There was a PCA on my old unit like this. I worked in a level III NICU. Once I had a surgeon call and tell me he was on his way up to do a rectal dilation on a patient in 10 minutes and to gather everything. I went to the nursing station and the PCA was standing there, talking to someone about vacation. I said, excuse me, Dr. So and so is coming up in 10 minutes to do a procedure on Baby Jones, can you please go get an open bed warmer and take it to room 24? I've called CSS for the dilators and I'm getting the Fentanyl and Versed. She looked at me and pointed to the storage room and said, "see that door right there, it leads to the storage room, and there are all the open bed warmers you need in there, what you do is get one and roll it to your room." I was a new nurse and new on the unit so I thought that somehow I was a problem or had done something terrible to this person. I was flustered because the surgeon was rude and pushy and he would be obnoxious if everything wasn't ready when he got to the unit. I looked at her with shock and another nurse overheard what happened and told her that it was her job to do it and she needed to go get it set up. She went and set it up, she later came to me and told me it was her job to help me, but if she was busy that I needed to wait for her to be done.
Over time I realized that this is how this PCA was. She treated all of the new people like this. I finally sat down with her and our assistant manager and aired my concerns. Nothing changed except how I dealt with her. I learned to phrase things so that it was her choice to help me. I hated that I had to do that, but sometimes it's easier to deal with people like that than deal with their constant drama. Administration isn't doing their job by allowing that to happen, but it's not my problem anymore, I left that dysfunctional unit.
I feel like the equivalent of this behavior would be a nurse telling a doctor no when they wrote an order.
