Resident frustration, kind of long

[hubcaps]

I gotta vent. So a resident interrupts me during my shift report and says how I shouldn't page him in the middle of the night. He goes on about how he's nice, but other residents might not be.

I was bugging him at the beginning of the shift to put in an order for ativan prior to chemo for my pt. The pt actually has it ordered on paper by another service (oncology), but was not in the computer system. It was actually the floor residents fault that the order was never put in, I caught that mistake. Anyway, he never put it in. I gave the ativan, but as an override med, as instructed by my preceptor. I decided to page him around 5:30AM, so it really isn't the middle of the night. Plus other nurses were paging him, so I figure if he was going to be woken up I might as well remind him of the order. I was actually waiting all night for an appropriate time to page him.

That part doesn't bother me too much. My sister is a resident, so I know the stress and sleep deprivation they go through. Plus all the nurses aroud me during report said what I did was fine and he was being a jerk. What really ****** me off was that he confronted me in the middle of report. One I am trying to hand off my pts. Two why did he have to do this infront of everyone. I saw him 20 minutes earlier in the hall with no one around.

Should I confront him about this (interupting report and "public humiliation")? I don't want him to think he could step all over me or other nurses. At the same time, I'm afraid that if I confront him I'll have more problems with him. I've just been a nurse for 2 months now, so I'm not sure what to do.

[UM Review RN, ASN, RN]

Did it ever occur to you that he might've confronted you in public deliberately so that you would think twice about "bothering" him?

[hubcaps]

Of course, but I don't think it is the most appropriate method. Angie, I'm not sure I understand the purpose of your response.

[UM Review RN, ASN, RN]

Only to encourage you to stand your ground, hubcaps. That type of bullying behavior is very counterproductive for good patient care. Don't let it stand in the way of getting the best for your patients. Docs (and residents) signed up for middle of the night calls when they chose that career path, and they'll just have to deal with it, or change careers.