I'm an old lurker, new poster around here. Although I work in s specialty I'm posting this here because I think it applies to most nursing areas. This is a partial vent and partial request for input. How do you respond when female pts (or their families) refuse to have male nurses/aides involved in their care? Recently on my floor, we have had multiple (usually elderly) women refuse male nurses. If they can't speak, often the family says the same thing. Ditto with not wanting men involved in foley placements or hygiene care, transfers to bathroom/commode, etc.
Often, these patients are obese, require multiple staff for hygiene care, etc.
While I certainly understand the embarrassment they feel, I have never, ever, not once had a male pt insist on male caregivers. (Some say that men enjoy female attention, and this may be true for a few, but most seem just as embarrassed as the women. However, whether there are just so many more women than men in nursing that they haven't had the option enough to think to ask, or whether they just think of it more as a professionak relationship, I have never in 10+ years had an adult male ask for male only caregivers.)
There are some nurses on my floor who will move heaven and earth, make assignments that make no sense and try to do full bed changes on 500 pound women with diarrhea themselves because of these requests. Most don't even try to reassure the pt and see if they can work it out first, they believe these women have "a right" to choose the gender of their nurses. Personally, I think that preferences can be taken into account but not guaranteed, particularly when no one makes any effort to give male nurses to male pts. When there are only 3-4 staff on a busy floor and 2 are men, often you gotta use at least one man to help with the total care pts. And I see nothing wrong with using the same reassurance on the women than we use on the men, ie that we are licensed PROFESSIONALS doing our job, etc. (Not to mention that I.do believe facilities with CMS accreditation cannot be discriminatory when hiring, including gender discrimination)
In a similar vein, what do you do when pts do the "I only want nurse x, if she's not here then nurse y. And I hate nurses r, s, t, l, n and e and refuse to have then involved in my care." Occasionally one of the shunned nurses has done or said something worthy of a complaint, but I have heard reasons as benign as "when we asked if she worked days all she said was yes, and we don't like one word.answers."
So what are your thoughts? Does this happen frequently in your facility? Does the gender exclusion tend to always be female pts, like at my unit? Any strategies to resolve the gender concern without totally messing up continuity of care for others, not to mention throwing the fairness of assignments off balance. And do you allow pts to hand pick staff and to ban staff for any reason at all? Our admin is all about pt satisfaction, so often we just have to deal, but it feels unfair to allow a few pts to dictate the assignments. Or maybe I'm just a jerk. Thoughts? Suggestions?
