burberrylover

Come back once you get through nursing school, pass your boards, and actually work as a nurse and THEN tell me what you think. Again, is yelling at a patient's family member appropriate? Is thrusting a piece of paper with a funeral parlor's name on it ok?

I am not debating. I am pointing out there is another side and I think that irritates you.

And I find her comment offensive about nurses being burned out, just because they don't agree with her stance. I'm a new grad working in an ICU and I'm no where near burned out, I just see things from the pt's side, the healthcare members side, and the family members side Can you honestly tell me that some of the behaviors presented by the HCPs were appropriate?

Yes exactly.

And how can you be so sure that my brother is lying?

Thank you for your kind words. I really do care for my brother. You see, he is an extremely skittish and gentle person. I am the *****..lol. I have mentioned it before but his friend was medicated properly. My brother had requested that she not be so doped up she could not talk but the doc refused to allow her to be in pain at all. So all of you who are commenting about how she suffered at the end are wrong. I think a lot of you are jaded and burned out. I hope I never get to that point myself where I find rude comments and yelling at people to be acceptable behavior.

Until you are actually a nurse and faced with these situations (and believe me you WILL be faced with them), you have no idea why the nurses and docs and other members of the healthcare team responded the way they did. I don't have to be a nurse to understand what rudeness is. I don't care how annoyed one is, it is wrong to thrust a piece of paper in someone's face with the name of a funeral home on it.

I am 100% supportive of HCPs being straight and honest. Had the nurse told me brother, "Your friend is going to suffer if you do XYZ" that would have been one thing. Instead, she resorted to namecalling like a two year old.

I do have one question: This lady died within 5 days on the onset. Honestly, could hospice have been set up during this time, keeping in mind that two of those days were Sat and Sun?

While we are not certain that the medical staff meant harm, we are not certain that they did not mean harm either. It could go either way. I do think an apology for their behavior is called for and hope that my brother gets it. Those nurses were the professionals here and more should have been expected from them. I know that ,as a future nurse, there will be times that I will have to be quiet and do my job. That is life. Snidely calling my brother a "candleholder" and sharply handing him a piece of paper with the name of the local funeral home printed on it was not advocating for a patient in a positive or helpful way. All I can say is that if I had been there to witness that, I would have raised holy hell. I am glad that the end came as well. I mean, I don't want anyone to suffer. I can tell you that after the emergency surgery and once the LW was clarified, there were no heroics after that. She had adequate pain meds. Everything was on the "up and up" so to speak. And yes, Leslie, I am hoping to is dancing with the angels...I do, however,take offense to your description of her as a person "trapped in a crippled bodyform". She was more than that....she was a person who loved children and animals, enjoyed trips to the beach, had a friendly smile.... she was truly more than just her CP.

Again, thank you all for your thoughts and insights. Many of you are right....none of us were there to see what happened. All I know is what my brother told me and I know him as a credible person. So,I tend to believe him. After reading some of the posts and having a deeper understanding as to how things work, I guess I can see what prompted the caregivers' ugliness. Still, acting on that rudeness was unprofessional. Two wrongs don't make a right. In past careers, I have had to keep my mouth shut when I disagreed with a customer or a superior or whatever. I hope my brother's friend was not in too much pain and that people might stop to remember that he cared for this lady for 14 years and gave her a happy life, something that no one else-even her own family-was willing to do...

I'm not really sure what your intentions are, but if it obvious that when you realized the majority disagreed with you that you became hostile and argumentative. Who is being hostile? I did not say that I disagree or do not appreciate or insights. I have questions. My brother did, too. Having questions or concerns is not a sin.

I never said he wanted pain medication to be limited so that she would suffer. Must a person be unconscious on pain meds for them to work?

Yes, I find what was written to be very rude. My point is what actually gets said & what is the caregiver hears (both words and tone)is not always the same thing due to their stress with the situation. I did remind my brother of that and he told me that it was said in the exact same way I wrote and in a nasty, sarcastic tone.