Pet peeves!

Nurses General Nursing

Published

I am sure this has been addressed along the way, but what are your nursing pet peeves?

A couple of mine:

How many times have you been taking a medication history on a patient, only to have them tell you they have no idea why they're on a particular med. Hello?! It's kind of an important thing to know :banghead:

Or, when a patient calls on the call bell asking for the nurse to "come here" and I ask if there's anything I can bring with me (trying to save a few steps and a little time) and the patient says no and then get to the room and they give you a laundry list of things they want. (this will almost always happen when you have five other things you're trying to do at the same time..) :smackingf

Okay, I need to quit now..I can actually feel my BP rising...LOL. Any others?

Specializes in A myriad of specialties.

1) Nurses who DON'T do dressing changes (when I worked LTC had an amputee with a bid dressing change--pretty bad too--eschar, drainage, very foul odor always noted to it); often I'd return after being off two days and still find MY dressing still intact! I brought this to the DON's attention and still nothing was done about it!!!

2) Nurses who don't spell corrrectly.

3) ALWAYS having to recheck patients who have TEDS to make sure they were replaced after bathing!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Emergency.

I can't stand it when nurses don't put the room number in the little space for it on most pages of our ED chart. So I am holding a pile of things to go treat someone's patient and I have to put everything down so I can rummage though the chart to find the one page that has the room number on it. Probably sounds stupid, but it drives me crazy!

I hate it when people bring their whole family with them for some vague complaint and there are 6 people surrounding the pt. all rubbing her legs and feet and head, and tucking her in and all demanding warm blankets, ice water, more pain meds and you can't even get to the pt., when you finally do they are all eyeballing your every move and insulting you if, say, you don't get an IV on the first try. Then when you try to get an assessment they all talk at the same time, interrupt each other or argue about her medical history. You know if you ask some of them to leave the 2 who remain are going to give you an even harder time.

I hate how people come to the ED and the second they walk in the door they render themselves completely helpless and think you are responsible for figuring out how they are going to get home, how they are going to get to the pharmacy or afford their meds, how they are going to get up the stairs in their house with crutches because they are too fat to walk anyway, how they are going to eat, what they are going to do because they have to go pick up their child from daycare RIGHT NOW!...oh the list goes on.

Ok, one more, I hate it when women come in with pelvic pain and don't bother to shower before they come in, you get a whiff when they just take their underwear off and you have to hold back the urge to puke during the pelvic exam (and I'm not talking about odor from a medical problem, I am talking about someone who is obviously greasy, unshaven...etc) Seriously, GROSS, I don't care if we are professionals, no one wants to see your nasty unwashed genitalia. WASH IT!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Family.
Seriously, GROSS, I don't care if we are professionals, no one wants to see your nasty unwashed genitalia. WASH IT!

We have an OB/GYN nearby who is rumored to have sent pt's home from appts with the order to wash and then come back, lol!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Corrections, neurology, dialysis.

I hate how people come to the ED and the second they walk in the door they render themselves completely helpless and think you are responsible for figuring out how they are going to get home, how they are going to get to the pharmacy or afford their meds, how they are going to get up the stairs in their house with crutches because they are too fat to walk anyway, how they are going to eat, what they are going to do because they have to go pick up their child from daycare RIGHT NOW!...oh the list goes on.

I had a similar thing happen only this was at nursing school orientation.

The faculty ran down the list of things required of us before class begins. As I was leaving a fellow student latched on to me and began whining about how she was going to go to nursing school. "How do they expect me to pay for this? What am I going to do about daycare? How am I supposed to work when we go to school all day Monday through Friday?"

Um, forgive me, but isn't it the student's responsibility to work out those details?

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

I hate it when residents or family members, who wouldn't dream of speaking disrespectfully to me, are mean to my staff and treat them like something they found on the bottom of their shoe.:madface: :nono:

Up Vote Up Vote ×

I really hate visiting times. I hate it when family members come in not to see the patient but to inspect and see what the nurse has or has not done. They spend more time talking to me than they do visiting the patient. Most of the time at last one of us will be trying to take a lunch break and the families have no regards to the fact that there you are eating but to ask "Could you get mother a drink of water?"...but your mothers lunch tray is in front of her with coffee, juice and milk. "I know but she wants water"...guess what so do I.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

I HAVE THE ULTIMATE PETPEEVE!!! Family members that try to "diagnose" their loved-ones by saying to the nurse...."well my medical dictionary at home says...." Or, " I looked up online lastnight that my mothers signs and symptoms mean she has this...." Well then if you're the freakin doctor why are you bringing them to the hospital!!!!!

Up Vote Up Vote ×

"I hate it when family members come in not to see the patient but to inspect and see what the nurse has or has not done."

Sorry, but if I had a loved one in the hospital, you can be d***ed sure I'll make sure they are getting the care they should. Just read these forums and see how understaffed most hospitals are. Read about the mistakes that get made by even the most well-meaning nurses. Read about missed meds. Read about new graduates getting little or no orientation. Wouldn't YOU double-check if it was YOUR mother in the bed?

I spent a week in the hospital on IV antibiotics for cellulitis. I was supposed to get them every 4 hours, and have a hot-water heating pad on my foot (site of the infection). Well, the IV had problems and needed to be replaced. Had to wait for a Phlebotist or IV tech or some such thing (I am not anurse, am thinking about going to nursing school), so I went 8 hours without getting a new IV. Had I not been well enough or aware enough to keep after the nurses to find the IV tech, Lord only knows how long it would have taken. I also had to badger to get the IV switched to another arm when phlebitis developed in the first site. Then the heating pad malfuctioned: again, ahd to raise holy-old what-for to get a new one (which also dodn;t work!). Had I been elderly, young, or confused or sicker, I would not have been able to look out for myself.

Families do not need to be obnoxious about how they do it, but I surely can't fault them for keeping an eye on their loved one!

Up Vote Up Vote ×

My pet peeve was when I was a CNA in a LTC working the 7-3 shift, the other two shifts didn't record the BM's for a week for the residents I had, so the residents were getting laxatives, and I ended up with all the diarrhea to clean up. And the lady with the diarrhea had it in her bed, all over the place and she got a UTI from the mess. I wish the other two shifts would take the time to record the BM's.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in LTC/Rehab,Med/Surg, OB/GYN, Ortho, Neuro.

1. I hate the doctor that sneaks in to dictate progress notes, proceeds to write half a page on orders on these pts that he hasn't set eyes on, puts the charts back in the rack, then gets seriously ticked off when you call him several hours later because you just find the order and need to clarify everything because his handwriting is sooooo atrocious.

2. Cannot stand coming behind others who talk about what a great shift they had, then you have to spend the first four hours of your shift correcting their mistakes.

3. Hate the patient who calls for their pain med, which you bring in less than five minutes, and you do not give because they are sleeping so soundly. Then the patient proceeds to tell the doc that they didn't get their pain med when they called for it.

Had to stop writing... this was part of my night last night, and just writing about it is getting my BP rising.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Okay, here's another one -- how about when you walk in the pt's room and their phone immediately rings and suddenly it's like the most important call in the world and YOU have to wait for their stupid phone call (does not matter you have 15 things you need to be doing, all at the same time). Good grief, that ticks me off - I've actually had thoughts of trying to be slick and unplug the phone when they're not looking (but then the idiot caller would just call through the operator to the nurse's station and want to know why so-and-so isn't answering the phone and by the way, could I drop what I'm doing and go in there and check?) :angryfire

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Cell Phones, HATE them. We have signs on our doors that say "Please Turn Off Cell Phones". Do you think that people can read? no. So the dog is jumping off the table (I'm a vet. tech.), the child is screaming bloody murder and then the &*^%$# cell phone rings. So the owner lets the dog go, the kid screams louder, the stupid owner answers the cell phone. I just want to smack people sometimes.

Fuzzy

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Add a Comment