Patient request you not take care of them?

Nurses General Nursing

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Has anyone ever had a family/patient request that you not take care of them? How did you react to this without letting it break your spirit?

Specializes in ob/gyn med /surg.

i had a nasty patient who refused me to take care of her , she asked me if i went to clown college for my RN.

she was just demanding .. she wanted me to massage her nasty toe jam feet and toes.... and shave her nasty smelly arm pits, i refused and that made her very mad , then she screamed at me if i didn't answer her light in 1 minute , i told her i was with another pt who was coding and she said " i am your patient and you will answer my call light when i ring" " there are other people who can code that patient" i told her that a person coding was number 1 at that time... se proceeded to throw me out of the room and fire me.

i was so happy to get out of that cow's ( no offense to cows) room , i danced to the charge nurse's office and told her what happened .. and never took care of that selfish nasty woman again.

and i don't take it personally , i have been fired by nastier people than her... i believe in karma ... and every dog has their day

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Chances are, usually, the feeling is mutual. I've had it happen twice, and was actually relieved I didn't have to take care of the pt. Also when I have been the pt, there are some people, (very few) I don't want to take care of me.

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Specializes in Emergency.

Just the other evening right before shift change I had 2 pts. (both males) ask who the night RN was. Both said they didn't want the male nurse they had the night before. One said he was a liberal talking his ear off all night and the other did not elaborate.

Sometimes I think personalities just don't mix. Even though it feels personal, it really isn't and you should try to let it go. No doubt it will happen again or you will wish you could fire your pt. instead of the other way around! : )

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Specializes in Plastic surgery and Med/surg.
Has anyone ever had a family/patient request that you not take care of them? How did you react to this without letting it break your spirit?

I have not had someone as of yet, but then again I have only been there since June. But I have had two different patients ask that one tech not come back in the room due to their perfume and the second one did not want the nurse that they had the previous day shift. In both instances, I let my charge nurse know what was going on and they handled it. With the tech, I just took over all care, like doing vitals and I & O's which was fine with me. With the nurse, they just switched rooms with one of the other nurses. In both instances, to me, it was not my place to be the one to say something to my collegues and so that is why I went to my charge who has been in her nursing career a lot longer than I have and hopefully more experience in difficult situations.

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Specializes in Cardiac Telemetry, ED.
Has anyone ever had a family/patient request that you not take care of them? How did you react to this without letting it break your spirit?

When I was a student, a patient requested that I not take care of him. He did not know that I was already working as an LPN, but only saw the "Student" on my ID badge and made a judgment. I was actually kind of relieved because the guy was a jerk anyway. :chuckle

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Specializes in Ortho, Neuro, Detox, Tele.

It can be anything from race to age to gender. Sometimes a patient means well, but they don't feel comfortable with you. It happens on occasion...you have seperate yourself from your feelings and your professionalism. YOU know you are a good nurse. Move on, learn, and know you are the best you can be.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, educator.

don't sweat it, it happens a lot in NICU's. In our unit, we will tell the parent that we can't make a promise for a certain person to NOT have their kids and we leave it at that. NICU mom's are under stress and will take it out on you. Heck, after 20 some years I don't have all the answers and if they don't like it too bad, sometimes they don't like that we can't tell them their kids are going to be okay, or they don't like that we had to tell them their kid got sick that day, or they don't like how you swaddled their kid or a hundred other things. You may have just been on the end of a long and bad day for here and you got the short end of her stick!

Sometimes this is easier said than done, but you just have to move on and if you get the kids again just be pleasant and go about your day.

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Usually a blessing in disguise. Often these patients, as others have said, are rude and obnoxious (or in your case, the parents) and really it's better not to deal with the headache.

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Specializes in tele, oncology.

Usually I do the happy dance b/c it's the ones I don't want to take care of...

In your situation, prev poster could be dead on. I had a patient once refuse me b/c I looked just like her sister-in-law, who was apparently the biggest ***** on the planet. I have also had people ask me to stop caring for them so that someone "older" can (I still get carded for liquor and am in my early 30's). If that's the case, I usually explain to them that I look young, but have five years more experience doing this than the older woman they want to care for them (or whatever is applicable depending on who I'm working with), and that's was why I was chosen to care for a high acuity patient. Usually they want to keep me after that.

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Specializes in Peds Critical Care, Dialysis, General.

I've had that happen before, twice. I was also going to ask to not be assigned to either one, either. Then, one of our attendings told me that one mom thought I'd given too much morphine, too fast and that caused her child to not breathe well. He stood up for me (YIPPEE!!!) and said he knew I did everything per policy and that the baby's congenital defect was the real reason the child couldn't breathe.

Oddly enough, though, I got assigned to one of the children I had been asked to not be assigned to on a subsequent admit. This time, the mom had no qualms about my care. In fact, she stated that she felt very comfortable with my care of her child.

I hold onto the ones who ask that I be assigned to their child when I'm at work. That number vastly outnumbers the other 2.

Even our ANMs have people who don't want the ANM to touch their child!

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I have never had a patient that has made that request. However, there have been a few patients that I have requested to 'give away' if I had taken care of them the night before, and I have also had a few patients that I wished would have complained about me so that I could trade them mid-shift. Those patients actually liked me, though.:chuckle That's my luck.

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Specializes in ED, ICU, PSYCH, PP, CEN.

Twenty two years ago when I was a pneumonia pt I got a male nurse. I told them I refuse to have a male nurse. So they gave me a female nurse. This is long before I even thought about being one.

Boy was I stupid. But I was brought up that boys were firemen and cops and girls were teachers and nurses.

Now I work side by side with wonderful male nurses and wish there were more to balance out our profession.

Thank God times have changed, but I always smile when I think about that.

As far as the whole experience thing. New parents of sick children are over the top with fear and you have to be so careful what you say and how you behave around them.

I had one the other night in the ER. 4 week old-premature by 6 weeks with a fever, got the whole work up and nothing was found. Mom wept the entire time they were there and then I found out dad was a lawyer. Boy was I glad I was only triage and not the nurse.

Baby is okay and that's the good part.

Just keep learning and someday soon you will be the one everyone is asking for.

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