order to make decisions).

Most importantly, the nursing staff did not bother to hide the fact that they disagreed, often quite strongly, with our trying to honor the terms of my mother-in-law's living will, and this at a time that we needed support more than ever.

About the difficulty in obtaining pain medication, the less said the better.

I understand that the staff was very busy, and I understand that they could have used more help. But we really didn't want the Hospital Director's letter of apology, received after the funeral: we needed support when it counted.

[fergus51]

MG, I am sorry that was your experience.

There is one area I would wonder about and that is access to the chart. I work in a neonatal unit, where the parents have every right to know what is going on with their child, however we do have guidelines for the hospital chart. They have just started requiring that parents go through the chart with either a nurse or a doctor in order to explain any questions they may have (because even a neonatalogist is a parent first). This was started because of problems in the past (and has been met with good reviews from parents and staff alike). The hospital chart is considered the hospital's property here, so they are not required to show it to families, but we do think it's important to keep good relations.

Every hospital however IS required to keep decision makers well informed and I think it's a sad sign that people wouldn't even want to tell you their names! I always start my shift with "Hi, my name is ____ and I am the nurse looking after your child for this shift". There is so much mistrust out there between nurses and families. And frankly, I find it disgusting that a nurse would make her opposition to a living will apparent to family members. I often think families are making bad decisions in the treatment of their children (you don't want to know how often!), but I know to keep it to myself at work.

[MG-NotANurse]

Thanks, Fergus51.

This is my point: your being polite didn't take any extra time, and it kept the family members' hospital experience from being worse than it absolutely had to be. In a neonatal unit, I imagine that there's more than enough heartache to go around.

Your hospital's policy regarding the chart sounds very sensible. My experience was that I couldn't seem to discuss it with anyone.

[fergus51]

That's a real shame MG. We have a parent resource nurse and parents conference with the docs as needed. Politeness is necessary and I agree it doesn't take any extra time. We do still have conflicts with some families, but I think it's related to them being so stressed and having no control over the health of their child. I do get really sad when there is a family who feels they aren't being well cared for, and unfortunately sometimes there doesn't seem to be anything else we can do to change it.... Fortunately the majority of the nurses I work with try really hard to work with families and we have the staffing to make it possible. It's been my own personal experience as a fmily member that the worst nurse-patient relationships happen in floors where the nurses are looking after 5-10 patients. I like having 2 patients, cause sometimes I spend more than an hour just talking to parents.

[mattsmom81]

As I see it, the OP has an agenda. While I'm sorry for his wife's illness, if one looks in his archives one will see likely note the pattern of anti bedside nurse sentiment. This was my point.

Of course people should never be overtly rude. Problem is any response less than what is wished is often perceived as rude by today's 'customer'. It is THEIR way or it is wrong, incompetent, etc.Of course we as nurses should be perfect at ALL times. The public demands and expects attention and perfection. We as nurses should do our job under a microscope with families critiqueing our every move, be everything to everybody, answering every detail of every question our demanding families have while our other patients wait for their necessary medications, so we can also be disciplined for late meds... then browbeaten by our bosses for not being perfect when the overly demanding family complains..THEN we come to our own bulletin board and read nurses criticizing other nurses...

Anyone wonder why there is a nursing shortage at the bedside????

[fergus51]

I totally feel you on that mattsmom. I don't think parents understand how demoralizing it is for us when we are bending over backwards trying to be good to them and it is never enough. I think we're lucky that it is the exception rather than the rule, but it really does hurt my feelings when I work with one of those families. I want to say "I am here trying to do right by you! I don't come in for the wages or the glamourous uniforms. I come in to try to help care for your baby".... I think particularly where I work it has to do with a lack of control. If the family is razzing the nurse at least they feel like they are doing SOMETHING for their baby. I am glad that bad nurses and impossible families are not the norm here. If they were I would not still be working