After several weeks of leaving work depressed I am finally asking for advice here. What do you do when family members talk down to you? I am so discouraged that I am seriously considering a change in profession. I guess when I say "talk down" I am putting it lightly. I should say: scream, curse, bad mouth, yell and otherwise expect you to be the Walmart Service Desk. I am a strong person, I can take up for myself. I have no problem referring the person to the proper management personel that can take the service requests better then me due to their inflated salary and nice office chairs. But the treatment I have been recieving hurts. I guess I went into this profession because I have compassion for others, understand their downfalls and want to help make it better. Is it just me or has the generations changed in their ways of thinking? When I first started in Nursing as a CNA the pts, and family members were appreciative. Now very few are ever appreciative. If staff answers their call in 3 minutes it should have been 1. I blame some on management, for always promising the best when they know they cannot always provide the best 100% of the time. But are people becoming more rude then ever? How do you stand up for yourself in a professional way? I have thought that maybe it is just me, but I got to talking with other staff who say that they to have been insulted personally and professionally and do not really know how to respond. I know that part of the problem is the fact that we are also short staffed, and family members do not know that their anger directed towards me is useless and ineffective since I cannot fix the situation, but that doesn't make me feel any better!
Rude behavior is never acceptable and I have zero tolerance for it. I tell patients that if they have a problem with my level of service to them, then feel free to tell me in a civil manner. If the problem is facility related, I then direct them to member services. I will not listen to abusive, screaming, cursing patients and/or their families.
Last night, I had a woman calling to tell me that she could no longer take care of her mother and wanted Mom put into a nursing facility right away ( this is at 1030pm). I asked the woman what was happening now at this moment that made her feel that she could no longer care for mom until morning. The daughter couldn't provide any reason, she just mom transferred to a nursing home this evening. (And by the way she wanted the PCP and his staff to select a facility and make all the arrangements, and she didn't want to have to pay for anything at the new facility).
I tried to explain that it wasn't the Dr.'s responsibility to select a facility for the pt. and that I could refer her to social services to get appropriate referrals to local facilities.
The daughter began to yell at me, because her request was not going to occur this evening. I explained to her that if she wanted Mom transferred quicker than she and any family member should pick a facility and make any needed arrangements, rather than waiting for social services to get involved.
In my years of nursing, (10+) I have only come across one patient and family that I trully could not deal with. I am NOT super-nurse either. I agree with the above posts that if you share in understanding what the patients and families are going through when someone is sick and hospitalized, and give good care, it can be resolved. HOWEVER, there is always the exception.
I took care of a patient a while back who was trully verbally ABUSIVE to me. She and her sister kept re-emphasizing how inadequate the care was. She was making unreasonable requests, and when nor granted, got very mean. I continued to take care of her for the next few hours, (as I was assigned to the patient as a 1:1, and charge nurse..) until I could not take the abuse anymore. In the past she had repeatedly called administration, and this time I called them. I reported her as being verbally and mentally abusive. I had NEVER been treated like this, in my life by ANYONE. And trully, I was going out of my way to please, and it was the first time she had laid eyes on me. Administration then came to stand outside of the door, as I walked into her room, to routinley administer meds, and they heard as she harrased and demeaned me as a human being. Managment WITNESSED what I was saying, and agreed with me. I then gave up the patient to another soul, and eventually, she was discharged the same day.
There are some people in this world, no matter how hard you try, that you will not please. Please do not let any comment reflect on how you nurse, or your emotional well-being as a person. You and your family know who you are, and that is all that matters. Self-respect and self-esteem, NO ONE can take that from you.
Oh, did I mention that I again bumped into that mean patient in Wal-Mart? And THAT is another story!!!!!!!!!!:)
PLEASE! TELL US WHAT HAPPENED! DID SHE CONTINUE RUN HER FAT MOUTH OR WAS SHE JUST A LITTLE MORE SILENT CONSIDERING THE FACT THAT YOU WEREN'T AT WORK!
when he attacked i said "well if your wife is getting such horrible care here why keep her here? why don't you take her home and you take care of her yourself? he didn't say a word and he never yelled at me again.
wow!! you know, that's not the 'therapeutic' thing to say :chuckle i have wanted to say that to many a patient. i guess it works!!
family members today are very aware of what they can get away with and manipulate and they are aware that they can scare even the most prudent nurse if they even mention the word lawsuit.
what most nurses fail to realize is how many threats actually become lawsuit...it's very few. think about it, are attorneys going to waste their time on 'my mother did not get the royal treatment' when there is no objective evidence of such? sure i know some lawyers (well more than some) have no scruples, but if they're not going to get paid, it's not going to even become a case. there are plenty of legitimate suits out there (wrongful death, pure negligence, malpractice, etc) for the system to focus on. i took a legal nurse consultant class, and all of this was covered. sure we need to cover our butts with everything we do, but we can't let irate and anxious families control us, and take us away from doing our real work, and taking care of patients who are going bad, not pts who need their bedsheets changd for the fifth time today. we can't be afraid to do our job.
It's true that there are rude patient's relatives and we know that.Relatives who are just trying to let us know that they are rude.Sometimes,its not actually due to being unhappy with the patient care,its all about nonsense stuff,selfishness!..(do u know that it runs in the blood? LOL:chuckle kidding)I have few experiences of this issue but so far(thanks God) i have'nt been sworn at by any of patient's relatives.But who knows,they might have done it behind my back,i hope not because i will never ever tolerate it!. i myself haven't done it my whole life.For me,being rude is a different thing.I could get by if the relatives get angry if they have a good reason to be angry as at times,they cannot control themselves of the situation.I could tolerate the shouting as it can be a way for them to release their tension but never the sharp tongue "swearing" because its dehumanising,unacceptable,even degrading you as a professional.This is a difficult situation when your on it but we can at least try to do something proper in the first place rather than walk off and turn away from it.We cannot eat and swallow rubbish,can we?..we deserve and we have the right to be treated with respect a professional human being..People should know that!
Never in a million, trillion gazillion years will I fetch ANYTHING refreshment related for a pt's family.....especially a demanding family. :angryfire I'm pretty sure that's not in the job description.
I mean, don't they know where the cafeteria is? Of course I suppose I would OFFER a nice person a cup of coffee after an extremely hard night w/ their loved one or if they didn't want to leave bedside because of the possibility of their loved one passing while they're gone.
Never in a million, trillion gazillion years will I fetch ANYTHING refreshment related for a pt's family.....especially a demanding family. :angryfire I'm pretty sure that's not in the job description.
I mean, don't they know where the cafeteria is? Of course I suppose I would OFFER a nice person a cup of coffee after an extremely hard night w/ their loved one or if they didn't want to leave bedside because of the possibility of their loved one passing while they're gone.
never in a million, trillion gazillion years will i fetch anything refreshment related for a pt's family.....especially a demanding family. :angryfire i'm pretty sure that's not in the job description.
and while you're fetching that coffee, your other pt. craps out. what do you tall the doc (or the other pts family, or administration): oh sorry, i was too busy serving my 'customers' do give patient care. :angryfire :angryfire
never in a million, trillion gazillion years will i fetch anything refreshment related for a pt's family.....especially a demanding family. :angryfire i'm pretty sure that's not in the job description.
and while you're fetching that coffee, your other pt. craps out. what do you tall the doc (or the other pts family, or administration): oh sorry, i was too busy serving my 'customers' do give patient care. :angryfire :angryfire
I HEAR YAH ABOUT THE CUSTOMER/CLIENT thing... and the HOTEL....oh yeah..
I was in an administrative meeting the other day with the CNO, (a discharge planning meeting), and we were discussing transfers and discharges. The CNO came up with a plan to have a "check out" time, someone replied, "oh, now we really are Hotel Lakeview". She replied with "No, we're going to be the Ritz-Carlton!"
eeeeeeeeewwwwwwww. I am NOT a service in a HOTEL! I am an RN, providing medical care!!!!!!! I hate the way this is going........
hipab4hands
366 Posts
Rude behavior is never acceptable and I have zero tolerance for it. I tell patients that if they have a problem with my level of service to them, then feel free to tell me in a civil manner. If the problem is facility related, I then direct them to member services. I will not listen to abusive, screaming, cursing patients and/or their families.
Last night, I had a woman calling to tell me that she could no longer take care of her mother and wanted Mom put into a nursing facility right away ( this is at 1030pm). I asked the woman what was happening now at this moment that made her feel that she could no longer care for mom until morning. The daughter couldn't provide any reason, she just mom transferred to a nursing home this evening. (And by the way she wanted the PCP and his staff to select a facility and make all the arrangements, and she didn't want to have to pay for anything at the new facility).
I tried to explain that it wasn't the Dr.'s responsibility to select a facility for the pt. and that I could refer her to social services to get appropriate referrals to local facilities.
The daughter began to yell at me, because her request was not going to occur this evening. I explained to her that if she wanted Mom transferred quicker than she and any family member should pick a facility and make any needed arrangements, rather than waiting for social services to get involved.