Some people are just plain rude!

Specialties School

Published

Some people are just plain rude! The anesthesiologist came in before my husband's procedure yesterday to go over everything. He leans over, looking over his glasses to look at my badge, and asks, "Oh, where do you work?" He said, "A school nurse...so you're like the 'mall cop' of nurses?" Seriously? #condescendingtwit #blesshisheart

I hope you told him his patients are lucky they are usually asleep so they do not have to endure his stupid remarks. What an egotistical fool! Mention him by name in the survey!

Specializes in Psych, Peds, Education, Infection Control.

Lord, do I know this feel. Even my mom, who's also a nurse, was like, "So it's kind of like babysitting?" when I started school nursing. Until I explained that I had trach kids, brittle diabetics, GT kids, portable vent kids...then she kind of got it a bit better. Like home care, except with a LOT more patients. And in child/adolescent psych, inpatient, some people have the illusion that we're holding hands and singing kumbayah with the kids...nope, it's just like adult psych, except parents and DCFS and people actually have no idea how fast a kid can MOVE sometimes when they're doing something unsafe. And we have seizures and medical emergencies pop up and guess who's gotta handle it? And "night shift is easy" - ha! Been there, done that too. It's SO true, like in school and homecare nursing, in the hospital, you don't have your teams and services and it's you and whoever you can grab. And mental health...well, psych patients don't sleep. Or if they do, it's not until the wee hours. I had a kid try to Spider-Man it out of the hospital once, by climbing onto his toilet and into the ceiling...he thought the vents would lead him to freedom. It doesn't work like that and he got stuck, at 3 am, with no one but nurses and techs to get him down... Sure, we do Q15 minute checks for safety, but so many people have no idea what a determined kid can accomplish in 14 minutes.

Specializes in Psych, Peds, Education, Infection Control.
If you can't think up something good on the spot, you can always be ready with this standby: "I'm sure you didn't mean that to sound as insulting as it did."

I'll have to remember that one! I'm the queen of thinking of the perfect comeback three hours later.

Specializes in Peds, School Nurse, clinical instructor.

I don't even bother responding to rude people anymore! When people ask me what I do all day, I say " surf the net and hand out tampons and band aids" It's just not worth getting stressed over :)

I would have said, "I've got your mall cop... how about you make sure my husband wakes up after this procedure! How bout that sense you took off for a few minutes to be an comedian :devil:

Specializes in LTC, Rehab.
I don't even bother responding to rude people anymore! When people ask me what I do all day, I say " surf the net and hand out tampons and band aids" It's just not worth getting stressed over :)

Wait - you're almost stealing what I said during nursing school, when asked what I was going to do. I usually said "Hand out Tylenol on cruise ships".

I was actually coming to make a similar post! A friend of mine had said I needed to pick up a REAL NURSING PRN job over the summer at a LTC/SNF so I could gain some real "clinical" experience. I'm just tired of the condecension. Not every LPN needs to go into a nursing home. :facepalm:

Specializes in School Nursing, Hospice,Med-Surg.

One of our 1st grade students told his teacher this year, "Nurse NP is so good at her job. I bet she makes a million dollars a day!"

When the teacher came back to tell me this she said, "Can you imagine getting paid a million dollars a day just to count bandaids??"

I wanted to say, "No! Can you imagine being paid 40K just to line kids up and watch them play on the playground??"

All of this "I should've said this but I thought of it later" reminds of the Jerk Store episode from Seinfeld where Constanza thought of a real zinger hours later and was like, "Oh, yeah? Well, the jerk store called and they ran out of you!"

Specializes in Case Manager/Administrator.

My graduate thesis was geriatrics and I love working in Skilled Nursing facilities. I was introduced once to a CEO of an IT company as a geriatric nurse ( I am also a NHA and past experience as an Emergency Room flight nurse), he then asked me your a nurse then why can't you make it in a real hospital.

I did not say anything to him, I just shook my head and walked away. 2 years later he had an emergency...and ended up in a SNF acute-rehab he did not even recognize me, or know who I was. I never told him but he did receive great care.

Specializes in LTC, Rehab.

Somehow 'why can't you make it in a real hospital' reminded me of this: I heard someone on 'Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me' (on NPR) a while back saying, when someone mentioned a nurse giving flu shots at a company, 'You wonder what kind of nurse she is'. I thought uh, she (or he) might just be doing a one-day gig to make some extra money. Far too many people are SO quick to assume all kinds of things about someone else these days.

Specializes in Hospice, corrections, psychiatry, rehab, LTC.
There is this arrogance that the only "real" nurses work in hospitals and ICU nurses somehow are up at the top. LTC and others are seen as somehow less.

This triggered another memory. During my brief (but not brief enough) foray into LTC, once I had an elderly female who had fallen. I knew that her hip was fractured, because we had an on-site x-ray done and we had gotten the results. I called a hospital near the facility to call in report because we were sending the patient over. Obviously an "elite" ER nurse getting report from a "lowly" LTC nurse.

I gave my report, and I explained that we had already confirmed the fracture by x-ray. I gave the nurse the name of the x-ray company and the name of the interpreting physician. The rest of the conversation went something like this:

ER nurse: What do you expect us to do?

Me: It would be a good idea if you fixed her hip.

The hospital gave her a Lortab and sent her back, stating that their x-rays were "inconclusive" (I had seen our films, and there was a clear break). We wound up sending the patient to another hospital the next day, where her hip was repaired.

Some people are just plain rude! The anesthesiologist came in before my husband's procedure yesterday to go over everything. He leans over, looking over his glasses to look at my badge, and asks, "Oh, where do you work?" He said, "A school nurse...so you're like the 'mall cop' of nurses?" Seriously? #condescendingtwit #blesshisheart

He's just jealous. Or his brain has absorbed too many anesthetic gases. But why jump to conclusions and figure he meant something derogatory?

Mall cops might deal with things that most of us would like to avoid - armed robbery, accidents, suicidal barricaded persons, unattended packages/bomb threats, ill or injured persons, car theft or damage, gang fights, fire, flood, explosions or other malfunction of HVAC or other equipment, theft of merchandise or wheelchairs, and much more. Police work in general can be mundane, just like surgery/recovery, or it can be scary and dangerous - just like surgery and recovery.

You should send him a note and tell him how you feel, though, if it bothers you. And let him know some of the things you can see in a day or during the course of a school year. Not all dramatic or important things take place in Surgery, Recovery, ER, or ICU.

Same with summer camp nursing, which some of you SN's might be headed for this summer. Everything from lots of GI, sunburn, bug bites, and respiratory to stroke or MI in adult staff, serious trauma, serious mental health issues/suicidality, OB/Gyn, and much more. Ailments can involve any body system. If his kids are going to school or camp, he'd better be glad there is or will be a nurse there. remind him of the mission of a school nurse.

Again, though, don't assume he meant it disparagingly.

+ Add a Comment