Patients who are too lazy to open their own splenda packets

squeakykitty · Apr 10, 2008

I really don't think that this thread is derision of pt. behavior to talk about the laziness or selfish entitlement attitudes. This is a good thread to vent and share stories in. Who knows--maybe some of these pts. will read it, change their ways, and appreciate nurses more.

RN1982 · Apr 11, 2008

In my opinion, we are all human. I don't seen anything wrong with having a thread about venting frustrations when a patient who will not do something they are perfectly capable of doing.

I think its perfectly health to talk about our frustrations rather than keep it all in.

medsurgnurse, RN · Apr 11, 2008

woohoo, angelfire that about sums it up!

lamazeteacher · Apr 11, 2008

You have found a punching bag that won't swing away from your jabs! You ask that I spend 6 months on a (?) M/S floor, with the idea that I haven't done that. I was hospital trained in the early days of nurses' 3 year hospital "training", when we spent mid days in class, and split shifts on the units (M/S). We were ridiculed, humbled, and chastised and eventually learnerd to channel our anger productively. We boiled glass syringes and needles (after sharpening the needles on soapstone), cleaned treatment trays, metal bedpans, and patients while instructors and head nurses watcvhed, checking to be sure a dime would bounce on the non "fitted" (flat) sheet we stretched over mattresses, and pulled draw sheets tight until our knuckles bled.

On pediatric rotation (3 months), we'd have 9 toddlers each to feed at each meal, lined up in high chairs as they spat out whatever had been spooned into their mouths During one of those times, a nun training to be a nurse called them "brats", which I couldn't believe anyone with her convictions would do.

We did "total care" for 6-8 patients (no med or treatment nurses), and there were no recovery rooms, in those days (the late '50s) so we'd likely get a fresh post op patient back with BPs Q 5-15-30 minutes at least once a shift. Woe to the student nurse who missed one! When doctors strode regally into the nurses' station we stood up as one, and handed them their patients' charts without being asked; and if a physician entered an elevator, we waited until after they entered, to get on it.

No one questioned that, or complained - that was unthinkable. We learned to hold our tongues, write lengthy explanations of our patients' day longhand, manage their meds without 1 hour's leeway before or after the times they were to be given, and although there were fewer of those than there are today, we had to have memorized all of their actions and adverse reactions, as well as the correct doses of each one, in case an order was written incorrectly. We were the phlebotomists, and had to monitor IVs without pumps, counting the drops until we went cross-eyed. It never seemed necessary to wish it was otherwise, and we accepted the burdens, belittling comments of patients and other students further along, and staff and the humiliating (and mostly unnecessary) corrections of others as our due.

People who were sick had all the idiosyncracies you've mentioned, and more. I loved the Psych rotation (3 months living on the grounds of a huge hospital0 and working first on acute admission wards and then chronic ones, where there would be sociopaths (one killed his parents), tertiary syphilitic old men, excrement on floors to clean (no disposable diapers), lobotimized shufflers who drooled copiously, and schitzophrenics with Parkinsonism from Thorazine all patrolled the halls and large "social" rooms in packs. I'll never forget a crazed, shrieking Eskimo woman who had postpartum psychosis, running pell mell up and down the halls naked. No one could catch her! Yet despite the paucity of effective medications and severity of their conditions, which made for bizarre working conditions, it never seemed appropriate to laugh, and talking about them was unthinkable. Our observations, comments, etc. were all copiously written in their charts. Obviously that generation of nurses was considerably different than yours. I've worked as a nurse for 48 years...... in pediatric heart surgical, OB (L&D, postpartum and nursery), emergency, psychiatry, cardiac, ICU and recovery units as a staff nurse since graduating.

After getting my BScN degree in Public Health Nursing, I was assigned a 25 square mile, 5,000 family rural district wherein I was to see all recently discharged patients; every Post Partum woman and newborn baby within a week of their arrival home; as well as perform school nurse functions at 2 private and 2 public schools, and staff well baby clinics twice weekly, see all Tb and insulin dependent diabetic patients at home monthly; and see that children we diagnosed with head lice at school in the fall were successfully treated (some only after the tomato picking season was over, as their parents used them for that).

After moving to CA, I took a job in a Maternity Home housing 52 young women hiding from their friends and families in the mid '60s. I ran a county OB clinic there, with the addition of a nurses' aide training program I initiated for the residents interested in learning to take blood pressures, test urine for gluc and alb, and weigh the others without revealing the results; taught prenatal classes, supervised house mothers and was on call 24/7.

Once I saw Dr. Lamaze's techniques working for laboring women, I became one of the first nurses certified in that childbirth teaching method and began teaching it in the community as well as at the Maternity Home, where I established a buddy system so each young woman had a "coach". One of my first opportunities to deal with nurses'

aberrant behavior was an evening when I received a complaint from nursery nurses at one of the hospitals, who objected to a few new moms who planned to relinquish their babies, crying because those nurses refused to allow them to hold their babies to say goodbye. When I got there, at 9 PM I disclosed to those nurses' surprise, that we had recommended that, as studies showed recivicism was considerably more frequent when mothers didn't do that. That was appropriate grief, I taught them.

I learned about addictive behavior from the 7 wards of the court who were part of the adjacent house's recovery program, and then organized the educational and infection control programs at a day center for pregnant addicts assigned there by the court and funded by a grant.

Now I'm 69 and havn't stopped working and being involved in nursing staff development and patient teaching. Your post raised my shackles as no other has, due to the crass disregard for patients' expressed needs, and nurse malfunctions in an emergency; and blaming patients from the resulting confusion, made worse by poor leadership skills.

I wrote all the forgoing to demonstrate my time in the "trenches" before accepting administrative (Inservice Education, QA/QI, and Infection Control) positions; and volunteered with the American Cancer Society (becoming President of the Los Angeles Unit); then the American Red Cross Disaster Committee, running infirmaries at shelters when earthquakes and fires displaced people) while my children were young, and I hadn't the need to work for pay.

When I wrote that some nurses might want to consider other work, it was because of their apparant unsuitability and dislike of the work they've undertaken. IN AN IDEAL WORLD, THERE WILL STILL BE PATIENTS REACTING INAPPROPRIATELY IN EMERGENCIES, BUT NURSES WILL BE BETTER PREPARED TO DEAL BETTER TO ATTAIN OPTIMUM RESULTS DURING THOSE TIMES.

No poster to a thread on this website has more right than another to vent. You vented about patient behavior. I vent about nurses' inability to correctly deal with that. My opinion is based on many decades of teaching nurses and working with patients, resolving problems.

BeachBayNurse · Apr 11, 2008

You have found a punching bag that won't swing away from your jabs! You ask that I spend 6 months on a (?) M/S floor, with the idea that I haven't done that. I was hospital trained in the early days of nurses' 3 year hospital "training", when we spent mid days in class, and split shifts on the units (M/S). We were ridiculed, humbled, and chastised and eventually learnerd to channel our anger productively. We boiled glass syringes and needles (after sharpening the needles on soapstone), cleaned treatment trays, metal bedpans, and patients while instructors and head nurses watcvhed, checking to be sure a dime would bounce on the non "fitted" (flat) sheet we stretched over mattresses, and pulled draw sheets tight until our knuckles bled.
On pediatric rotation (3 months), we'd have 9 toddlers each to feed at each meal, lined up in high chairs as they spat out whatever had been spooned into their mouths During one of those times, a nun training to be a nurse called them "brats", which I couldn't believe anyone with her convictions would do.
We did "total care" for 6-8 patients (no med or treatment nurses), and there were no recovery rooms, in those days (the late '50s) so we'd likely get a fresh post op patient back with BPs Q 5-15-30 minutes at least once a shift. Woe to the student nurse who missed one! When doctors strode regally into the nurses' station we stood up as one, and handed them their patients' charts without being asked; and if a physician entered an elevator, we waited until after they entered, to get on it.
No one questioned that, or complained - that was unthinkable. We learned to hold our tongues, write lengthy explanations of our patients' day longhand, manage their meds without 1 hour's leeway before or after the times they were to be given, and although there were fewer of those than there are today, we had to have memorized all of their actions and adverse reactions, as well as the correct doses of each one, in case an order was written incorrectly. We were the phlebotomists, and had to monitor IVs without pumps, counting the drops until we went cross-eyed. It never seemed necessary to wish it was otherwise, and we accepted the burdens, belittling comments of patients and other students further along, and staff and the humiliating (and mostly unnecessary) corrections of others as our due.
People who were sick had all the idiosyncracies you've mentioned, and more. I loved the Psych rotation (3 months living on the grounds of a huge hospital0 and working first on acute admission wards and then chronic ones, where there would be sociopaths (one killed his parents), tertiary syphilitic old men, excrement on floors to clean (no disposable diapers), lobotimized shufflers who drooled copiously, and schitzophrenics with Parkinsonism from Thorazine all patrolled the halls and large "social" rooms in packs. I'll never forget a crazed, shrieking Eskimo woman who had postpartum psychosis, running pell mell up and down the halls naked. No one could catch her! Yet despite the paucity of effective medications and severity of their conditions, which made for bizarre working conditions, it never seemed appropriate to laugh, and talking about them was unthinkable. Our observations, comments, etc. were all copiously written in their charts. Obviously that generation of nurses was considerably different than yours. I've worked as a nurse for 48 years...... in pediatric heart surgical, OB (L&D, postpartum and nursery), emergency, psychiatry, cardiac, ICU and recovery units as a staff nurse since graduating.
After getting my BScN degree in Public Health Nursing, I was assigned a 25 square mile, 5,000 family rural district wherein I was to see all recently discharged patients; every Post Partum woman and newborn baby within a week of their arrival home; as well as perform school nurse functions at 2 private and 2 public schools, and staff well baby clinics twice weekly, see all Tb and insulin dependent diabetic patients at home monthly; and see that children we diagnosed with head lice at school in the fall were successfully treated (some only after the tomato picking season was over, as their parents used them for that).
After moving to CA, I took a job in a Maternity Home housing 52 young women hiding from their friends and families in the mid '60s. I ran a county OB clinic there, with the addition of a nurses' aide training program I initiated for the residents interested in learning to take blood pressures, test urine for gluc and alb, and weigh the others without revealing the results; taught prenatal classes, supervised house mothers and was on call 24/7.
Once I saw Dr. Lamaze's techniques working for laboring women, I became one of the first nurses certified in that childbirth teaching method and began teaching it in the community as well as at the Maternity Home, where I established a buddy system so each young woman had a "coach". One of my first opportunities to deal with nurses'
aberrant behavior was an evening when I received a complaint from nursery nurses at one of the hospitals, who objected to a few new moms who planned to relinquish their babies, crying because those nurses refused to allow them to hold their babies to say goodbye. When I got there, at 9 PM I disclosed to those nurses' surprise, that we had recommended that, as studies showed recivicism was considerably more frequent when mothers didn't do that. That was appropriate grief, I taught them.
I learned about addictive behavior from the 7 wards of the court who were part of the adjacent house's recovery program, and then organized the educational and infection control programs at a day center for pregnant addicts assigned there by the court and funded by a grant.
Now I'm 69 and havn't stopped working and being involved in nursing staff development and patient teaching. Your post raised my shackles as no other has, due to the crass disregard for patients' expressed needs, and nurse malfunctions in an emergency; and blaming patients from the resulting confusion, made worse by poor leadership skills.
I wrote all the forgoing to demonstrate my time in the "trenches" before accepting administrative (Inservice Education, QA/QI, and Infection Control) positions; and volunteered with the American Cancer Society (becoming President of the Los Angeles Unit); then the American Red Cross Disaster Committee, running infirmaries at shelters when earthquakes and fires displaced people) while my children were young, and I hadn't the need to work for pay.
When I wrote that some nurses might want to consider other work, it was because of their apparant unsuitability and dislike of the work they've undertaken. IN AN IDEAL WORLD, THERE WILL STILL BE PATIENTS REACTING INAPPROPRIATELY IN EMERGENCIES, BUT NURSES WILL BE BETTER PREPARED TO DEAL BETTER TO ATTAIN OPTIMUM RESULTS DURING THOSE TIMES.
No poster to a thread on this website has more right than another to vent. You vented about patient behavior. I vent about nurses' inability to correctly deal with that. My opinion is based on many decades of teaching nurses and working with patients, resolving problems.

Why would one put themselves in some of the conditions you described in a society where one can sue at the drop of the hat? Yes, things were definitely different years ago, perhaps I would be more willing to take on too many patients, unsafe conditions etc., when the patients were not likely to sue and take away my family's livelihood.

RN1982 · Apr 11, 2008

So we are suppose to just "deal" with being treated like crap? I think not. We are all human. The point of this site, in my opinion, is to share our experiences, whether they be good or bad.

The fact that we "vent" about patients here is because WE ARE DEALING WITH IT. WE ARE DEALING WITH IT HERE AND NOT TAKING OUR FRUSTRATION ON THE PATIENTS. WE ARE HUMAN TOO AND JUST BECAUSE WE "VENT" OUR FRUSTRATIONS ABOUT OUR PATIENTS DOES NOT MAKE US ANY LESS OF A NURSE.

AngelfireRN, MSN, RN, APRN · Apr 11, 2008

As the title states, this thread is a vent about patients, not the nurses who, in your exalted opinion, don't know how to deal with them. No one is saying you do not have the right to vent, but you could not have picked a more inappropriate place to do so. I may be a country girl, and I may be a young'un to you, but I darned sure know enough to know when I am not wanted around. I also have enough sense to know when I have stepped in it royally, and make an attempt to exit with grace and dignity, not trot out a laundry list of laurels (which I know you worked hard for, no doubt) to further drive home my point.

You have offended me and I would dare to say a great many other nurses on this forum. As I said, I don't give a whit about your opinion of me personally, but to think a fellow nurse would say these things to her peers is inconcievable. I really don't think you see us as peers. You make yourself sound superior. You know a better way for everything. To hear you tell it, I'm frankly amazed I made it through undergrad, my career, and am as far as I am towards a Master's without your supreme guidance. With all your credentials, you must be right up there with the Surgeon General. I ask, does anyone stay around when you start in with this tirade? By all means, keep it up, keep reminding us all how pitiful we are as human beings. Let me know how that works out for you.

When was the last time you were at the bedside in the last decade as a floor nurse, not an educator? They are not the same, let me assure you. Educators get to leave, floor nurses are stuck for 12 solid hours with the aforementioned derided behavior. If you spent, as I challenged, 6 months (and I mean NOW) at the bedside as a floor nurse, I daresay you would have a different view.

As a final note, feel free to vent. Start your own thread where those of a like opinion, if there are any, can join you. Don't come in here and bash us because we get tired and ill and frustrated. i want someone here who sympathizes and gets mad with me, not someone who gives me a slap on the hand, a lecture, and a homework assignment.

Go rest on those laurels you felt the need to trot out. Look down on us mere mortals from your mountain and think about how wretched we all are. But, please, keep it to yourself. You aren't helping anyone here. The derision is going to continue, and I do believe you're on the receiving end of a healthy dose, by your own means.

Thanks to all those who cheered me on!

GadgetRN71, ASN, RN · Apr 11, 2008

What it comes down to for me is...times change. I've heard quite a few older nurses lament the fact that we young un's are too big for our britches, ie. we don't put up with people crapping all over us. I'm very sorry that you had to stand up when a doc entered the room, or that you had to give him your seat. It would be a cold day in hades before I do either of those. I don't care that you single handedly took care of 10 patients at a time back in the day, because the acuity of patients in the hospital has worsened. Of course these nurses don't mind opening Splenda packets and playing waitress, because many of their patients back then would check themselves in for a "rest".

I'm still giggling over the "Dance of Anger", myself.:chuckle

FireStarterRN, BSN, RN · Apr 11, 2008

Patients have changed, society has changed, many things have changed. It also used to be that nurses ran the wards, their word was the final one, and patients and their families respected the nurse's authority. When I was a girl, children under 12 years old were not allowed to visit hospital wards, period.

The abuse that Lamaze Teacher describes that she endured in nursing school is not something that I feel is reasonable. I've heard stories of the old nursing schools that basically stripped women of their civil rights and treated them like slave labor. My Aunt Ruth went to nursing school in the late 1920's and they were basically indentured servants of the hospital that ran the school. They were required to be unmarried women, and their social lives were strictly limited, they lived in a barracks type situation at the school much as if they were in the military, working long hours doing menial labor at the hospital.

They could get away with this in those days because women were second class citizens, with limited rights and opportunities, having only recently even obtained the right to vote! So, what Lamaze Teacher is describing is not the rosey, well ordered world that she remembers, but probably one tinted by the rose-colored glasses she is wearing.

santhony44, MSN, RN, NP · Apr 11, 2008

I can respect your age, and your years of experience, and your contributions to the care of patients over your years in nursing.

However, you are obviously extending no respect in return.

Not only that, you are, in fact, pretty well missing the point.

I don’t think any nurse on this thread was complaining about demanding patients because such patients were taking away from the time the nurses would otherwise be sitting about playing computer games, doing their nails, or eating bon-bons. (I do believe that eating a meal, using the bathroom, or occasionally propping one’s tired, aching feet up are legitimate uses of one’s time).

I believe that the complaints were predicated on the beliefs that, first of all, functional abilities must be used in order to be maintained; thus, patients who refuse to do the simplest things for themselves might be in real danger of actually becoming unable to do those things. Then, the next issue is that, when the nurse is busy opening Splenda packets, moving water glasses over ¼ inch, pulling up blankets, changing TV channels, and doing other such tasks that the patient is fully capable of performing for him-or-herself, then the nurse is not spending time with the patient who does need the assistance, or who is in need of assessment, or medication, or teaching, or even, simply, a kind or reassuring word.

Patients who are being excessively demanding of the nurses’ and support staff’s time are not only showing a lack of respect for the staff. They are also showing a profound disrespect and lack of regard for the other patients. For, in fact, human life. This is what was shown in the example of the dialysis patient who was being stepped over by other patients, who were then demanding to be “taken care of” first. In response, we were appalled, disgusted, angered; then, we were scolded, lectured, and condescended to.

Yes, it was hard when you were trained as a nurse. That doesn’t mean it’s so much easier now. There are medications, surgeries, tests, and procedures which exist now which were not dreamed of when you were in training. There are patients now in hospitals who would not have been there when you were in training, because they would never have lived so long.

Having recently reached my own “silver anniversary” of 25 years in nursing, I’ve been reflecting a lot on my own education and training and the changes in medicine and nursing. I believe the complexity of medical and nursing care has increased exponentially in that time. Daily, I write prescriptions for medications which did not exist when I became a nurse. I’ve seen CT scans, MRI’s, day surgeries, laparascopic surgeries, and innumerable other technologies, tests, and procedures become commonplace. While much of this is a very good thing- my own parents are now octogenarians, having outlived their parents by decades, and I thank God for whoever invented the laparascopic cholecystectomy- it has not made nursing easier. It’s harder, and patients just may be harder to deal with.

No one came to this thread to be lectured to, to be talked down to, to be condescended to, or to be treated like a recalcitrant, not-too-bright student. The purpose of a vent thread is to, well, vent. To express frustration, to get some support, to commiserate, to, perhaps, be able to laugh a little instead of cry. We don’t wish to be scolded, to be treated like bad nurses who don't understand patients, or to be told that we're mistreating patients.

If what you perceive to be the attitudes of the nurses posting on this thread disgusts you, then, please, think what you like. Cluck your tongue, shake your head. Then, please, just go away. Please.

squeakykitty · Apr 11, 2008

Society has changed, and the field of nursing has changed a lot over the years. Just before I was born in 1967, a nurse had the time to reassure my mom when she was in labor and very scared because the last one with my brother was so hard and painful. Now, I don't think any nurse would have that kind of time.

People used to have more respect for one another and for the nurses, but now we live in a Burger King society where people want what they want "right now" the way they want it, and to heck with anyone else. In other words, there is an epidemic of the Selfish Entitlement Syndrome, where people are getting more selfish and rude all the time.

People are not acting this way because of the way a nurse "presents themself". They act this way anyway, and the responsibility for this behavior should rest on them alone. The nurse is not responsible for anothers behavior.

Now, states are even enacting laws against assaults on healthcare staff, which I don't think were there the year I was born. I've seen an interesting thread along these line, here is the link. https://allnurses.com/forums/f8/does-scare-anyone-but-me-281221.html

I totally understand the venting here. If a nurse has to deal with being at the beck and call of people like this, it takes away from people who are really sick. It does scare me a little, the idea that one of my family members might come to harm because a self absorbed person has bullied a nurse to the point they couldn't even check on my family member.

There is a shortage of nurses willing to put up with abuse, and it will only get worse unless nurses can have a way to get respect and not be abused. Years ago, battered women had no resources. They do now, and nurses should have resources too.

aeauooo · Apr 11, 2008

we live in a Burger King society where people want what they want "right now" the way they want it, and to heck with anyone else.

Which is one of the reasons I can't wait to get out of this country and go back to work in Africa.

Twice in my life I have experienced severe culture shock - both times were when I had returned to the U.S. after having lived in another country for over a year: Iran in 1978 (yup), and Ethiopia in 2002.

You might think I'd experience culture shock moving to one of those countries, but I didn't. I expected that I would have to adjust. I was absolutely not prepared to see my own country and culture from a perspective I gained while living outside of it.

So God willing, I should be back in Africa next year, where I can make a difference, instead of the almost Sisyphean task of working as a nurse in this country, where the reward of feeling like I've made a real difference seem few and far between.