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?

In my area, there are quite a few racial refusals (patients refusing nursing care from nurses who do not belong to their racial-ethnic origin).

My area too, we had a patient who once requested "No nurses with accents" Yes, those were her EXACT words! I live in the Bay Area and on my unit majority of the staff are foreign/with accents... Luckily she was only in our hospital for about 3-4 days because on night shift there are only a handful of us without accents and I was SICK of caring for her!

OP, in my opinion you got off easy. As several other posters have stated, most of the time pts who are picky about their nurse are picky about everything else. Don't let it bother you. Pts won't like you for all sorts of reasons, they are in an extremely stressful situation and only want the best for their loved ones... Unfortunately as new nurses sometimes we are not the best fit in critical care situations because of our lack of field experience. All you can do is observe those around you and ask TONS of questions! Good luck to you and don't let it get you down, I'm sure you are a great nurse you're just still a little green...

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Wow, how appropriate for me to have found this thread today, because this just happened to me last night when I worked, for the first time since I first started working as a nurse over a year and a half ago. And though I've been feeling pretty down about it, like others have said, it was actually a huge relief not to have to deal with this patient anymore...but it also kind of bothers me that the nurse who took over her care didn't have the problems with her like I did. But all I can do is just try and learn from it and move on.

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Specializes in Community Health, Med-Surg, Home Health.
i've had it happen a few times, and although it always hurts, you can't let it get to you. usually it's for some stupid reaso that has thing to do with who you are as a person or as a nurse. to illustrate:

one patient refused my care because the lying scum of a married man she was dating told her i was his sister and i disapproved of their relationship. (i did disapprove -- mainly because i was his wife.)

one patient's wife refused my care because she'd overheard me talking to a fellow general hospital fan about the hiv status of a character. even after the other nurse (and my boss) explained to her, she still dissed me to all the other patient families for "openly discussing a patient's hiv status."

one patient's wife refused my care because after the umpteenth time she'd asked me to fetch her some oj, a blanket, a pillow, adjust the thermostat, etc. i told her (probably pretty impatiently) that i was here to care for her husband, and that the oj, blankets, pillows and room temperature were for his comfort and that of the other patients.

i was happy not to have to take care of any of those folks again!

you were the wife of the patient's lover? (just trying to see if i read it right, lol). hey, if so, then, certainly i would disapprove!! (:no:) sometimes, people can be real orificees. if a person can get defensive because you are speaking about soap opera characters, then we can certainly do without them.

i had a patient complain about me once, because she tried to come in the exam room while i had another patient there. she was offended that i closed the door on her. now if the tables were turned, how would she have felt?

most times, these are people with major issues that unfortunately,we can't fix in one tour of duty. and, sometimes, we have to keep in mind that they aren't hurting the nurse, they may be hurting themselves.

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Specializes in Ortho, Case Management, blabla.

The only time it ever happened to me was with a very demanding patient. I refused to give her any more after she forgot about the dose I had just given her 20 mins before - plus she was apneatic and barely able to keep her eyes open. She thought I was lying to her that I had just given her the med. She threw a fit about her "right to not have any pain" and blablabla I stayed adament and she said "I want a different nurse." I told the charge nurse about it-He went in to talk to her- and we ended up playing "Good nurse, Bad nurse" and she accepted me back a few minutes after firing me. We just didn't have the staff to be switching patients around in the middle of the shift like that.

Also there was this nurse I used to work with that would get the requests to not take care of certain patients at least once a week......like clockwork...every third or fourth shift she worked. She just struck a bad note with a lot of patients for some reason. If it bothered her she never let on.

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Specializes in Community Health, Med-Surg, Home Health.
The only time it ever happened to me was with a very demanding patient. I refused to give her any more after she forgot about the dose I had just given her 20 mins before - plus she was apneatic and barely able to keep her eyes open. She thought I was lying to her that I had just given her the med. She threw a fit about her "right to not have any pain" and blablabla I stayed adament and she said "I want a different nurse." I told the charge nurse about it-He went in to talk to her- and we ended up playing "Good nurse, Bad nurse" and she accepted me back a few minutes after firing me. We just didn't have the staff to be switching patients around in the middle of the shift like that.

Also there was this nurse I used to work with that would get the requests to not take care of certain patients at least once a week......like clockwork...every third or fourth shift she worked. She just struck a bad note with a lot of patients for some reason. If it bothered her she never let on.

Now, THAT is something I hate, to have a situation where there is no one else to replace the nurse that is receiving the negative PR, and has no choice but to continue caring for the patient that is being really, really abusive to them. Have seen it, was not very pleasent...:banghead:

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Specializes in ED, ICU, PACU.

I haven't read throug this thread yet; so, forgive me if I repeat another response.

Be grateful & happy that you don't have to care for the patient who requests you not taking care of them.

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