lizziebeth157

Your hospital makes you do the escort thing too instead of just giving directions? I actually got chewed out by my manager for telling a patient how to get to the ICU waiting room (turn around, go down the hall on your left, it's the first door on your left). Seriously. As to the OP, my hospital obviously has a Hilton Hospital mentality. Aside from the escort thing, we are also expected to go above and beyond to satisfy patient requests. If you go to the customer service thread, you can see my rant about the towel complaints. Another example is that i had a patient this past weekend who apparently thought i was his personal secretary. He was from out of state, passing through when he had an MI. Most of his family was in NY or FL. He was in my hospital in VA. Our patient phones don't call long distance so I offered to call someone from his family so they would know what happened. I made two calls for him, one did not answer, the other did and I transferred the call to his room and they talked for a while. Mission accomplished right? Nowhere close. Now he wants me to call his mother in the Dominican Republic. I called the operator, and they said that unless he had a credit card, they could not place an international call. I asked the patient, he did not have a credit card. Sorry Charlie, no call to mommy for you. Well he proceeded to complain to everyone who entered the room (lab techs, an echo tech, docs, CNAs) All of whom came out and asked me why i wouldn't call his mother for him. After I explained to one particular doctor why i didn't place the international call for him, she told me to give him my cell phone. I thought she meant the wireless phones that we carry at work, she said no, YOUR cell phone. I try to be respectful of the docs but that just pushed me over. I believe my exact words were "are you f***ing crazy?? give him yours!" oops... I'm sure that'll come back to bite me in the a55... If you can't tell I'm still rather irate over that whole situation. But seriously, give a patient my personal cell phone to make an international call? yeah and who's gonna foot that bill? Not me. And we're applying for Magnet status. Just had our Magnet survey last month.

I understand that we do want to provide good customer service to our patients so they continue to come to our hospital and therefore we maintain our jobs, but there are definitely those people who go crazy with their demands. I remember an incident about a year ago when we had a patient (a very selfish, entitled son of a gun) who was ****** off because our towels weren't soft enough. That's right, the towels were not soft enough. This man had a nasty pericardial effusion verging on cardiac tamponade, but he was ****** off about the TOWELS! He spent an entire shift calling the operator and requesting to be transferred to various higher ups in the system (nursing supervisor, director of nursing, head of environmental services, and the CEO of the company)... eventually the nursing supervisor left the building, went to the wal-mart down the street and paid out of pocket for fresh new towels and other nicer toiletries, put them in a basket with a ribbon around it and gave it to the patient just to shut him up. I think it's absolutely ridiculous that it came to that. Like our nursing supervisor has nothing better to do than spend her own money out of pocket to buy towels for a whiny patient? And just yesterday I had a patient crash on me very suddenly. Me, my charge nurse, the rapid response team and two docs were in the room trying to stabilize my patient when one of my other patients (a complete walkie talkie just waiting for the doc to discharge her home) came INTO THE ROOM and asked why i was taking so long to get her a glass of water!!! Are you freaking kidding me!?!?! Could she not see that there was something slightly more important that a glass of water going on right then? And just to make it a little better, there was a water fountain not 2 feet from the room. I'm still amazed that I kept my cool and didn't rip her head off.

Hello, I'm Liz. I just graduated in May, passed the NCLEX June 18th and just started a 2 year Critical Care Residency program in northern VA.

i'm in northern virginia (kinda) $24.50 base pay (up to $27 after passing the NCLEX) Pay differentials: $5 evening, $8 nights, $3 weekends, and up to $10 for critical need

I'm just started a critical care residency program that has 1 week of general hospital, human resources and nursing policy orientation, and then 3-4 months of classroom training and preceptorship.

My school makes us disrobe and do physical assessments on each other and it was absolutely mortifying. Mostly because I had to get nearly naked in a room with half my classmates (including guys). Even more so because I am overweight and my partner was one of those gorgeous teeny tiny girls who works out every day. Despite that, she was far more modest than I (in the sense that she wouldn't let me practice the breast exam on her). When it came time to do a full physical assessment for a grade, I felt extremely unprepared because she'd never let me practice the breast exam and a few other things before. Also, having to be almost naked in front of two of your instructors the first semster in the nursing program is rather embarassing. :imbar

I'm a senior BSN student at JMU. This time next year I'll be an RN (so long as I pass the NCLEX :chair: ). I have an interview at UVa tomorrow to work as a patient care assistant (aka CNA) for the summer. Wish me luck, I need it