Patient Complaints

MIA-RN1, RN · Apr 14, 2006

huh...that is weird. If I were you I'd ask for specifics so that you can respond to each reported complaint.

Did you use proper therapeutic communication? Maybe the patient was just having a bad day himself and took it out on you because you are an easy target. The fact that no complaint was made until after you left made me think of that.

I had a patient who didn't care for me once but it was never made to be my fault. Right during clinical my instructor offered to pull me from his care and I was not to blame.

I don't know about men in nursing, being a female my self. But I know that all the male nurses that I have met thru school have been absolutely wonderful and I've never heard complaints about them.

allthingsbright · Apr 14, 2006

i dont know, i havent met very many "happy" sick people. my instructors sort of accepted that our patients would be grouchy and unless we were rude, neglectful, made an error, etc (like true, serious issues) they took many complaints with a grain of salt. we would get sort of a "talking to" in front of the patient to show their opinion mattered, but the reality was they just felt awful and would have been unhappy with Florence Nightingale.

anyway, i am sorry! just continue to do your best, be compassionate, and you will be fine. i havent seen any prejudice against male nursing students yet.

maybe ask your instructors how you can improve just to get thier imput and to show you take things seriously.

blackdog · Apr 14, 2006

allthingsbright,Coopergrrl,

Thank you for your insights. Coopergrrl, I basically did what you suggested would be good to do, i.e. ask for details, and allthingsbright my instructors did inform me as to how to improve which I thanked them for. The thing which disturbed me most about this was how to me it seemed that my instructors looked on this as a cardinal sin even to the point of them asking me if nursing is right for me. I will continue to do my best, the worst part however is the seeds of doubt that are in me now. I'm a 36 year old father of 3 and going back to school, (living off of my 401K and wife's income) so this is very expensive and time consuming for me. I'd hate to have done it and then have it be the wrong field for me.

rehab nurse · Apr 14, 2006

hey there blackdog,

i am not male, but am a bridge student (lpn to rn) after being a lpn for 10 years. i had an instuctor also ask me if "nursing was right for me", not because of a complaint, but because i am not a morning person, and during morning report, i guess i wasn't as bright eyed and bushy tailed with a big old grin on my face. i don't remember anyone else in there at 5 am with a big smile on their face either! lol...

anyways, i would ask for the actual specific c/o if you haven't already. i have seen over the years that often when pt's c/o and they pinpoint the nurse, a specific complaint is never brought to the nurse's attention at all, only the fact the pt compained. IMO, that is not enough. to improve, you must know specifics, if any.

secondly, not every pt is going to like every nurse. just like every person does not like every other person. as long as he didn't complain to you, and you were in there, doing your assessment and professional, i think you don't have anything to worry about. and it sounds like that's exactly what you did.

as far as your questions,

1. yes, pts complain about people. it's not always justified, but i have seen the wrong people pinpointed by management. it's not pretty, but it happens. i have only had one complaint brought to my attention in my career. so i would not worry about this, like i said as long as you are professional to the pt and family, you will be fine.

2. i have worked, and still do, with quite a few male nurses. i have seen some pt's complain about male nurses, usually because said pt is female and extremely uncomfortable with having a male care for them. however, i've never seen any pt c/o a nurse just because they are male.

hope this helps! nursing school is stressful. i think you'll be fine!

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Apr 14, 2006

I've been a nurse for 30 years and these kinds of complaints have come my way through a manager or supervisor every now and then. And, the interesting thing is that it most often is always shocking because the complaint comes from a patient that I thought I had a good working relationship with or a patient who had thanked me over and over for something I had been able to do for them that someone else wasn't. Sometimes I was just confused with another staff member. Sometimes these patients are confused or sedated and not thinking and remembering clearly. (Had a patient once who accused me of ripping his pajama bottoms off and exposing him when I had gone into his room to start his IV when I was on an IV team. He told this to nurses in the ICU when he was post-op and they reported me! Luckily for me, there were two other staff nurses who happened to be in the room with me the entire time I was starting his IV. My nurse manager said it was the biggest laugh she'd had in a long time, but she still had to follow up on the complaint and talk to me about it.)

I have been in supervision and management as well. One of the duties of management is to listen to the people making these complaints. So, I would go in and listen to patient complaints--often it wasn't just the patient, there were also family members sometimes directing the patient. I'm hearing them going on and on about someone on the staff that I just can't believe. But, of course, I had to follow every complaint through and talk to the member of the nursing staff who was involved. Often the patients didn't have a name, or they were only able to identify staff by one or two specific physical features.

When you work in a service industry this kind of stuff happens. There's no way you can predict who is going to come forward with a complaint--you just can't predict it. It comes from passive-aggressive people. These types will be meek and quiet to your face, but all guts and threats when you are not around. All you can do is always act politely and respectfully of everyone. When you run into supervisors or managers that don't understand that there are patients who do this and who don't know when their own staff is not capable of the treatment the staff member is being accused of, you need to rethink why you are keeping on working there. There is a fair way to deal with these complaints and a stupid, biased and unreasonable way for managers to handle them.

Just shake your head and move on. This is part of the "fun" of working with people. For each one of these there will be many more who will be appreciative of what you do for them. It's just that feeling like you've been stabbed in the back hurts. It will pass. And it's not because of your gender, kiddo. I don't know what else to say to help you not feel so badly about this. So, don't beat yourself up over it. It's probably not going to be the last time something like this will happen. Bottom line, the patient was never injured or in any danger.

Sheri257 · Apr 14, 2006

How common is this type of thing?

Very common. Don't feel bad about it. Some patients can be very devious. You can move heaven and earth for some of them, and they will still complain. I'm just sorry that your instructors took you to task over it. I know they have to monitor students and make sure they're not doing anything wrong ... but they should also know that patients will pull this sort of thing from time to time.

I've also found that a lot of it depends on the facility. When I've worked at facilities that deliver substandard care ... the patients know something is wrong ... they just can't figure out what's going on. So they're stressed and tend to blame whoever is around, and that can easily be you ... even though it's not your fault and there's nothing you can do about the problem ... but they don't know that.

When the facility generally gives good care ... I've found the patient complaints are virtually non-existent. The patients are much happier because everybody from the doctors to the aides are taking care of things so, the patients are more relaxed and tend to complain a lot less.

:typing

blackdog · Apr 15, 2006

Thank you, Daytonite, Lizz, and rehab nurse. Your experiences and ideas on why this thing happened to me sound right on target... Unusually stressed out client, can't pinpoint my name, oriented x3 but a shaky 3 at that- could only get the date right to within a couple of weeks, asked me at least twice why he was there. I'm not going to take it to heart. My skin has been thick at past jobs, and even though I did not think that I'd get "stabbed in the back" so to speak as a nurse, now I know better and will have thicker skin for it.

-Blackdog

Bala Shark · Apr 15, 2006

Hey, the same thing happened to me..A patient told my instructor that I was not doing well and my instructor gave me a very poor evaluation..And all I did was take her blood pressure from the dynomat and do a finger stick on her..Everything was rountine..Friggen, I am on probation now after one patient said I was not doing well..It is the instructor's fault in just basing everything on what just ONE patient said out of so many...

blackdog · Apr 15, 2006

Bala Shark,

That definitely is a bunch of bull. It's as though we are not worthy of decent and fair consideration in these matters. As a student it makes me wonder if it'll even be worth it to be a nurse. I'm still optimistic for now though. How certain patients can be like this after our treating, and caring for them with courtesy and respect is beyond me. It's like I told my nursing instructors after they acted as though I hit the patient -"as Ricky Nelson said, "you can't please everyone"". Of course they did not like it when I said this to them. I'm a 36 year old father of 3 with a good marriage and good kids for crying out loud and they act as though I was some careless 17 year old laughing off the situation. But if things do not improve for you or I we need to remember that this road goes both ways. Our tuition helps pay their salaries and we always have the choice to take our money elsewhere for our nursing education- even though it may make things harder for us in the short term.

-blackdog

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Apr 15, 2006

. . .oriented x3 but a shaky 3 at that- could only get the date right to within a couple of weeks, asked me at least twice why he was there.

Let me give you a thumbs up on assessing orientation. After 30 years I still can't definitively say that every patient I come across is completely oriented. They may know their name, where they are, what day it is and who the president of the United State is, but that's only part of the big picture. I've seen it in my own parents as they aged. They cover up their forgetfullness and confusion really well if they want. I've been appalled at the unabashed way my mother outright lies to cover up holes in her memory. I think pride and and an unwillingness to "lose face" has a lot to do with it. My mother was a brilliant nurse at one time. It's amazing that others, however, still see her as being oriented. You can have a very nice conversation with her today, but tomorrow she won't remember any of it. I don't trust any answers she gives to the doctors about her medications and little treatments because I count the pills and watch what she is really doing. I am also aware that as soon as she is out of the house, she is confused with respect to direction and couldn't find her way home if she was only 20 feet down the sidewalk. She lives with me 24 hours a day so I see this all the time with her. However, when you are only seeing a patient for a couple of minutes out of an entire 8 or 12 hour shift, that is not nearly enough time to make an accurate assessment of someone's orientation unless they are outwardly confused and you can easily see that.

PickMePlze · Apr 16, 2006

Hey, the same thing happened to me..A patient told my instructor that I was not doing well and my instructor gave me a very poor evaluation..And all I did was take her blood pressure from the dynomat and do a finger stick on her..Everything was rountine..Friggen, I am on probation now after one patient said I was not doing well..It is the instructor's fault in just basing everything on what just ONE patient said out of so many...

That sucks. You can't please EVERYBODY, shouldn't the instructor take that into account?