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 med/surg, Icu/Ccu. ER, PACU, HHC, LTC.
My biggest pet peeve- a patient is admitted with a 3 day hx of vomiting and diarrhea. You don't even have them off of the cart from the ER, when the family begins to continuously chant "she hasn't eaten in 3 days" implying that I should run right to the kitchen and whip her up a 4 course meal. Hello...she just got here.... I don't think we've cured her yet!!! I haven't seen her chart, and I can guarantee you that she is going to be NPO or maayybee clear liquids!!!!!

You mean ER DIDN'T cure them????...................lol,j/k.

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-I hate it when the off going nurse gives you a crappy report saying report was called and the pt is ready to go up to the floor. You find no report given and pt needs a new IV or is incontinent and has a whole slew of other things needed to be done before they go up.

Not quite the same, but similar...MD's that treat floor nurses like we are brain damaged.

I got a pt from the ER with no report other than name, dx and vs(someone else took report, and that's all the ER nurse knew because they just "took over" the pt), then when the pt arrives, he is BLUE, pulse ox in the 60's on room air, no O2 hooked up to the pt, BP off the charts, sinus tachy, confused, combative, so I called the rapid response team, and the MD leading the team ripped mea new larger method of disposing of my solid waste products for not knowing any hx!!!!:banghead: :banghead:

HELLO, I've only had the pt for less than15 minutes before I called the RRT and the second the RRT walked in I stated" he just arrived from ER, no report, cyanotic, tachypneic, confused, combative, these are the current VS.We didn't get report from ER, all we got was a Dx, age, sex and VS. He has crackles to bilateral lobes, running sinus tach at 150, pulse ox at 60 on room air, up to 80 on 100%NRB. "

GRRRRR...I really don't like cocky interns/residents who think floor nurses are idiots...I was tempted to say "I'm sorry my Jedi mind skills are rusty...I wasn't able to read his mind for the hx." Darn MD should have been happy that we already had EKG, lab, xray and RT on their way before we got any orders to call for any labs/ekg/etc. And yes, I know it's highly important to know if someone has CHF...but with a SBP over 220 and DBP over115, I don't think bolussing IVF at this moment would have been part of the game plan anyways. :uhoh3: :uhoh3:

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Specializes in ICU,ER.

THONGS AND LOW RISE SCRUB BOTTOMS........

ggrrrrrrr..... there is this girl at work that wears nasty looking red and black or whatever color for the night.. thong....that rises about 4 inches above her pants when she bends or squats. So tacky.

Really, that's just something ya don't wanna see..........

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Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.

People who don't have the willingness to learn something new.

Had someone tell me on one of my first call weekends that i would be the one setting up and doing the 3 ORIF cases we had scheduled, because they "didn't know how to use those frag sets real well". Ok, explain to me why someone's got the same job title and position i do, yet has 10 year more experience, and I know how to set up this and they don't? Not to mention i wasn't even a preceptor at the time yet they were, and part of the OR requirement to be a scrub preceptor in out OR is to be proficient in ALL fields?

So when i offered to teach, i got the brush-off "Oh maybe some other time" excuse.

Which had left me scrubbed for all 3 cases, no lunch in 9 hours, while Ms. I-Don't-Know-Hoooooooooow sat there and did nothing but watch. I've learned since then, if someone doesn't know hooooooooow, they're going to. It's not fair to do that to someone when it's highly preventable.

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I hate when family members bring their loved one's to your hospital or nursing home and bad mouth the entire place and tell you how bad the nursing care is but then say well he has been here 10 times this year!! I always wanted to say, "then why don't you take him somewhere else if we are so bad."!!???????? But I hold my tongue!

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Biggest pet peeve:

Turning a patient: Getting everything ready, pads and/or new sheets halfway there, all you need is 1 minute of help-

You ask for help- "Everything is ready- just one quick turn" and you hear "sure, in just a minute"

Then you wait, while it takes your co-worker 15 minutes to finish some small task that could have waited.

All I needed was 30 seconds!!!

Also- having to wait for report. I'm ready to go- finish you stuff after report.

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where is your patience, what if that was you mom or aunt, memory problems start around age 50 and not everyone is medically oriented or organized.[/quo

my pet peeve is people who post to a vent thread and then blast us all for venting! if you haven't walked a mile in our shoes (and it doesn't sound as if you have) you aren't entitled to an opinion on our vents!

ditto! i could not have said it better!

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