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.

[lamazeteacher]

Which illustrates the fact that our patients come into the hospital with ingrained habits of having others at their beck and call.

How about the patient who really becomes totally helpless when their family comes to visit? That's a weird phenomenon.

INGRAINED HABITS DIE HARD - USUALLY WITH THE PATIENT..............We can't heal a lifetime of expectations in the little time they're in hospital. Thank heavens the MDs expecting their noses (and possibly behinds) to be scratched by nurses are dying out........

[lpnstudentin2010, LPN]

.....Have you never noticed; as soon as see you (even though they don't know you from Adam), they say something like "thank god your here! Do you know what I had to live through because of the treatment of (fill in the blank) on the (fill in the blank) shift?"

.....

Only time I made this comment was because I was glad. I had seen my evening shift nurse a total of 1 time the whole shift. She got me a new pulse ox monitor finger tip sticker thinggy put it on the tray in my room said she would be right back to put it on she just needed to take a call. I wait 3 hours fall asleep then wake up to being assessed by the night shift.

Now I realize that there was an issue. I was her only patient but she was the charge nurse. I realize there must have been an issue to have to scoot out that fast and i realize that being charge nurse she deals with crap. But I was her only patient (the next shift told me this).

By the way I have a random question.....how do the assign the charge nurse a patient? Is it random? Or do they give then the easiest/most challenging patient? I want to know if one of those is a sentiment about me. I hope they consider me easy, I try to not need all that much attention, and avoid calling if possible.

[leslie :-D]

By the way I have a random question.....how do the assign the charge nurse a patient? Is it random? Or do they give then the easiest/most challenging patient? I want to know if one of those is a sentiment about me. I hope they consider me easy, I try to not need all that much attention, and avoid calling if possible.

charges typically make their own assignments...

or not.

it all depends on their work ethic, time constraints, other demands, etc.

but yeah, usually the least sick/needy pts.

it could be 1, 2 or a whole assignment.

sometimes, none.

meg, you never need to worry.

you my love, are clearly a model pt and a personal joy.

trust me, it's the others w/problems.

leslie

[lpnstudentin2010, LPN]

charges typically make their own assignments...

or not.

it all depends on their work ethic, time constraints, other demands, etc.

but yeah, usually the least sick/needy pts.

it could be 1, 2 or a whole assignment.

sometimes, none.

meg, you never need to worry.

you my love, are clearly a model pt and a personal joy.

trust me, it's the others w/problems.

leslie

Thanks Leslie. it is one thing as a patient I worry about. Being seen as needy or a pain to my nurses. Which I realize I probably am not, but I do not want to be.

[Recuerdo]

It isn't just the neediness...it's those who seem to have this sense of entitlement, like the entire Universe should kiss their ass. They're the worst.

Neediness can be remedied by learning how to be strong.

It's a lot harder to get rid of arrogance, I think.

[softstorms]

Most of what we miss and want is Respect. I am so sad to say that most of what we have is a " MAID" persona. Our "pts" are "clients"

and PR is more important than pt care. We have become a "Service" industry. But, as nurses, we continue to do what is best for our patients and work around the rest of the crap. :)

[lpnstudentin2010, LPN]

I only have the utmost respect for my nurses (usually). As long as they treat ME with respect I will treat THEM with respect. They are human just like me and they are charged with keeping/getting me healthy, of course they get respect.

[mamason]

On our floor, the charge nusre usually doesn't take an assignment. Her job is to sign off our orders, make us aware of the new orders. She also helps problem solve if we need assistance. The only time our charge takes a pt is if we all have a full assignment and the hospital needs to place a pt. Then, the charge will step up to the plate and take that pt along with her other duties. It's not as easy as people think. It's a lot of responsibility. I respect the work that our charge nurses do. Our floor is a very busy tele floor. So, as most of you know, a lot can go bad at any given minute. Many of these pt's are unstable. SO, not only is the charge taking care of labs, orders, and dealing with the docs. She also must be aware of each and every pt and their condition. That's a huge responisiblity.:bowingpur

[neonatal3]

Yep, in these times many patients seem to talk to professional nurses as though we were maids or waitresses! I am a retired nurse, and I do not miss this apparently growing trend of lack of appreciation for professional nurses from patients and families! One of my worst experiences was when I was working in a neonatal intensive care unit and a visiting Dad wanted information about his baby and looked at me from across the unit where I was monitoring a couple of other unstable premies , raised his arm, and snapped his fingers as though I was a waitress and he wanted a coffee refill!!!!!

I agree with your comments that one of the contributing factors to this current lack of respect for professional nurses from patients and families seems to be "...management backing them up...customer service expected of nurses these days..."! Bummer!

As a senior cititizen retired nurse, I can tell you that when I was first drawn to the idea of being a nurse in the 60's patients and families seemed to truly respect nurses. At that time, nurses seemed to be viewed by the public as special altruistic people maybe similar to nuns or "angels".

Best wishes to all of you still "in the trenches"!

[KyPinkRN]

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.

Your long and dedicated career is a definite accomplishment. With that being said, just because you went through all of that doesn't make it the right way. This isn't the fifties, and nurses are no longer trained not to question physicians and to act like their servants. We don't do the things you mentioned in your post because there is no need as technology has advanced. We have grown as a profession. I believe that it is nurses with your attitude that perpetuate society's perception of us as servants. I for one didn't graduate from college to give up my chair to a doctor. As your post indicates you are far away from a recent position at the bedside. If you truly believe that others on this board are "unsuited" for nursing I urge you to take the advice of others and do some med/surg nursing at the bedside.

[KyPinkRN]

Originally Posted by aeauooo

HA! I got one for ya:

I had two patients in the ICU, one alert & oriented, relatively stable. The other was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head who had blown out one of his eyes. I had to put lacri-lube on it then cover it up with half a styrofoam cup every couple of hours.

While setting up to put lacri-lube on the guy's eye I heard my A&O patient in the next room say, "

I want a drink of water

." Then I heard one of the visitors come out of the room saying, "

Where's that nurse? Where's that nurse?

"

I removed the styrofoam cup from the guy's eye and stood aside so that the guy's blown out eye could be seen from the door.

I heard, "

Where's that nur

..."

I didn't hear another word about a cup of water after that.

It just occurred to me, this might have been a HIPAA violation, except that it occurred before HIPAA was enacted. You can't pop me for a violation that wasn't a violation at the time!

Motion to dismiss granted. Court adjourned.

I really don't think this is a HIPAA violation... you didn't reveal any personal information if anything the other patients family just saw something gross and will think twice next time.

[squeakykitty]

I really don't think this is a HIPAA violation... you didn't reveal any personal information if anything the other patients family just saw something gross and will think twice next time.

It was a wake-up call, that maybe there are other people who are sicker. They learned some priorities that day, and maybe that they should get their own water.