please help - difficult family, feeling hopeless

WOW, your manager is really nice, huh? I can't believe she just laughed at you, that tells me a LOT about the company and her. Clearly she KNOWS this family has had issues with nurses, yet sends you (a newer nurse) to them, when she should be sending a more experienced nurse that can maybe handle the family better. I am sure your nursing care is fine, don't let them get you down. In the mean time, I would be looking for a new company to work at. This company and this boss are not likely to have your back if the family keeps complaining, get out of there. There are a LOT of homecare agencies looking for RN's. Good luck!

Just quit.

Life is too short for this nonsense.

DNR yourself. There are other cases.

I have experienced the hyper-controlling family myself, but in the hospital. We had to get administration involved. But you have no such depth of assistance. If my manager laughed at me for a serious concern I had, that would be the end of that relationship. I would immediately look for another job. If you want to persevere, understand that the family's reaction is understandable given the nightmare situation they are in. This is one adaptation people will take. Don't take it personally! You have to create a professional space in which to work, creating some distance from your feelings and ego. Not everyone can do this. You can't control what people do, but you control how you react to it. Google "inspirational quotes"... Good luck.

I totally agree with the others, drop this case and if you can't, go to another agency!

No job should be making you feel like that. Just because you have a sick child doesn't mean you theat the nurse like crap. I never did. Just move on.

I did a couple of homecare cases years ago. One of them was similar to what you describe. I would never do homecare again, it's too weird to be enmeshed in weird family dynamics. The parents of the pt, especially the mom, were totally controlling. Everyday was a lesson in nursing 101 in the care of her adult son who had suffered a TBI in a car accident. She also shared with me her frustrations with the liberal priest at her church, her obsession with the Fatima apparition in Portugal, her disgust with her lesbian daughter whom the husband had banned from their life, then she'd take a smoke break. Her husband just plain gave me the creeps.

A bit different scenario, but perhaps some insight (though I agree, hit the road on this one):

I just learned of a case with a very disabled teenager (terrible medical malpractice perinatal, no argument there) whose parents have their own narrative about what the child needs and what the child's capabilities are. They read what they want into the reports; they ignore the inconvenient facts as "just recommendations, just suggestions" and choose to misinterpret both what the experts have been telling them (these are well-educated professional people) and the neuro-related behaviors the child exhibits. When I gently corrected one of their misconceptions, they said, "Oh, that's not what they told us," and looked very uncomfortable.

None of this family's narrative is remotely congruent with any expert recommendations from the many medical and nursing specialties they've consulted and it certainly didn't square with my personal observations. The few opinions they have agreement with are from other "soft" specialists who apparently have not read the neuro and other hard sciences diagnostics. The parents were displeased with my dispassionate neutral recounting of my observations and recommendations, because they didn't fit their internal narrative.

While I agree that parents get to choose their child's care as long as they're not straying into actual abuse/neglect, even if it's not fruitful, I got some good insight into this couple from their legal counsel. She told me that at the end of litigation, parents come to the realization that this is it, this is permanent, this is not going to get any better any more than it has for the last X years of futile "interventions." Then, denial no longer possible, they're looking around for somebody to blame, somebody to lash out at, even if it's completely illogical. They're more to be pitied than censured, in the words of the old song. The stages of grief come into play here, obviously.

So with your patient's family. Don't take it personally; it's not the last time it will happen but if you're sleeping well at night because you know you're doing the right/best thing (even if it takes you a few sleepless nights to realize that), then ... well, that's it. And if your management doesn't recognize this, then they're not smart enough to be managing cases like this and you're better off going to work for somebody else.