JacobJohnson

This is a hypothetical situation and wondering if anyone has experience in it. It's a thought I've had before. Scenario: The trained RN is in public and not on duty. He or She witnesses a man collapse and determines he is in cardiac arrest. The RN starts CPR. A family member directs the RN to with-hold CPR, stating that the man has a DNR/POLST stating no CPR. However, the order is not present. What do you do? What are potential repercussions? Do any laws protect the professional here?

I work in acute care and often deal with many demanding and "difficult" patients. Some of which are worse than others. I'm happy to help and usually do so with a smile. My problem is being assigned the same run of difficult patients for days on end. It wears me thin and by the end of the shift I am ready to quit. A resolution! Rotate the difficult patients among all nurses so no nurse has the difficult patient 2 days in a row. The problem is that if I need to be able to define a difficult patient with objective data. As some may know caring for bariatric patients is physically taxing, so it would be easy to say patients with a BMI >50 are put on the rotating list. Does anyone know of a suggestion for objective data in defining a psychotic patient or verbally aggressive/demanding/demeaning? The issue for this is that I don't want to end up having it being simply floor nurse discretion, as it could turn out that all of the patients are now on the "difficult patient" rotation list. Look forward to your ideas! :)