"Thats not my patient"

Nurses General Nursing

Published

I think our jobs as healthcare professionals would go a lot smoother if these two sayings were banned from all facilities.

"Thats not my patient."

"Thats not my job."

Any other thoughts on this?

Specializes in Mostly LTC, some acute and some ER,.

I hate it when people say that.

I was dumb and did say that once when I was new. I got a lecture, and my butt chewed, and never did it again.

Now if I am asked to take care of some one, I just do it. If I am in the middle of something I nicely say, "can you ask some one else, because I am in the middle of doing this, and I cannot leave this patient.

Another thing that bugs me is when another CNA says, "I'm not your hall partner, your hall partner can help you."

Most of the nurses that I work under are very helpful, and I turn to them when I can't find another CNA to help me. There are a few that say, "That's not my job."

I once had a nurse tell me, "No, that is a CNA's job, I cannot help CNa's lift. They are way below me, and I have way more important things to do."

That made me so angry that I coundn't see strait. It took me more that 20 minutes to find another aide. GRRRRR

Unfortunately, that seems to be said way too often. But what really. bugs me is the nurse/aide ongoing war. Somehow a few too many of the nurses where I work believe that there are specific duties that are strictly for the "aides" to do (like answering a call light) and specific tasks the nurses do and never the two shall meet!

When I hear those words, the staff member gets one oral warning, the next time they are written up. I ask them would you appreciate that if your family member had their call light on, in distress and someone said, "that's not my patient." Then I tell them plolitely, move you rear!!!!!!!

Specializes in Med-Surg, Trauma, Ortho, Neuro, Cardiac.

My major pet peeve it when I hear someone telling a patient "you're not my only patient.......". Bugs me. That's not therapeutic.

Specializes in Alzheimer's, Geriatrics, Chem. Dep..

I also tell my patient's roommate, "Your nurse will be checking in with you but please let me know if you need something". It's not ok to pretend the roommate isn't there.

Re the water thing I think you should check with the pt's nurse first in case of fluid restriction or NPO, but what I do is ask the patient's nurse, "Can I get so and so a drink of water?" I messed up on this just once, LOL!

Originally posted by stevielynn

Its called TEAMWORK.

Teamwork makes all of our jobs easier but unfortunately it is not a constant. I am a firm believer in teamwork and cant stand to hear the dreaded words, "thats not my patient" or "Im on my break". :o

By portraying yourself as a team player and helping your coworkers when they need it, I believe will eventually rub off on the non-team players and change the negative attitudes that are detrimental to running the unit. There are some that will never change so from my experience I dont put to much time or energy in trying to turn "them" around.

We started to put a "key word" on our assignment board everyday. TEAMWORK was one of the first as well as ATTITUDE and FLEXABILITY ect ect. It kind of starts our day on a positive note as we all debate what the word of the day will be. During the shift we "remind" each other of the word for the day.

Getting the right group of people to make a team is a challenge but it makes the day sooo much easier. There have been times where Ive gotten a late admission and absolutely NO help. On the other hand if 3-4 nurses team up an admission can be done in no time at all. Thats teamwork and I appreciate it when it's there..................

deb

Originally posted by sedate_me_stat

I am normally shy by nature.

I work on a busy telemetry unit right now and we have one nurse who always says that!

"he is not my patient"

she even went to the trouble of coming to the front desk to tell me that my patient wanted a drink of water.

Usually I let comments slide. But I responded to her and told her that the patients are everyones responsibility and I did not know that I had special "water getting" skills.

She does not like me too much anyway , So it did not bother me to tell her that.

Comments like hers make me sad

You don't sound shy to me! Your response to

your co-worker made me laugh! :chuckle

Specializes in NICU.

This is a peeve of mine, too. I am a HUGE believer in teamwork. We are all a team, there is no sense in pretending otherwise. I have no problem helping out any team member in any way I can, and I expect the same from others. I go out of my way to be helpful as much as possible, and I personally do other people's jobs all the time. I put in orders for everyone if I have time (unit clerk), I restock supplies, I order things for other people from pharmacy, make phone calls, page doctors, help with admits, bathe/care for ANY baby if I have time, pick up trash off the floor, empty the trashcans, etc. I don't know, I guess it's just how I think...I have never said to anyone "It's not my job." or "I can't help you." unless I was horribly busy, and even then I said it politely and deferred them to someone else who could help. I suppose that is why I've had such a hard time recently on my unit- realizing that this behavior is sort of hard to come by and not everyone feels the same way.

As an aside, the thing someone mentioned about the med students irks me to no end. Baby crapping out, student/resident sitting right there, and when you ask for help or for them to take a peek they want to know, "Which team?" and then say, "Okay, I'll pass it on." without doing a dang thing. Drives me up a wall. You're RIGHT THERE. Would it be so hard to just confirm this or write a measly order for a CXR or whatever? Though I know they're busy, too. Just...irks me. ;>P

My answer to anyone that asks for help is "If I'm not able to help you, I will find the person that can." I have found this defuses almost any situation. And then I make sure that I follow up. I have been amazed at all the times I have been sincerely thanked for that, even for the smallest things.

Sigh, this reminds me of the family of a patient (pt #1)who has been in for over 2 weeks. After responding appropriately, politely, helpfully and getting the patient's nurse when I am not her nurse, the husband follows me around and always asks for everything. He likes to vent and yell too.

This makes me so sad because this family is so needy and difficult that I have spent way to much time on them when I could have spent more time on a terminal patient(pt #2)who died a couple of days ago. The last day I had her (pt # 2), she was sent to hospice, where she died the next day.

Would have liked to have time just to sit for a minute and hold #2's her hand. I was pestered to do things for #1 like order extra food from dietary after the family had eaten most of the food off her tray. Every little thing from coffee for them, to softer pillows for her they wanted. All the while I wished I could be with patient #2.

But through it all I was polite and helpful. So the family should be happy (but they never seem to be), management should be happy, and I have helped increase customer satisfaction. But I wonder if patient #2 was satisfied. All her medical needs were met. But if only I would have had some of the time that #1's family had taken, I would have just sat there for 5 or 10 minutes and talked to her and held her hand.

Sorry for this long post I guess I was really sad about that situation. Thanks for letting me express myself.

Specializes in Geriatrics, LTC.
Originally posted by Zee_RN

My standard answer:

"I'm not taking care of her today but is there something I can help you with?"

Basically this is what I say too, and if it is something I don't know about the patient, then I tell them "let me go find that nurse and ask her or send her down" This works for docs, family and other staff.

Specializes in NICU.

((((((((((hugs to you!!!))))))))))

Oh, I can SO relate to this type of situation. I'm sorry you didn't get enough time with #2- that must have been hard on you.

We had a family recently who REFUSED to be satisfied. They complained about EVERYTHING and myself and a bunch of other nurses bent over backwards for weeks to help them. They completely monopolized our time, and we had a chronic baby (I work in the NICU) who was sort of circling during that time. It brought so much more stress to the unit, and it made us not even want to go near the baby for fear of having to deal with the family and be screamed at for yet another thing they didn't think was good enough (from the type of EKG leads used- we have one type and they said the baby didn't like those!!, to the way I suctioned the baby vs. the way she suctioned the baby, etc.- I mean, we JUST COULDN'T WIN. We provided the best nursing care to that child, and on her way out, the mother turned around and said, I just want you to know that I wrote incident reports on you, you, and you, and we're investigating our legal options to sue the hospital. Argh! We got terse words from our unit manager, who offered no support and also apparantly didn't see how hard we'd all been working to help this family after they left and for once, I went home feeling very, very helpless.

You're not alone in your frustration. Just wanted you to know that. ((((((((((((more hugs because I'm in a huggy mood today!))))))))))

Kristi

:kiss

+ Add a Comment