Recently at work a son of one of my patients has really taken the cake. He arrived to visit mom while I was finishing my assessment & medicating her for pain, and waited outside the room while I was doing so. I came out to tell him that she was all set & he could go in and visit. Son proceeds to go on about how he had diarrhea all morning (at this point I just ignored those comments, given that I don't care abt his bathroom habits considering he's not my patient.) I went on about making my rounds.
20 minutes later, I was down the hall in another patient's room doing my assessment & meeting the patient (as I had never cared for him before.) Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone inside the doorway, hesitating. I went to turn around and started to say "come in" as I thought it may have been a family member of this pt, and I was just finishing vital signs, so it was nothing too personal.
Once I turned around, I realized it was that son! I told him politely, but firmly- "I'm with another patient right now. You are going to need to wait outside please." He scurried out, looking absolutely shocked that I couldn't attend to his questions at that very second. Imagine the nerve of me assessing my patients!
I talked to the other nurse that was out at the desk when he had gone looking for me...she told me what his concern was about his mother---it was something I had already discussed with him MULTIPLE times, and told him that her MD was aware and the situation being looked in to. (Being purposefully vague, but the subject of his concern is not as high priority on her problem list as other medical issues are.)
Seriously--If he had walked into the room to say "Excuse me nurse my mother can't breathe/is dying.." that would certainly have been one thing...but this guy just has no boundaries! I promptly made social work aware because I have a feeling this won't be the first issue we have with this son.
What jaw-dropping things have you all seen family members do?
i had a man following the nurse in and out of other patient rooms demanding his wife get medication. (she had no order for it and i had paged the doc to request it). i told him he couldnt go into other patient rooms and to go back to his wife's room and when the nurse got finished he would be right there. this guy complained to the VP that i was rude to him and threatened to take her AMA! the VP basically blessed me out and told me that unless i got them to change their mind and stay, i was fired.
I just posted in the CNA forum about a family member of a TBI patient who is very anxious and constantly hovering over us. You'd think the private room her family member occupies is a war zone or something, with all the jumpiness and hand-wringing that goes on, not to mention the constant watching of the clock. Everything is timed. This woman literally expects to see a stage 4 decub that if we are 4 minutes late repositioning her family member, who has better skin than I do! Then when we roll her over the family member looks on in terror and breathes a huge sigh of relief when the skin is indeed intact with no signs of any pressure. It's like that with everything- any tiny scenario seems to have the potential to lead to suffering and death. This is why the visitor doesn't go home even for 5 minutes. They come in shifts and sleep over every night. Does she think we all wait for her to leave so we can all give each other the secret signal to run in there and abuse the patient? Maybe she watched something on Dateline, I don't know.
She also "educates" us on every little thing we already know. She even gave one of us directions to our linen closet when her mother needed a new pillowcase. Like we don't know where it is.
My manager got a complaint of me that I gave a bed bath wrong. I have never gotten that complaint before but the family member said that I wasn't supposed to wash her mothers' hair and some other stuff(I wasn't paying attention). I asked the patient and she said it was ok, best one she had in a long time.
(I wanted to say be grateful I gave her bath!) Then the same family member complained that I wasn't timely enough with the patients food. Last time I checked I didn't work in dietary.
Was coding an 8 year old in the ED when another patient's dad wanted the popsicle we promised his son "now."
I think if dr.s and nurses were saving my family members life, and I heard selfishness like that, I'd probably be swearing a blue streak and clawing someone a new one. At the top of my lungs.
A pt's family members had all brought food in for themselves and the pt...not so unusual right?! Well the grandson had been rolling all over the floor playing (semi private room btw) for the first part of the shift Which grosses me out enough, but....once the food was brought the boy proceeds to spread out his hamburger wrapper on the floor and eat from it French fries, ketchup and all. I had first started working there so I was too shy to say anything about it, now I would suggest otherwise lol
That is seriously the grossest thing I have ever heard.
Where to start,one time we had a Dr overhead page"will the family of the pt in room 123 bed A come to the room IMMEDIATELY".She had walked in the room to check her pt and found her asleep with an infant in her arms almost dropping the baby on the floor.It seems the pt's daughter came in to visit Granny bringing her newborn(week old)baby and a 2 year old,left the baby with Granny-on a vent barely awake-to baby sit while she took the 2 year old to the cafeteria for lunch.Doc blessed her out for that and even being out 1 week after having a c-section.
another time,another family in to visit Dad,with a baby in a stroller,baby is pulling old vent tubing out of the red trash can and playing with it.Family couldn't understand why we got all bent out of shape about it.
people who think its appropriate to walk into the nurses station and proceed to say "mom/dad/whoever needs X" and then looks at us like we are nuts when we explain they cant be back here, confidential area, and WHAT is your family member's name??
having a wife of a pt come into the nurses station in the middle of the noc wearing hospital garb and saying she has a HA, cant sleep and could one of the nurses get her some tylenol and a sleeping pill. umm... how bout no!
a visitor who wrote "poems" and forced you to stop and listen to them, no matter what you were in the middle of (she would seriously block you or corner you). she walked into a code one noc and started screaming at everyone to stop what they were doing and listen to her new poem that she just wrote. she quickly discovered that we had security guards!
visitors who stay the night and use the call light and request "put a pillow under my legs, oh, i used the BR and i saved you a sample, i think i need some IV fluid too can you just give me some, purposefully wake the pt up when they have just fallen asleep and then gripe bc 'mom hasnt slept all noc'
i had a family who stayed after visiting hrs, literally had a party in this pts room, was loud as heck,and allowed their kids to play football in the hallway at 2300 and then complained to the high-ups when we told them to be curteous of other pts trying to sleep.
a family seeing that we had pizzas delivered one day for a treat from a Dr and it was placed in our breakroom for supper. we walk in for supper break and there's all the family and no more pizza. oh, and there was some family members looking thru staff lockers for "more food" and others whording food in their purses from the staff frigde!
a there are soooo many more, but i cant even remember most of the really good ones at the time
i had a man following the nurse in and out of other patient rooms demanding his wife get medication. (she had no order for it and i had paged the doc to request it). i told him he couldnt go into other patient rooms and to go back to his wife's room and when the nurse got finished he would be right there. this guy complained to the VP that i was rude to him and threatened to take her AMA! the VP basically blessed me out and told me that unless i got them to change their mind and stay, i was fired.
Visitors who demand that we heat up there food and serve them drinks. Meanwhile, they let there satanic children run all over the unit and seem to have no morality or values.
Had a lady visitor (Rotund woman) raise hell and scream that we did not have appropriate food choices for her or her family who were visiting grandma. She threw down her KFC platter on the nurses station (it had been inside the room already - Iso room for C-Diff) and said "Its cold and I am hungry - heat it up NOW" -
If any of you have seen the movie Road Trip - remember the diner scene and the french toast with the angry chef? I am always tempted to do that! LOL
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
patient's wife brought 60-something year old patient's aging mother in to visit, and then left her there while she went to have her hair done. (she wanted it to look nice for patient's funeral, "just in case.") i was having an extremely busy day in the icu. i had two patients -- the 60-something, relatively stable gentleman i'll call "dick" and a post-op with an open chest, runs of v-tach and a balloon pump. "dick's" mother was suffering from dementia, and she kept wandering over to my other patient and trying to touch things, pulling on her son's chest tubes, and trying to take off her dress. i was doing the best i could, but i was about ready to tear my hair out. dick called me over and whispered urgently "my mother has to go to the bathroom."
"ok," i said cheerfully. "bathroom is right through those double doors, first door on the right." then, thinking the better of it, i said "i'll have our cna walk her down there so she won't get lost."
"oh, no," he said. "she can't go by herself. you have to help her. my wife is on her way back and mom has to be cleaned up before she gets here."
"oh, good," i said. "your wife can help her."
"she doesn't like to do that," was the reply.
mom, it seems, had soiled her diaper and the wife left, thinking i'd just take care of things in my copious free time.
Seriously...ok that one takes the cake..
Which grosses me out enough, but....once the food was brought the boy proceeds to spread out his hamburger wrapper on the floor and eat from it 
French fries, ketchup and all. I had first started working there so I was too shy to say anything about it, now I would suggest otherwise lol
southernbeegirl, BSN, RN
903 Posts
i had a man following the nurse in and out of other patient rooms demanding his wife get medication. (she had no order for it and i had paged the doc to request it). i told him he couldnt go into other patient rooms and to go back to his wife's room and when the nurse got finished he would be right there. this guy complained to the VP that i was rude to him and threatened to take her AMA! the VP basically blessed me out and told me that unless i got them to change their mind and stay, i was fired.