Oh God, A NURSE is my pt!!!!

NewEastCoastRN · Jan 12, 2007

Recently, one of my coworkers was admitted to our hospital. She had a rough time because the nurses assumed that she just wanted to be left alone and would let them know if something was wrong. They didn't even give her anything to wash up with - we brought it to her from our unit. So, I guess the moral of the story is to treat nurses like any other patient. They need the assistance just like any other patient.

CaLLaCoDe, BSN, RN · Jan 12, 2007

ok, here's my take...

had a patientrn who insisted i role her ted hose up like nylons before applying them to her leg, really impossible!!!...now i know from experience this doesn't work,best to shimmy them up the leg which she insisted was wrong..however, i know now works like a charm!

oh brother when she was in pain...call the fire department...pain threshold limited :-0

had a patient #2 rn who i received from icu at shift change...talk about nerve racking...readying oneself for shift change and completely worried i'd forget to ask or do something during his initial admission to the floor. and icu nurses are soo detail oriented, more so since fewer clients; so i'm sure he thought my assessment was lacking. :paw: :paw: :paw:

ps. so please don't get on my case when in the future i'm a patient with sundowners and on four point restraint with haldol 5mg ivp and adivan 2mg ivp and still end up doing the houdini and pulling out foley& iv with feces and blood running down my person walking down the hall towards you know who!

jimthorp · Jan 12, 2007

I've had a couple patients and family members who were nurses...no problems.

When seeking medical care I do not reveal my profession.

Drysolong · Jan 12, 2007

As a new nurse, I've had similar experiences. My nurse patients have been very helpful to me. Teaching me and sharing their experiences.

Im about to enter my 2nd semester of nursing school, but my very first patient was a retired nurse who's first patient was also a nurse. She told me how nervous she had been, and told me not to be nervous about it. Her point of view was that without the bodies to care for, we wouldnt be able to learn much.
She was very blunt, from Long Island and had no difficulty in helping to teach me as I cared for her. (Are you going to leave this B/P cuff on me all day? You need a string to hang your pen on, youre gonna lose it. You arent a tape person, are you?) In most instances i knew that she was correct in her feedback and told her so, with no ego in it. I was there to learn after all.
There was a point tho, after getting her up for hygeine, where she was feeling very poorly and the roles really changed from teaching nurse/student nurse to patient/nurse. I was able to help provide her with some comfort, and as my day ended with her, i offered her the opportunity for feedback, and she told me that I was going to be a very good nurse. It made me feel like, if I could do a good job for someone who knew what I was doing, I would be able to effectively "fake it till I make it" with other patients. Its helped me take more of a proactive role in what little patient care I have had to this point.
ALMOST makes me look forward to being retired and having some fresh faced young thing come in to ask if she can help care for me. I'll have a neat story for them.
Long story short, use the opportunity to learn from them!
Sarah

Anjann, RN · Jan 12, 2007

I WAS the nurse in the bed 2 months ago. I was very idealistic and naive, and had only been working as a nurse for a week when I got sick, and let me tell you that I wished I could have laid back and let the nurses take care of me, but the one nurse I had post op was so horrible...she was ignoring my basic needs regarding pain and BR assistance, neglecting her duties expecting the PCA pump to do all the work while she sat out back all night puffing on Marlboro's.... I was shocked that any human (let alone a nurse) would think that to minimally acknowledge a patient in obvious physical and by then emotional distress would be normal or acceptable. I requested to be moved to another unit and the staff were so wonderful and very supportive and I had no more problems after that.

So I would say the "nurse as a patient" isn't always thrilled about having to trust a nurse they don't know either. Having a RN behind one's name does NOT make them a good nurse. It just means they passed the test.

CHATSDALE · Jan 12, 2007

maybe you remember the royal pains better than you do with the cooperative pts

was treating a wife of an md, she was ok he was a nervous wreck and he made nervous wrecks out of every shift

anothe time we had an er nurse admitted to our floor and she stayed on the buzzer all the time...one time she rang to 'see if anyone was out there'

because no one had been in for a couple of hours...try waiting in er to be seen if you gt in in two hours you will faint with shock

nursemike, ASN, RN · Jan 12, 2007

I had several nurses for patients during clinicals. At first, I thought my instructors figured I could use the extra help. Eventually, I decided my instructors thought their ailing colleagues could use a laugh. But it went okay. I did get some good advice, and they got some laughs.

Practicing, I've had several nurses as patients, mostly good experience. One nurse whose father was my patient stepped out so I wouldn't be nervous when I started his IV--very generous, I thought. One little old lady with dementia had her whole family in tears and just wouldn't cooperate with her care, so I took a deep breath and told myself "Be the nurse." Went in and laid down the law, only to discover she had been a nurse for 30+ yrs. Bounced me right out my ear, she did, but I got an order for .25mg Ativan and regained control of the situation.

samaletta · Jan 12, 2007

I agree with Anjann; there are some wonderful nurses out there, and then there are some nurses that, well..... aren't as good. I would get very angry had I been in her situation. Sometimes when you're sick, you want to be the patient, and not a nurse. I agree that some people's basic needs are being forgotten, whether you are a nurse or a lay person. I think it makes it harder when you are one of those wonderful nurses, and then you are treated in such a way. It could be that the people taking care of you are intimidated. But when you know what GOOD nursing care consists of, it can really make you mad knowing that the care you are recieving isn't even close to it.

jo272wv · Jan 12, 2007

I have taken care of two RNs in my short carreer and have only had positive feedback with them. Actually when they returned to work we became very good friends. It made me test my knowledge of what to be done and when because nurses know as much or more then the one doing the procedures. Plus in most cases if their dressing needs changed or other small tasks and you are very buisy, they will do it themselves if possible, of course I go back right away and assess since its my butt on the line.

erichRN · Jan 12, 2007

It's just like in anything else-- I've taken care of some that were a lot of fun and some that were a "challenge." People are people, some fun to be with and some not. Learn what you can from everyone.

Gompers, BSN, RN · Jan 12, 2007

I have to admit that I was a bad patient at when I had my daughter the other week.

They knew I was a nurse and were treating me very well. But 36 hours after my c-section, I got sick. I had a temp of 104 F/40 C complete with full body chills and a heart rate in the 130's. It was awful! I thought I was going to wind up septic in the ICU by the end of the day. Well, I was questioning them right and left, as soon as my chills subsided. I wanted to know why they weren't going to get blood and urine cultures (they said it was most likely a uterine infection, not blood), why I only needed 24 hours of IV antibiotics and 24 of oral ones instead of a full week or so, blah blah blah. I mean, I'm just going on what I've been taught about infection and antibiotics, you know?

Well, that's not the bad part. The bad part is I tried to blame the infection on them, and told them that I believed it was a blood infection because of the way my IV was handled.

I still stand by this, though. First of all, the way my IV was secured wasn't very clean. Just tape slapped on it, and when I started to sweat in labor and it got loose and smelly underneath, they just slapped more tape on top of it. By the time I got sick, I'd had this IV for 48 hours. It stank to high heaven. AND the thing that really made me mad was that I saw several of my nurses giving me IV meds without swabbing the ports with alcohol. This happened in both L&D and postpartum. I would have said something sooner, but I didn't want to be an annoying "nurse patient" so I just figured I'd let it go, that it wasn't a central line anyways, and that my immune system was fine so I was probably going to be just fine.

But when you're in a hospital bed with a fever that high, you lose all sense of professional courtesy.

I felt horrible afterwards for "blaming" the staff nurses for my infection. It wasn't anyone's fault. I wish I could have done something to smooth things over, but what can you do after an accusation like that?

Ruby Vee, BSN · Jan 13, 2007

i've taken care of lots of nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, x-ray techs and pharmacists. usually no problem, although there were a few i could cheerfully have strangled! (namely the md who was a new diabetic when i was a student -- i had to demonstrate patient teaching on him to my instructor. i was supposed to be teaching him to inject himself with insulin. he was a complete butt about it, and i was so sure i would fail that i was nearly in tears. my instructor instead gave me kudos for maintaining my cool in a tough situation!)

i've even taken care of some health care professionals i've worked with -- the husband of the nursing supervisor, a pharmacist i knew, coded on my shift, and ann stood in the back of the room during the entire code. it was one of those awful codes where nothing you do works, and finally ann made her way to the bedside, grabbed her husband's hand and said "this is enough. call it." then the physician got on a high horse and exclaimed that "no nursing supervisor was going to tell him when to call a code." i had already stopped pushing meds, and i said "when you get to the part about notifying the next of kin, she's right there," and gestured toward ann. probably not the most tactful way to phrase it, but ann appreciated it even if the physician didn't!

more recently, i've been the patient. i've also been the wife and the daughter of the patient. i won't speak for anyone else, but i'm too busy being the patient or the family member to want to critique my nursing care unless it's incredibly bad or incredibly good. (the nurse who told me that if dad were awake, he'd be overbreathing the vent when i asked for more sedation for my father whose bp soared 100 points whenever anyone touched or spoke to him. "do you think that might be the vecuronium drip?" i asked, before i thought to phrase it somewhat more tactfully. or the nurse who spent 20 minutes making sure i understood how to change my husband's dressing and that i had everything i'd need to change it before discharging us from the er 600 miles from home and 1200 miles from our destination.) i work in cardiac icu -- i really needed the teaching about my post-op care when i had spinal surgery, and hubby's ulcerative colitis wasn't a topic i could bypass teaching on either. dad's heart attack, though, was another story and i thank those nurses for just telling me what his ejection fraction and enzymes were rather than wanting to know why i was asking!

if your patient is a nurse, find out what area she/he works in. chances are they'll need just as much teaching as your other patients, only you can use the big words! if not, perhaps you can learn a thing or two!