I work on a fast paced med/surg unit in a large hospital. For the most part our surgeons are great caring doctors who are easy to get along with. But we have one especially, who is a peripheral vascular surgeon, that is the most rude, degrading, loud, and angry doctor you could imagine. I mean you should hear the stuff that comes out of his mouth.
We have many good nurses on our floor, we are by no means incompetent. We even have one surgeon that insists his patients come to our floor and our floor only. But this "jerk" doctor will sit in the nurse's station and demand to speak to so and so's nurse and then as soon as they approach him he will lay into them in front of everyone; fellow coworkers, patients, visitors. He usually screams and says what horrible nurses we are and that he should never bring his patients here, and hes just very very degrading and nasty.
For instance tonight one of our nurses had a post-op angioplasty/stent placement patient who was complaining of numbness that just started in his foot and was progressing up to his shin and calf. This was the foot he had just been operated on and he said it had never been numb before and the numbness was spreading. So of course that nurse called the doctor who happened to be the "jerk" doctor. He ended up coming in, assessed the patient, and decided there was no need for concern. Well he came into the nurse's station, plopped down with his feet up, and demanded our unit assistant to get the patient's nurse.
When she didn't appear before him within 30 seconds he demanded to have the nursing supervisor called. In the meantime he is looking around for the patient's chart and sees that the patient's medical doctor is there looking through it. So he leans over, grabs the chart from the other doctor without saying anything, is tearing through it getting what he wants, and then gives it back to the doctor without saying a word.
By this time the nurse had made it to the nurse's station and the first thing he says to her is "have you EVER taken care of a vascular patient before?!" she says yes of course. He then proceeds to rip into her about why would she ever call him when there's nothing even wrong with the patient and that he wants to know how he can have all his patients transferred to another hospital, and so on and so on. I mean he literally yells so you can clearly hear him all the way down the hallway.
Then when he was done with her he demands again where the nursing supervisor is and our unit assistant tells him that she is on the phone but he demands that she come to the floor because he wants to talk to her face to face. our unit assistant tells him that she is doing staffing for the whole hospital and will be there as soon as she can but it wont be right away.
He stands up and slams his pen down and says forget it, let her know i will be speaking with the vice president of nursing tomorrow. make sure you tell her that! and he leaves. It was unbelievable that a human being would act like that....and the sad thing is, this has happened just as bad if not worse many many times with him in the past.
So my question is, has anyone else ever had to deal with this and how did you react? Are we allowed to stick up for ourselves or do we have to sit there and take it? He has never yelled at me but im sure its bound to happen and i really dont know if i would be able to keep my mouth shut. I was just curious on other people's thoughts on this...
