Patients who are too lazy to open their own splenda packets

[FireStarterRN]

Good grief, some patients want to revert back to being 9 month old infants!!! They also like to ask requests one at a time. Then, after you wait on them hand and foot all shift with the patience of a saint, they turn on you in an instant when their latest trivial request is not immediately granted due to the fact that there is someone circling the drain in the room next door.

[frenchfroggyAPRN, MSN, LPN, RN, APRN]

I had a bilateral AKA in the hospital, that requested me to feed him. When asked if someone fed him at home, "No, I just want ya'll to feed me, I'm too tired to feed myself". I explained to him that No I will not feed you and handed him his fork.

[bigjay]

I think you have to take this type of behaviour on a case by case basis. One thing I always look at it why the patient is in hospital and what their future expectations are. If they're going to be going home they need to start working on becoming independant again, feeding, bathing and doing their own care to the maximal extent they can. Often times these patient need to be pushed to do it. I find leaving them with trays, wash clothes, etc tends to yield results when I return. Many nurses that I work with tend to cave in and just do things for patients they are quite capable of doing because it's easier and faster than motivating/forcing them to do it themselves.

With patients that are dying (I work on an Oncology/General Medicine ward) I give more leeway even if they are fairly capable. For these patients I don't mind doing some things they could do themselves so that they can conserve their energy for more important things like spending time with family. You still have to draw lines though with some patients. Feeding people who are completely capable is one of my pet peeves.

[GadgetRN71, ASN, RN]

No thanks about the journaling and reading the "dance of anger".(was that for real, BTW?) Anger is not always a bad thing, you know. It gets us out of situations where we are being abused, taken advantage of etc. I figure, as long as I'm not verbally abusing these knuckleheads, slapping them upside the head and I try to be a competent, knowledgable nurse, then I'm doing my job.

Maybe some of these demanding patients should start "journaling" to find out why they are so nasty to other people and why they don't want to cherish their independence.

Again, this thread is meant as a means for people to vent their frustration. This site is more therapeutic for me than all the self-help mumbo jumbo in the world.

[medsurgnurse, RN]

No thanks about the journaling and reading the "dance of anger".(was that for real, BTW?) Anger is not always a bad thing, you know. It gets us out of situations where we are being abused, taken advantage of etc. I figure, as long as I'm not verbally abusing these knuckleheads, slapping them upside the head and I try to be a competent, knowledgable nurse, then I'm doing my job.

Maybe some of these demanding patients should start "journaling" to find out why they are so nasty to other people and why they don't want to cherish their independence.

Again, this thread is meant as a means for people to vent their frustration. This site is more therapeutic for me than all the self-help mumbo jumbo in the world.

[sample24]

Actually that is a technique taught to stroke patients; and if she is that obese she may well not have been able to reach herself properly. She had point blank told you she was incapable of reaching that part of her anatomy well enough. I've gained a bit of wieght over the past few years, and while I am not obese there are times when leaning over my own gut was not as easy as it used to be.

Maybe I should have prefaced this with "the pt. had been doing it herself for 2 days..." I actually chose not to go in to all of the other ridiculous demands said pt. had been making, and that at the physicians request we not enable said pt. any more because we were delaying her return to independence. I really didn't think all of the peripheral information was necessary.

My intention was not to label obese pts as your post suggests, but just to share an experience that I had as a nurse that I am able to laugh about now. It's unfortunate that we aren't able to 'vent' even to our own nursing community without judgment. It's no wonder so many nurses get burned out and seek out other avenues of nursing that don't actually involve hands on care.

[Recuerdo]

To the ICU nurse who let them see the guy's eye....

Well done!

[Recuerdo]

You know what the saddest thing of all here is, is that using this type of corporate, "customer" philosophy, we actually prevent people from healing and becoming whole again. Sometimes what people need are firm boundaries and sometimes what they need even more is a good, swift kick in the butt. Healing is hard work. You have to want it. You have to go for it. Nobody else can do it for you.

Not even "that nurse".

[Virgo_RN, BSN, RN]

Update to my post on page 14 about the grumpy wife:

I arrived to my assignment today and as I stood outside the room reviewing the chart, I made a point of getting the wife's eye contact, and smiling a huge smile and waving at her and saying "HI!", like I was really happy to see her. She smiled and said "hello" back, in a friendly tone and with a smile on her face. She ended up telling me that after she had left yesterday, she got to her car only to find a $30 parking citation (and it was pouring rain out). I told her to ask about it at the front desk, but she didn't seem like she was going to. I explained that since she had been in the ED with her husband, the ticket did seem unfair, and sometimes the hospital will drop the fine if you take the time to explain the situation, and that the person at the front desk might be able to help. I wish I would have followed up on that, but she slipped out unnoticed sometime before dinner.

Also, I was able to get a smile out of the patient by joking around with him a little bit. Toward the end of the shift, he asked me to do cath care. I asked if they had done it this morning with his bath (the CNAs are supposed to do it on day shift), and he said no and mumbled something, but I got the feeling it wasn't because they didn't offer, but that he had probably refused. It seemed to me that he asked me to do it because I had built a rapport with him.

Now if I could only have figured out how to make the angry old man down the hall not be so angry, but no dice. This guy was so angry, he'd rant about anything. I tried to engage him in conversation by asking him questions about himself, but every single answer turned into a rant. The only thing that finally worked was his scheduled dose of Xanax. Interesting since he refused morphine because it is "dope", but had absolutely no problem with Xanax. Go figure.

[Virgo_RN, BSN, RN]

It is a "given" that sick people, while not exonerated of their extremely negative behavior, are nevertheless expressing their individual reality. The nurses contributing to this "vent" thread, hopefully vent here instead of acting out their negative feelings toward patients. It is useful to discharge feelings in this manner. However, I am unsure of what constitutes a "vent" thread, rather than one contributing to other nurses' information.

I'm glad you can see the use for a thread like this one. A "vent" thread is a thread where we get to say the things we would NEVER EVER say to a patient or their family member. It is a thread where we get to be "bad" people instead of perfect people. It is a thread where we support one another in our feelings of frustration and assure one another that we are only human, and are not alone. See, if we were to say any of these things publicly, in a non-nursing context, imagine the reaction we would get from a member of the general public. This site is a safe place for us to be able to let off some steam and NOT BE JUDGED like we would be if we were to express these feelings elsewhere.

It would be good when feeling angry about the patients we care for, to "journal" them. Then, a few days later, when the anger has diminished, read what we've written and see if those feelings have changed.

This is the same purpose that venting serves for me. I am always reflecting on my reactions to certain situations, why I react the way I do, and how I can react in the healthiest and most constructive way possible. In order to reflect, I must vent.

Then I realized that I had no right to act upon a situation in which I personally was not involved. That was a hard lesson, and it seems that I still have more to learn about butting out of scenes in which I have no part. Sorry, colleagues.

I can't comment on George's story because, like you, I was not there and did not observe what happened. I may vent about rude and demanding patients, but I cannot imagine witholding pain medication from ANY patient simply because they did not say Please and Thank You. That is ridiculous. I hope you can distinguish venting negative emotions anonymously on an internet discussion forum (a coping mechanism) from actual patient abuse (a crime); which, if George's account of events is accurate, is exactly what that was.

I was faced with a similar situation just today. The off-going nurse reported to me that the patient had not voided since her foley had been removed, and had not asked to use the BSC. When the aide went into the room, she found the patient soaked in her own urine, needing a complete linen change and skin care. The smell was so terrible that it wafted into the hallway and I had to spray deodorizer up and down the corridor to protect the patient's dignity, and everyone else's nostrils. The aide wanted to file a report the patient's condition, to place accountability on the previous shift. I explained to her that we weren't there on day shift, we did not observe the care the patient did or did not get, and that the patient could have soaked her bed within the last half hour of the previous shift, that she could have been completely clean and dry when the previous shift did their last rounds, and that we could not make assumptions.

In the past, when I was an aide, I would have been right there with this aide, furious that a patient would be left like that. But, since I started nursing I'm more hesitant to jump to conclusions, and more likely to take a step back and give the benefit of the doubt instead of blaming.

[KLKRN, RN]

I worked SNF for awhile, and a patient's wife, someone who was always a complainer, came out into the hall in a fit one day while I was passing meds. She dropped a dead bug on the med cart and said, "I just found this in xxx's room!" and huffed back to the room.

I took some deep breaths, went into the room and sat down across from her and said, "I want to ask you something....If those had been xxx's meds I had on that cart, and someone else came up and did what you did, how would you feel about that?"

I agree that this is a place to vent, and it seems to be getting a little out of control with all the picking at one another I'm seeing.

We have a job that is often frustrating and thankless. I have been able to position myself, personally, in a situation that works for me and minimizes my frustration, but I have been a nurse 25 years, and I know what it's like.

My goal is always to treat everyone with respect, and keep an open mind, try to see both sides of an issue; but yes, there are times that people refuse to be civil and it's very difficult to do that. Having safe people to vent to, who understand and will not criticize who you are or how you feel is optimal.

Unfortunately, this is a public forum, much like a net thrown into the sea that catches everything out there. People are people.

It is possible to disagree without attacking the person involved. No one should have to put up with abuse from anyone. And IMO, it's okay to remind patients that we are not there to be abused.

[squeakykitty]

And here we go again with the "Bend over and take it. Examine yourself. The patient is having a bad day." This is a VENT THREAD! Face it, there are patients in this world who think that they are the only ones alive. And unbalanced electrolytes or not, if I had to step over a body to get to a clinic, it would darn sure trigger something in my brain that all was not well in the kingdom and their problem might be a bit more critical than mine.

It has nothing to do with electrolytes and everything to do with selfishness.

Can you honestly say to me that if you were lying in the floor, too weak to move, and people were stepping over you, demanding that they be treated before you were assisted, that your thought would be: "Gee, their electrolytes must be out of whack, and I bet they have to get back to work. That's why they're acting like a horse's patoot."

I know that I would not.

I think if I was the one on the floor, I would probably try to gather enough strengh to trip someone. Or bite their ankle. That would get their attention.

[squeakykitty]

How about the ever popular and ever condescending "I pay your salary!"?

There's only one good answer to that----------

"Great! Can I have a raise?"