Pt.s threatening bad feedback on customer service surveys

[Manatee111]

So, tonight the patient of another nurse requested a pair of pajama pant because although he was told not to wear underwear to Cath. Lab, he did & they cut them off. He's a bigger guy and the only size pants we had was a large, but not large enough for him. While his hurse was off the floor picking up a transfer he starts making a stink about how's he's paying $1800.00 to be have this procedure and we don't even have a pair of pants to fit him! I checked every other unit on our floor & there weren't any. He then goes on to threaten that we just better wait till he gets that cutomer satifaction survey! Over a pair of pajama pants!

This is getting ridiculous. 1st-Not even my patient, 2nd-Now patients are threatening us with bad surveys!

This guys is a diabetic with a blood sugar of 194 tonight who just had a sheath placed & he's been drinking coffee and juice and eating snacks all night. Why do we even both if we are just gonna let them run all over us anyway.

I'm so disheartened by the reality of nursing.

[SitcomNurse, BSN, MSN, EdD, RN]

HA!! I have a patient right now "rushing" down to the Admin office to complain because we arent doinig enough. 3 minutes ago this man wasnt able to wheel his w/c to get from his room to the desk, needed help,... couldnt get from the desk to the end of the hall, needed help, ....but because we couldnt help.. he turned his w/c in the opposite direction & headed for the Admin office. Puhleeze!! He wants to transfer off our unit because we arent doing enough for him. He is the biggest buffoon, says one thing but dosent even believe his own words, 2 mins later he is doing exactly what he said he wouldnt do. Ergo... I think he has dementia and is using anger to try to cover for it.

Therfore when someone comes at you with an unrealistic request, or threat, remember they are sick and scared, and more than likely an ass before they were sick and scared.

Tell 'em to pipe down ( nicely) and youwill try to make his demands a reality, but youre a Nurse, not a merlin. ( nicely)

[steelcityrn, RN]

Im sorry but he has a right to complain that they do not have bottoms for him in xtra large or 2x, 3x ect. This is the land of the obese, his complaint might save another nurse a headache! Purchasing department is at fault, not the patient. Let them get the complaint, as they should.

[Rabid Response]

Haha. I would pretend to agree with him and to share his outrage. I would tell him to be VERY specific when he filled out his survey and to write in the comments about how the low score was due to the fact that your hospital doesn't stock XXL pajama pants to give away on short notice.

[PostOpPrincess, BSN, RN]

I wouldn't give this man too much energy. Obviously has entitlement issues--and the reality is, you just can't please anyone.

Truthfully, he is upset because he has a co-pay of $1800.00 and he is taking it out on anyone and everyone around him.

His issue--don't make it yours.

Edit to add: Here's one that might help you...I had a patient the other day that needed a chest tube to drain the pericardium. Severe amount of fluid. He was very, very upset with surgeon because he was extremely uncomfortable having to go through it. Obese, diabetic, smoker, non-compliant--you name it--no personal responsibility.

Patient: "OMG what did this surgeon do to me?"

Me: "I don't think the surgeon did anything to you he wouldn't have done to save your life. The real question is...what did you do to yourself that brought you here?"

He shut up and didn't say anything else after--very good patient in the end.

[eriksoln, BSN, RN]

You have to take into account too the type of patient who abuses the surveys in this fashion:

Probably not much control of their own life at home. Gets pushed around by the spouse, kids, boss, neighbor. Not successful at much of anything unless you count highest score amongst their friends on this months fav. video game. Barely squeaks by financially, has to decide between getting a haircut or buying said video game and picks the video game. Doesn't take their health too seriously unless it's someone else's duty to do something about it. Is considered a nuisance by family members and friends alike. Loves to talk down to the cashier at their fav. fast food joint. You get the point, in general, a well rounded CLASS B citizen.

They come to the hospital and, as many people of low character do, fall for the advertising put off by admin. and management. "You are the most important person in the world right now. You are priority number one. We owe our best and nothing else to you will be good enough."

They all of a sudden feel important, powerful, and they have NO IDEA what to do with that feeling. So they run with it. "Get me perfectly fitting shorts OR BEWARE MY WRATH."

Me, I can't help but laugh when people get like that. Its just too funny, cause I picture them going home and getting told off and pushed around by their 12 year old. Its just too funny seeing people like that think they are so important.

Then, after I am done laughing, I act indifferent about the whole survey thing. Most realize the idiocy of their actions and stop. Some persist, and they keep getting laughed at. Mind you, I've been reported for this, but I am still working so, my approach isn't so bad.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

honestly, if we start to let the thought of what someone may write on a customer service survey influence our judgement in any way, something bad may eventually happen. i think the best i can do is prioritize my tasks, try to be as courteous as possible, and go the extra mile if i have the time to do it. if i know i should take care of "a" first, but "b" is loud and threatening, i should still take care of "a" and let the chips fall where they may. i have to be able to sleep at night. the rest isn't up to me.

i can attest to that. something bad did happen to me (or to my patient) several years ago. i had two patients in the icu -- one with a loud, threatening family for whom nothing was ever good enough. they had complained about several nurses -- about race, gender, weight, perceived attentiveness toward their needs (not the patient's, although they complained about that, too.) the other had just come from the med-surg floor following a seizure.

i had done all i could for the seizure except draw her labs. i'd been trying to stick her, but the whole time the other patient's family was loudly demanding ice for the patient, and whacking on the side rails of the bed while talking loudly about the "fat white (bad word meaning female dog)" who was ignoring their family member because she was black. multiple threats were made -- reporting me to the manager, to the ceo, to the naacp, and "fixing me" when i went to my car at the end of my shift. i was trying to stick the seizure patient for labs when the charming sister of my other patient whipped aside the curtain separating the two beds and said "you'd better get your fat white ass over here and take care of my sister because she's been waiting for her ice." she startled me, i blew the vessel and at that point i thought it would be easier if i'd just get the damned ice and then try again.

ice turned into ice plus bedpan plus an extra blanket then an extra pillow and then some pain meds because she still wasn't comfortable with the family berating me the whole time. i'm not sure how long it all took -- a lot longer than i'd planned. as i was passing the first patient with pillows for the second patient's family the first patient was seizing again. her oxygen saturations were in the toilet, and the resident decided to intubate. it was a cluster f*** from that point on. she didn't make it.

i'm not sure if i would have caught it in time had it not been for the other patient and her obnoxious family, but the dilantin level was dangerously low when the labs were finally sent from a hastily inserted central line during the code. i know i would have been with the first patient and not fetching stuff for the family of the second had they not been so freaking demanding.

now i get written up for "poor customer service" from time to time, but it's usually because i've prioritized someone's needs over someone else's wants. i've given up worrrying about the surveys. i still get called into the manager's office to be "counseled" about poor surveys -- i seem to get more of them than some of the newer nurses we have. of course, the newer nurses are trying to satisfy the wants at the expense of the needs. when you give ice cream to the diabetic, a big glass of ice water to the npo patient or crank up the head of the bed for the guy who's supposed to be lying flat because he just had his sheaths pulled, you're the "nice nurse." when you stick to the ordered diet, you're "mean." when you follow the rules about two visitors to the bedside at a time, you're the "mean nurse" because everyone else let the 13 members of the family into the icu room with their food, their cellphones and their unruly children. when you stick to fluid restrictions, diet restrictions and activity limitations, you're not their favorite nurse. i wish it wasn't that way -- it didn't used to be that way because in generations back, everyone stuck to the rules. but that's the climate in which we're nursing now.

[kathy313]

Over the years I've gotten a little jaded, at first I would try to do everything I could to appease the patient. Now, I give them copy of the survey, a pen and I make sure they spell my name correctly.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

i'm in the or and routinly take underwear off pts that were supposed to have it off before coming to the or. yes, it's annoying and a pita but come on, the folks in the cath lab couldn't take this guys underwear off and put it in a bag.....please...

i know we shouldn't have to do all this junk a pt should be able to do for themselves but we do. i'll bet when the cath lab was cutting them off they were gripping about ya'll not doing your job, heaven forbid we help each other out.

again, i do this on a routine basis, no it's not fun taking the underwear off a large person but unless it's an emergeny i'm not cutting anything off anyone.

sorry if this sounds rambling, i'm still asleep:zzzzz

as i understand the op, she wasn't responsible for him going to the cath lab with underwear or cutting them off. all she was trying to do was find a pair of pants to fit a loudmouth who wasn't even her patient.

ruby (who wishes she could cut underwear off of some of these guys!)

[happy2learn]

I wouldn't worry about the complaint either. I mean, if you did everything to try and find the pants with no luck, then that is the purchasing departments fault, and not yours.

What you could do is be proactiv and tell someone in management about it but say, "I was unable to locate (insert size) pants anywhere in this building the other night when a patient requested them. I searched everywhere with no luck. I appears we do not carry pants to fit patients of this size. With 65% of American's being obese, I think it would be important for us to stock appropriate sizes."

[SandraCVRN]

as i understand the op, she wasn't responsible for him going to the cath lab with underwear or cutting them off. all she was trying to do was find a pair of pants to fit a loudmouth who wasn't even her patient.

ruby (who wishes she could cut underwear off of some of these guys!)

lol, like i said, i was rambling and got off topic from the original post.

i think my point was if the cath lab would have just removed his underwear instead of cutting it off the original poster wouldn't have had to deal with this "particular" problem. of course someone that knows about the surveys and threatens complaints probably would have found something else to complain about.

my rambling about the cath lab stands (or any other dept the doesn't help each other out).

[eriksoln, BSN, RN]

Ok, one last post here.

I forgot to mention my favorite coping mechanism for this type of situation too. I got straight to management and dump the problem on their laps, right in the middle of it going on.

"This pt. is so upset over this/that and this pt. said they were going to this/that, OMG OMG I don't know what to do."

Most of the time, since they are now the ones in the no win situation, they just give this "Eh, they were going to complain anyway" attitude.

Funny, when I'm the one that they "complain about anyway", its not viewed that way. I have to make them an active participant to get any objectiveness from them.

[cardiacmadeline, RN]

If someone threatened me with the ridiculous satisfaction survey, I would leave the room and laugh. I could care less about those surveys. I do the best job I can and try to improve on things I know I need to improve on. I can't make everyone happy, and I am not going to waste my energy on a constant complainer at the expense of my other patients. I have never had a formal patient complaint against me so I must be doing something right! Our manager is pretty good about sticking up for us with patients and families if they know we haven't done anything wrong.