Patients who are too lazy to open their own splenda packets

MrsMommaRN · May 6, 2008

i work on a busy joint replacement floor. everyday it amazes me what our patients ask us to do. they ring the call bell as if they were ringing the front desk at a posh hotel. a few of my favorites:

your call light is on can i help you?

yeah i need a cup of coffee cream and 3 sugars:uhoh3:

your call light is on can i help you?

yeah i want to have my girlfriend spend the night? can you call her? :madface:

123sunnid · May 7, 2008

I'm a school nurse and this just happened today. I had a child come in with obvious conjuctivitis, which had reoccurred from last week. (meds weren't completed) Low income family, lack of knowledge, etc. I called the mom, who was working at the local fast food joint (bless her, she's the only one working...) who sent the 22 yr old unemployed, high school drop out brother to pick the child up. (I explained to mom on the phone about the importance of finishing meds, s&s, etc. and SHE seemed to get it.) Long story short, brother comes to pick up his 8 yr old sister and proceeds to nastily tell me I have no idea what conjuctivitis is and I need to "look into it". All the while he is standing over me and jabbing an unlit cigarette in my face presumably to make his point. It this repeatedly abusive and uncalled for behavior I have experienced as an RN over the last 10 yrs that has me decide to leave the profession for awhile, if not all together. I will keep my license up to date, but after this school year, I have no desire to continure to try to provide care i the face of this abuse/ignorance. I have worked in a variety of settings, hospital, dr's office, ins comp, and school, and it has never been worse than at the hospital and school level. If I had a nickel for everytime I was told "the school and that nurse" gave someone's kid head lice...I'd be a millionaire...

Recuerdo · May 7, 2008

This thread is making me so, so sad.

The person who was a nurse during the '50's....conditions were bad then and nobody complained. No one would dare.

The nurses of the 21st century....conditions are bad and now, much of the time, still nobody complains. Why not? Corporate management intimidation. Now, hospitals are a competitive business and the customer is always right. Different reasons...same result.

Nursing is the way it is because we have allowed it to be that way. IMO, that is nothing to self-righteously chirp about so proudly. I think it stinks for both the nursing profession, and the patients.

I have done this job since 1974 and I am still doing it.

By behaving like idiots, we have created the nursing shortage. Maybe if we lived in a society where personal responsibility was valued more than it is, people would take better care of themselves, care more about others, recognize real and necessary boundaries, and not treat those who try to help them like garbage.

Under no circumstances should a nurse ever take physical or verbal abuse from anyone. All working people are, by law, entitled to the proper breaks, and to reasonably clean and ergonomic working conditions. I don't care if they're nurses or not...it is both romantic and naive to believe and hold on to the old idea of sacrificing your life and your health because you think you are giving "service".

In a moral society, which we do not have, each person is responsible for his own life and health. Doctors and nurses can help, but they are not ultimately responsible. WE ALONE as individuals determine the outcome of our treatment. Health care professionals are just there to help.

There is nothing more destructive than that "Look how tough I am and how much I have done" attitude. It has been like a cancer in both the nursing and the medical profession for far too long. It's insane and violent in a subtly and sneaky and manipulative way. It still exists, even in corporate medicine. It is useless, egoic, immature behavior and it needs to stop.

I will celebrate its death, which I hope comes soon.

TrickieTam · May 7, 2008

We have a resident that wants all staff to heat up her food before delivering to her room. Now mind you her food just arrived from the kitchen steaming hot. She now has a notice posted in her care plan and adl stating its her right to have her food twice heated! Now we don't want to take away her right to tongue burning food now do we?!

neonatal3 · May 7, 2008

In response to Recuerdo's question "nobody complains, why?", one reason seems to be a long term misguided mentality in which docs, patients , and nurses themselves may view professional nurses as workers who are in the low ranked "private soldier level of the military"---docs in this "military" thinking are the top ranking "soldiers"--administrators in this "military" thinking are the middle rank "soldiers"--patients in this "military" thinking are the "mission"--this misguided "military" mentality seems to have lead many of many nurses to be expected (and to expect of themselves) to "follow orders, do your duty, do not question your orders or your mission".

For example, just yesterday a nurse pal told me that she got the "do not question orders, do your duty" response from a supervisor when she complained about an unsafe high patient load assignment one day this week! Did this nurse take her complaint about safety to a higher level of management? No. In response to her supervisor "order" , this nurse gave up and went on with her unsafe patient load. This nurse said she was afraid she would lose her job if she verbalized more concern about this unsafe working condition! Recuerdo, you are right that nurses do have an individual responsiblity to speak up more for improved working conditions.

lamazeteacher · May 8, 2008

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.

At my age, Jenny, I'd be a liability on med/surg. I've done my time there, and my adherence to protocols long abandoned, was appropriate for the time. It seems that humility isn't in vogue these days, and idiosyncracies patients exhibit while sick aren't tolerated by their healthy caregivers. It also appears that "do unto others, as you would have others......." is also lost. I don't need patients or others to acknowledge who I know myself to be - it's there, and I comport myself as one deserving respect.

Retaliation is immature, and exposing the sad circumstances of a patient such as the one with the eye injury is unforgiveable. Curtains are provided for such procedures as was described. No wonder patients lack respect when such goings on indicate the nurser has no respect for the privacy rights of others. Since medical and nursing practitioners rose from the barbers and reprehensive beings of Sarry Gamp's time, took training for their endeavors and displayed self respect our presence has been extolled, without the ludicrousness of the HIPAA act.

How on earth can a patient respect someone who asks that THEY sign a paper acknowledging that nurses, and others employed by the facility in which they are unfortunate enough to be receiving CARE, are to keep their mouths (and curtains) shut about them? If such a thing needs to be pointed out, it seems nurses and doctors should be signing the paper promising to keep confidentiality! It is actually a scheme perpetrated on the public that has small print (always read that stuff!) saying that they ARE allowing the transfer of their information from the records kept by the facility/care provider to insurance companies, government agencies, and basically whoever wants to know their medical information.

It is known as the "Health Information Privacy & Portability Act" in the insurance industry. And so it is written blatantly in the offices of the perpetrators of that travesty that cost millions to enact! Whenever it has been presented to me, at pharmacies where I get my prescribed medicines, doctors' offices and hospitals, I firmly state that I will not sign such a blatant form of treachery (defined as "readiness to betray trust" in the dictionary). So far, I have not been refused service.

My point in writing this is, conserve your energy for missions more deserving and appropriate, than patient ridicule.:typing

AngelfireRN, MSN, RN, APRN · May 8, 2008

And again I say, we are not ridiculing them. Egads, woman, take a powder. What's next, starting a New World Order? You don't seem to like any of the rules that are in place, admittedly don't follow some, and think that you comport yourself as someone who DESERVES respect?

My parents taught me that respect is not deserved, it is earned. You have not, in my opinion, been deserving of respect on this thread. You have expressed contempt of us all for venting and tried to tell us all how and what we should think and do. You have lined out your whole career to shore up an already flimsy facade. Silly me, after the beating you took on here, I thought you had lightened up and decided to join in for the gaeity. I see, however, that the tiger has not changed its stripes. How is it in that ivory tower?

The mods put it best....if you don't like what goes on in a thread, no one is twisting your arm. You don't have to read it. You also have no right to chastise us for letting off steam. If you want to start your own thread about us evil ones who like to talk about patients, go right ahead. I will choose not to read it, and I will have decorum enough not to challenge you and try to tell you what your beliefs should be.

If you don't choose to start your own thread, and you don't see fit to join in the spirit of the ones you read, please, stay silent. Do us all a favor. Don't be a killjoy. Take some of that respect you think you deserve and spread it around.

Like the New Radicals said....You get what you give.

May not be as profound as some you could come up with, but it works for me.

FireStarterRN, BSN, RN · May 8, 2008

I think sick people still have a responsibility to be decent, considerate members of the human race. Illness isn't a license to by a demanding tyrant. Ill people, also, have a social responsiblity to the rest of humanity. To say otherwise is to dehumanize them, in my opinion.

Adult patients should be mature enough to understand that the world does not revolve around them, and that nurses are very busy caring for more than one patient, some of which might have critical needs.

To abuse the calllight system with trivial requests is self-centered and infantile.

quezen · May 8, 2008

I have to relay this story my husband told me about a stay in a German hospital (just because I am relaying it does not mean I am agreeing with it, don't get all up in arms!). The room had four beds. Three were taken up by men in their thirties and forties. The fourth bed was a demanding old retiree. He called the nurse for everything. That nurse came in after he called her to cut up his food and told him that he was there to have his heart checked, there was nothing wrong with his hands and he could cut up his own food! (The nurse can get away with stuff like this in Germany-they are considered "essential employees'"by the government of the country and have some protections we don't have in our 'corporate' society.)

The men in the room told that old man to cut it out and quit terrorizing the nurse. He called her a few more times for trivia to get even with her. One of the men, not my husband, went over to his bed and took the nurse call light and securely taped a water bottle cap over it and put it where he could not reach it. They told the guy, if you REALLY need something tell us and we will call, but what you are doing is not right and we want you to stop it.

When the nurse found out later, after hours of peace and quiet, of course she had to remove the tape, but she did get a good laugh out of what those guys did to 'protect' her!

lpnstudentin2010, LPN · May 8, 2008

I have to relay this story my husband told me about a stay in a German hospital (just because I am relaying it does not mean I am agreeing with it, don't get all up in arms!). The room had four beds. Three were taken up by men in their thirties and forties. The fourth bed was a demanding old retiree. He called the nurse for everything. That nurse came in after he called her to cut up his food and told him that he was there to have his heart checked, there was nothing wrong with his hands and he could cut up his own food! (The nurse can get away with stuff like this in Germany-they are considered "essential employees'"by the government of the country and have some protections we don't have in our 'corporate' society.)
The men in the room told that old man to cut it out and quit terrorizing the nurse. He called her a few more times for trivia to get even with her. One of the men, not my husband, went over to his bed and took the nurse call light and securely taped a water bottle cap over it and put it where he could not reach it. They told the guy, if you REALLY need something tell us and we will call, but what you are doing is not right and we want you to stop it.
When the nurse found out later, after hours of peace and quiet, of course she had to remove the tape, but she did get a good laugh out of what those guys did to 'protect' her!

That was cool of them to have done for her.

lpnstudentin2010, LPN · May 8, 2008

One of my teachers in college works at a psychiatric facility (I am a psych major). She told me some stories of people who have MILD anxiety (she classified it as such). These people do not want to work, they claim they cannot because of their anxiety. When she told me this story I looked at her and told her those people annoy me. You see I have:

ADHD

Depression

Anxiety

and Neurofibromatosis which causes me to have many docs

appointments and potential surgeries which I have had 2

since the beginning of the calendar year (one in January one in February).

With all of that I am a full time student, and have 2 part time jobs.

NOW I REALIZE FOR SOME PEOPLE WITH ANXIETY IT IS DEBILITATING I am not saying that is not the case. She was telling me this story because she wanted me to see how strong I was to be "better" (read more functioning) then these other people.

queenjean · May 8, 2008

My standard response to a trivial request (something like "I need the head of my bed raised...when that button is right next to the call button) is "I'm going to let you do that."

Of course, I make sure they know where it is. Sometimes I think family and pts need to know that they *can* do those things--I've had family call to ask for the nurse to give mom a sip of water--but I think honestly they think that they might get in trouble, because they aren't sure if mom is supposed to be having water, or maybe we are measuring it and they don't understand that we do that at the end of the shift, etc.

Last week I had a family member call me to raise the head of the bed, but she honestly didn't know if she was allowed to do that.

I find the "I'm going to let you do that." typically works. If they complain, I usually follow with a "I'm sorry, but part of my job is to prepare you for home and encourage you to perform your own self care. If you need the nurse to perform simple tasks like this for you, your doctor may consider sending you to a nursing home for rehab instead of discharging you to home."

Or "Doing things like {insert activity here} for yourself is an important part of your recovery. It's part of your PT/OT/plan of care. Let me know if you need anything to help you do this for yourself."

Or, when all else fails: (with a smile and a laugh) "Oh, you must be confusing "hospital" with "hotel"! Sorry, but unless your arm falls off, that's something you are going to have to do for yourself!" I've said this before to many a pt; always with a smile and a teasing, good natured laugh, and they've always gotten the message. Now, I think since I will and do sincerely help anyone who needs it, pts typically get the idea. I'm not going to say this to someone unless I know they have been educated in what they can and cannot do, and they are just being silly and lazy at this point.