Seeing your doc on unit ANGRY

mom23RN · Feb 25, 2006

I'm sorry if he was having a bad day. I'm even sorrier that he thinks that because he's having a bad day he can treat people like sh*#. That is wrong on so many levels.

I'm assuming that you work on an acute tele floor? While I think it was wrong of him to bring in a CCU nurse I do think that things were not going well and he probably had more of a knowledge of their skills because he probably works more closely with nurses on that floor, but it's not the other nurses fault that she hasn't had a lot of expreince if the floor doesn't really give you those opportunities.

I would give him asecond chance adn it you have problems again I would certainly mention it to your NM (if it will do any good) and I would personally be finding a different doctor. :mad:

suzanne4, RN · Feb 25, 2006

First, there is no reason for you to put up with that. Second, since he had the time to come and find the nurse, he had the time to write the order. Verbal orders should be used only for emergencies, there is absolutely no reason why he could not have written that order himself. It actually would have gotten done much faster that day.

If the patient needed a CCU nurse, then the patient should have been transferred. That CCU nurse also had patients of her own that she was taken away from.

I would write up the incident and give it to your mananger. There is absolutely no reason that anyone ever needs to be treated this way.

Sounds like he had a fight with his wife, but there is no reason to take it out on you, and he owes you an apology.

nursing 101 · Feb 25, 2006

Shouldn't a nurse manager had stepped in at that point to oppose another nurse from another floor coming in? I'm sorry but that is very disrespectful...

I would change MD's because I am very, very picky to choose them in the first place. My health is very important to ME! An MD that can't keep his cool even on a bad day is not worth it to me.

thumperRN · Feb 25, 2006

We have a lot of wonderful DOcs on our floor, however; like most places there are always a few that can make life rough. If he is usually pleasant, maybe he was just having a bad day, but if this is repeated behavior, then something should be said. :nono: There is Doc on my floor who is a BARBARIAN. He is Jekyl/Hyde. Nice as you please when in with a patient, but the moment he walks out of the room, the swamp thing emerges. I told him one time that if I have a butt chewing coming that I'll take it, but if he is just on a power trip to be condescending and mean then I have better things to do. He doesn't speak to me much anymore...bummer...

Point is, you don't have to take that. They are not above humans just because they are Docs. Oh, and I would NEVER take a verbal order unless emergency. Too much room for possible error. I keep a clipboard with me that has extra Dr. orders pages, nurses notes, graphic sheets, etc. so I can just hand one over if need be.

TazziRN, RN · Feb 25, 2006

In our small hospital it's not unusual for the docs to ask for an ER, ICU, or OR nurse to come to the floor with them to help with a procedure because it's stuff we do all the time, while the floor nurses rarely or never do them. This is not a put-down, but giving the patient the best possible care. However, the way your doc went about it was WAY wrong.

As for him being your personal doc, I see my PCP at work frequently, and sometimes the man I see caring for pts in the ER is not the same man I allow to care for me. I have disagreed with some things he's wanted done or not done with pts but I have no complaints about the way he cares for me. If you're uncomfortable with what you've seen, perhaps you should think about finding another personal doc.

ZootRN · Feb 25, 2006

He became furious, walked out of the patients room with bloody gloves, picks up one of the phones at the nurses station and proceeds to call CCU to get a nurse to help him with the procedure.
.

Did he use a phone, having his bloody gloves on? I can see infection control involved over this. He can't compromise like that, no matter how bad his day was.

ctunurse · Feb 25, 2006

thank you all for the feedback and opinions,

mom23rn: you're right, i do work on a telemetry unit which i absolutely love but it's a lot of hard work at times. things weren't going well as multiple attempts to obtain the equipment he requested failed. he was in a bad mood when he first came on the unit and then he became furious after we ran into difficultly getting his equipment. ccu nurses do these procedures all the time and we rarely ever take part in them. in fact, this is my first time seeing one done on our unit but i've only been a nurse for a year. i can understand him wanting a nurse that knows what to do and what he needs and all.

suzanne4: oh, i was so set back by the amount of verbal orders he barked at me. but because he was my doctor i didn't want to add any more fuel to his burning fire. so, i kinda just smiled and repeated his orders. if he wasn't my personal doctor i would have asked if he could write an order. the ccu nurse that came to our floor was stressed. i know her personally and she graduated a semester after me. she is newer than me and she hadn't even been a nurse for a year yet. she was charge on ccu and she said she was the only regular ccu nurse on her unit at that time and the rest were resource pool float nurses. :uhoh3:

nursing 101: so happens our nurse manager wasn't working that day. this doctor is my electrophysiologist and the only one at this hospital. they paid him to come from another country. because i'm hmo, in the network, he's the only ep doctor available. grrr:(

thumperrn: we have a few docs that are nice to the patients but hateful to the nurses. i've never seen him this way before but this was the first time i had a one on one encounter with him about one of his patients. i've seen him on the unit before but that was before i was referred to him. thanks for the advice about verbal orders. it wasn't an emergency and i thought about asking him to write an order but again, he's my doctor and i wasn't sure how he would have responded to my comment.

tazzirn: i don't think we would have been offended as much if he didn't come across as if we were incompetent nurses incapable of helping him. and as he was finishing the procedure he was mumbling that he'd hate for something to go wrong when he's on this floor. but i know if i was a patient i would want the best for the job. we just disagreed with the way he went about it and in front of the patient. i don't have a choice in doctors. he's the only electrophysiologist i have to choose from since i'm hmo.

Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN · Feb 25, 2006

Is it strange or is it just me. Having your doctor stand in your face at the hospital and give you verbal orders about a patient of his that you are taking care of and to see your doctor come to the unit in a bad mood? Anyone else have this experience? Here's mine:

Yesterday, my EP doctor came to the unit and requested the nurse of one of his patients that had A-fib with RVR. He looked me in my eyes and stated how are you and then he proceeded to tell me to start a cardizem drip at 10 and give rhythmol po 150mg when patient can tolerate po meds. Then I watched my doctor get angry in another room because he was trying to start a central line at bedside and some of his equipment was missing and he already started the procedure. The secretary had distribution sent the item up two times and both times it was the wrong item. He became furious, walked out of the patients room with bloody gloves, picks up one of the phones at the nurses station and proceeds to call CCU to get a nurse to help him with the procedure. I felt so bad for the nurse that was caring for that patient. We all felt like he was putting us down when he had our nurse step aside and the CCU nurse help him. It's kinda hard to see him in this manner because when I went to him he seemed very pleasant and understanding. At first I was a little angry with him. I had to keep in mind that I am at work now and he is not functioning as my doctor at this time. He came back to the floor later on that day in the same mood and requested that the cardizem be increased he also gave me a few more verbal orders. We were in report at shift change and he opened the door and began to speak telling me additional orders having little regard to the person that was already speaking giving report. Everyone just looked at me and someone said he's in a bad mood today. Besides his mannerism I was a little let down by the way he managed the care of the patient I was taking care of. I thought to myself, I hope he doesn't take care of me that way? Maybe this just wasn't his day, but this is the first time I have taken care of one of his patients where he had to actually speak to me.

He should have brought that nurse with him to start with. :coollook:

wooh, BSN, RN · Feb 25, 2006

This wasn't an issue of "the best nurse for the procedure." This was a "getting equipment issue." And I've helped with central lines before, it's not a particularly "special skill" that needs an "experienced" nurse. Just needs a doctor that's not being a jacka$$ to ask for what he needs when he needs it. How exactly did the CCU nurse magically get the right equipment? Fact was, he was pissed off that it wasn't going well, and instead of blaming himself (sounds like he missed and needed another kit maybe? Meaning the whole thing was HIS fault if blame had to be placed) he acted like it was the nurse's fault.

And I feel for you on the personal doctor front. It's not a matter of disagreeing with the care being given. I chose my doc based on the fact that I like the respect she gives the nurses. If I'm in the hospital, I want to know that if the nurse has concerns, she first won't be afraid to call and second will be listened to when she does call.

ParrotHeadRN · Feb 25, 2006

When my son was younger and having lots of abdominal pain of unknown origin, I LOVED his pediatrician. He spent lots of time with us and always made us feel we were the most important patients he had. THEN I went to work for him.

I never knew what mood he would be in. Sometimes he'd come in and walk right by me without acknowledging my hello. The other nurses were the same way, VERY moody. I worked there for a month and every morning I went in feeling as nervous as I had on my first day because I never knew what would be waiting for me. I had never done office work before and they refused to orient me because they said THEY never got an orientation. And I saw him numerous times come out of a patients room and remark that the mother was a nut. It took me a few times of seeing that to realize that he had most likely done that to me as well. I left his office as an employer as well as a patient. I never would have trusted him after that.

As an aside, we accidentally found out my son has spina bifida occulta on S1 which accounts for the constipation he has suffered from since birth. We went to specialist after specialist and all we heard was it's IBS, it's made up, it's in his head, you're feeding into him, etc etc. All this while my son was curled up on the couch, unable to eat, with fissures in the corners of his mouth from poor nutrition. I used to think the best thing would be if we both could die because there was nothing I could do to help him. It was that awful. About 2 years ago, when he was 12, he started having nausea and heartburn and nothing I gave him worked. He had an upper GI which showed, imagine, he was full of stool and did have some reflux. But it also showed the spina bifida occulta. Of course, the doc called and said it was nothing to worry about. I know about spina bifida, but had never heard of SBO. I did lots of research and KNEW I had found the cause of his troubles. Luckily, the pain has gotten better, or he has learned to live with it. When he was 8 and 9, we just PRAYED for him to weigh 60 lbs. Now he's 14, weighs about 125 lbs and is doing very well. Sometimes I want to write to the original pediatrician and tell him what we know now so maybe he won't dismiss another child who is suffering.

Sorry this ended up so long.

Altra, BSN, RN · Feb 25, 2006

Most of my nursing school clinicals were at my local community hospital. During my last semester, I encountered my own PCP on several occasions. I had really liked him as my own doc - he always started office visits by just chatting about a wide range of health issues before I got undressed to be examined. He was my husband's PCP as well.

But during those encounters at the hospital -- I discovered that he seems to hate nurses. :stone It was quite eye-opening.

My husband continues to see him, but I have changed PCPs.