So I spend a good amount of time as a triage nurse outside of D.C. Since moving to this area, I've noticed patients are becoming more & more irrational, demanding & downright nasty. They argue about coming in for follow ups (sorry but you cannot have your statin when it has been 8 mos since your last CMP/Lipid Panel/LFTS') & state they "don't care" if this medication un-monitored can put them into renal failure. All they want is the quick fix - to break the nurse down until she refills that standing order. Is anyone else experiencing this? Despite the fact that nurses are more & more recognized as leaders in healthcare, there seems to the less and less respect on the forefront.
I have previously worked as an in-patient psychiatric nurse, and those patients at times were more reasonable then my patients now!
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
High co-pays, wait times in the office, googling your disease process -- none of these seem like good excuses for acting nasty and entitled. And for the husband who "does not treat nurses warmly" -- does he get offended and complain when nurses then don't treat HIM warmly?
I work L&D, so most of our patients run the gamut from being abusive while in labor to being happy and helpful after the baby is here. Therefore my comments may not be valid from a nurse point of view.
I am going to throw in my two cents from a patient point of view however. My parents and grandparents have both voiced the same complaint. First, everything is hugely expensive (especially for older people on fixed incomes like my grands). Going in for a 10 minute exam and a blood draw is a 30$ copay, which may not seem like a lot to us, but to retired people it makes a difference in whether or not they keep their cable on this month. My parents are both still working and both of them have changed providers several times because of the wait. I don't disagree with them, having a 30 minute appointment is not a big deal, but waiting an hour or more to be seen for that appointment makes a huge difference if they need to get back to work.
I know there's not a lot that can be done about the cost, sadly it is what it is. However there is a lot to be done about the long wait times. It wouldn't be a big deal if it happened now and then, everyone understands emergencies, but for someone like my mom who has diabetes and needs to be seen every 3 months and had to change from a provider she loved because there was never less than a 45 minute wait, well that's completely out of line.
In short, perhaps patients are more demanding and a bit nasty, but in at least some cases it is our fault and there is a lot to be done to be better! I work in a hospital that pays a lot of attention to patient satisfaction surveys because of Medicare reimbursement, if clinics and Drs offices were forced to do the same, I bet things would change!
The only answer to the primary wait times is holding all PCPs to a 15-minute timeframe. If you want to continue to talk to your doc, too bad, because you don't wanna make people wait, right?
Wait times are not a new thing...people are just becoming less tolerant of the needs of others with more focus on their own inconveniences.
I had a patient's family with every possible permutation of entitlement and manipulation going on. The patient herself was great, by the way. The son actually said, "The squeaky wheel gets the grease," to me. I. Addition, the patient was a long-term friend of a national celebrity, so the son called him 3 times during his mom's stay to come in to the hospital, which the celebrity did. (The celebrity just walked in, no entourage at all, a noticeably commanding presence, and quite nice.) The son said to me, "You all might take better care of Mom if you knew who she knows." I said, "I take care of my patients all the same, and I find that comment quite offensive to my integrity and professionalism." He apologized to me, and the sister told me, "Don't pay any attention to him. He does that all the time because he thinks it impresses people."
High co-pays, wait times in the office, googling your disease process -- none of these seem like good excuses for acting nasty and entitled. And for the husband who "does not treat nurses warmly" -- does he get offended and complain when nurses then don't treat HIM warmly?
No, he would rather they treat him professionally. He is creeped out by nurses who treat him like a friend they have never met.
So am I, for that matter. Don't hug me. I have a pretty good idea of where your hands have been and as much as some nurses swear they wash their hands every fifteen seconds, I have seen the studies that indicate health care workers don't wash their hands nearly enough. (If you want to know the stats, feel free to Google.)
Acting nasty and entitled has different meanings to different people. Just because I and my husband don't gush and fawn all over health care professionals for meeting the minimum requirements of their jobs doesn't mean that we are nasty and entitled. We expect competence and professionalism.
If that part of the post wasn't aimed at me, it felt like it was, so please mind your posts.
The only answer to the primary wait times is holding all PCPs to a 15-minute timeframe. If you want to continue to talk to your doc, too bad, because you don't wanna make people wait, right?
Wait times are not a new thing...people are just becoming less tolerant of the needs of others with more focus on their own inconveniences.
This is false. Wait times have increased. People are justifiably less tolerant of a system that tells them their time is less important than the practice's time. Especially with the current practice of having the patients pay fees for late and missed appointments, while the provider has no such penalty.
The solution is not black and white. You can't hold a PCP to 15-min timeframes, and the current attempt to do so is misguided.
What needs to happen is that providers refuse to see patients that carry certain insurance and refuse to see Medicare and Medicaid patients. Patients who have these plans need to stop being lemmings and start writing to their insurance companies and their government representatives to complain. Providers need to start treating proactively instead of reactively and defensively.
Providers need to start refusing to see patients who do not comply with treatment plans that they agreed to.
We need to get the trust back into the medical profession. I don't trust any provider anymore. I have to look up treatments and symptoms and diagnose myself before the appointment, because there is no way I am going to get a correct diagnosis in fifteen minutes or less. Medicine should not be held to the same standards as car insurance.
i have something similar. I have a concierge doctor w/30 minute appointments or longer. We have the portal too, but I have yet to find the benefit in the portal. I won't send a message through the portal as it goes to a generic inbox for anyone to read and answer my question. Even if it would go directly to the MD, his staff has permission to read and answer. I found that out with a different "secured messaging". Never again will I send something through the portal. I send my messages to his home computer or text him. It didn't happen to me, but I've heard a few others who used the "appt" section and several showed up for the same appt time. Portals are not that great. The only reason doctors are using them is for the meaningful use program w/the government.
brownbook
3,413 Posts
Never mind.....poop at least is kind of funny....the others are just plain yucky!