Alex87

I'm overwhelmed by the amount of support I'm getting. Thank you so much. I've analyzed the whole situation, and I've learned a lot of things from this experience, here's a few of them: 1. Family members (especially those in the medical field) can sometimes be the hardest people to deal with. 2. I agree with my NM that if the patient is refusing pain medicine but is in pain, I should try to investigate more. Maybe theres a particular reason why they don't want it, and perhaps we could obtain a different order for pain relief. Next time I'll make sure I'll do that. 3. The nurse family member is the type of person who just loves to complain. That night when they came up to our floor with the patient, she also bad mouth Trauma Center (where the patient came from). She actually told me she likes working in our hospital (she's been there for a few years already) but she thinks we have a terrible trauma center. She said that there was no communication from the nurses, blah blah blah. I just smiled and said, "you don't like our trauma center?" And she went on about previous experiences she had with the nurses there. Bad mouthing the other floors should have been a red flag to me right away! I should have known she was trouble. I also think that she already bad mouth me to her co-workers. If she can talk to me, who she just met, about how horrible trauma center is, you can just imagine how easily she can spread how horrible our unit is. And that's probably why my NM was so concerned. But like most of everyone here said, the floor's reputation wasn't on my shoulders especially that I didn't do anything wrong. 4. When the family member confronted me about not giving the 1 mg, the reasoning she gave was and I quote "it's okay to give 1 mg as long as there's someone who can witness that you wasted the other 1 mg" (our smallest vial of morphine come in 2 mg). Being a new nurse, I thought I didn't even know that's possible. I've never heard of that before. I thought hard about what she said and I came to a conclusion that her suggestion was totally dangerous and unacceptable. First of all, she's not the doctor, she can't change orders. Second she's not the patient, she doesn't have the right to say yes or no to a pain medicine. She doesn't have the right to demand what the patient get especially that the patient is AOx3. Her request and her reasoning is invalid. 5. I wouldn't have felt so bad if my NM would have at least acknowledged some of the positive things I've done about the situation, such as repositioning, reassessing patient's comfort multiple times, offering pain medicine, making patient comfortable. But I never heard any of that. Most of what she said was about floor's reputation, and she said it repeatedly. 6. I have a very supportive team of co-workers on the floor! I love them. They're the best. They've totally supported me on this one! 7. Allnurses.com rocks! I just love the advice and support that members of this group give. Thank you all!

Thank you for all your responses. All of you have been very supportive. I do agree and I'm taking it as a learning experience that if a patient is in pain, I need to dig deeper and need to assess and reassess and give education if necessary.

Thank you so much for all your responses. It definitely made me feel so much better. I know it was something I definitely need to learn from. After that conversation with the nurse manager, the feeling I got was "I let the unit down" and that "I should have been better". These two sentences just keep playing in my head, making me very anxious about work. I guess what I was looking for was a little bit of support and approval, that I did what I could and that I didn't do anything wrong. And I got that from everyone's responses. So thank you for saving my sanity. Chrisrn24, thank you for that tip. I've thought about that right after the call, that I shouldn't have answered it, and I should have just let the NM leave a message. And next time I won't answer my phone again.

I'm sorry if this is long. I don't know how to start my story. But I will try my best to give a good summary of what happened. I've been a nurse for only 7 months. I'm working on a Tele Floor, and in this particular night I received an admission, patient has multiple fractures (hip and hand) due to a fall. The patient was put on NPO for a surgery the following day. That night, a family member (who is a nurse and works at the same hospital, different floor) came to visit. Everything went well, she went home after a few hours since she had to work the following day. That night I kept asking the patient if he's doing okay, and if he is having any pain. I must have done this more than 10 times. His response was "I have pain, but I'm okay right now. It's not really bad as long as I don't move a lot." I told him I can give him pain medicine but he keeps refusing them. So what I did was to reposition and tried to keep him as comfortable as possible. This particular patient needed a few units of blood, and I had to hang them that night. So I had to sit with him multiple times, and most of my time must have been spent with him. And in those times I kept assessing his comfort and offering pain medicine and he kept refusing. And I told him that if he ever changes his mind, to just let me know. The charge nurse knows all about these since she had to witness the blood and she knows the patient was refusing the pain medicine. Around 0645 in the morning before shift change, he told me he was having a really bad headache. I told him I can give him the pain medicine to take care of the headache. And he finally said yes. He was on NPO so I can only given him Morphine since that was the only pain medicine IV ordered, and it was for 2 mg. As I was drawing this, my charge nurse told me "Oh by the way, the family told me to just give him 1 mg he is afraid it will make him loopy". I said "the order was only for 2 mg, do you wanna call the doctor so we can have it changed?" And she said "That's fine, just give him 2 mg." So I did, and he was fine. Nothing "loopiness" happened. I gave report, and I thought my day was done. I was preparing to go home when the family came and wanted to talk to me. I told her he was doing okay, and he got his blood, and finally said yes to the pain medicine this morning. She got really upset because I let the patient go without pain medicine for 12 hours. She said the reason why he didn't want it because it makes him loopy and she said she told the charge nurse before she left to give him 1 mg to at least help with the pain. So I told her he kept refusing it, the charge nurse told me to give him 2 mg. She then asked for the day shift nurse. I got a call from my nurse manager. This call came right after I got off work and I was literally running to the airport trying to catch a flight. I missed the flight and was so frustrated (the next flight leaves at 6pm, which meant I will miss an important family event). The phone rang, and my nurse manager told me she wanted to talk to me about a complaint by a nurse from another floor about her family member not getting pain medicine. She told me the nurse came to her and was very upset. She just wanted to know my side of the story. I was already pumped with adrenalin from running, plus the frustrations of missing the flight, and now this! I don't know if I told the story in a very calm way. But I tried to as much as possible. She told me she understand my side but she doesn't want the other floors to have this impression about our floor, that we don't take care of our patient's pain. She said I should have investigated more on why the patient doesn't want pain medicine. It's not a valid reason that I just accept when a patient says he's okay as long as he doesn't move a lot. And I explained to her that I repositioned him to make him comfortable and that I can't force pain medicine to someone who doesn't want it. I also told her that the charge nurse never informed about the family member's request until I was already drawing the morphine that morning. I should take this as a learning experience, and not to ignore someone's pain next time. She told me again that the family member was quite upset and she doesn't want this reputation on our floor. So here's the part that really bothers me. I feel like I've stained my floor's reputation, and other nurses must think very negatively of me now. I can't stop thinking about it. I've had many other horrible families before but I've always tried to be the best nurse to their family and satisfy their expectations. I just couldn't get over the fact that a complaint was filed against me directly to the nurse manager. I'm very anxious to go back to work. It's already stressful as it is, but this one is adding to my stress big time.

I'm on my first job as an RN. I'm still on my second day on the floor. I didn't have prior experience as a nurse or tech, so this is literally my first job. Before I went on the floor, I had 1.5 months of classroom orientation provided by the hospital. I thought that would help, but now that I'm on the floor, I really feel like I didn't learn anything in the classroom or nursing school. I feel so lost and confused. Is this normal? Will it get better?