Sucking out the fun....

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Specializes in Psychiatric Nursing.

****RANT WARNING****

So this past week I have been a bit overzealous about working OT and finally on friday after only a few hours of sleep the pervious few days I am finishing with only a few hours of staying over to go.... I work in an acute care psych hospital and on this particular day we ended up having some pretty generous staffing. I volunteered to pass meds and allow the other two nurses who would be there the entire shift to work with the docs and go into treatment team. So all is going well I am finishing up my med pass with only a few refusals (which is not all that uncommon). The doctor comes in and asks if a certain patient has taken her medication... I tell her this patient has refused even though I spent quite a bit of time going over the benefits of medication with her. Doc says "okay well let me try" calls the patient over to the med window and when she refuses yet again attempts to physically force this very little 83-year old patient to take an M-Tab.... patient resists..... IT WAS APPALLING AND AWFUL!!!! :angryfire: This patient is here on a voluntary status and is not court ordered to take medication. Honestly if this happened outside the hospital I would be calling the police -battery and assault of a little old lady!!!! Has anyone else had this happen?? I know this doctor has a hx of this type of behavior and has been "talked to about it" many many times..... The worst part was later on in the day I saw this same patient again and she wanted to know why I didn't stop it. I seriously wanted to cry. I don't really think this particular patient needs to be on medication and even if she does we should never be physically forcing anyone to take something unless we have an order from judge to do so. In the moment I was kind of afraid to go up against the doc. She has historically had a really poor rapport with many of the nurses in our facility but it always seems like no matter what the issue, the doc ends up winning out. To be honest though even if it costed me my job I really wish I had done the right thing. As a fairly new grad I really loved what I did and looked forward to going to work, now the fun has been sucked out of it and I don't want to go back. :cry:

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This MD should be reported,seriously...

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Specializes in ICU/Critical Care.

I would have asked the doctor to stop trying to force the patient to take the meds or I would be reporting him/her to the board of medicine. Couldn't you file a complaint with the board anonymously?

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Oh don't be discouraged!!! Okay so you had one bad experience... a really bad one but still.... if it is your calling you can't let some psyco, strong armed doc suck the fun out of it. Have fun with a invisible perimiter around said "doctor destructo." You can always repot the doctor to a higher up anonymously like Turn~ said. You might not have felt like you did the right thing right away but try and report him/her now. Just because you didn't jump on their back and beat em over the head doesn't make you a bad person or nurse. The higher ups should handle that, not you. Just make sure you tell em. ;)

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I agree with you, you should have said something even if something lame like "Doctor so-an-so please take your hands off of Ms. so-and-so" at least the patient would have heard. We all learn by our mistakes and we ALL make them thinking later we should have done this or that. I don't think you would have been fired if this doctor was in trouble for the same thing previously either, though there is always that possiblity. Agreeing with the others, you should report him.

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Personally I think I would have been so shocked by this doctor's behavior, I am not sure what I would have done in this situation. Don't be too hard on yourself. However, it could be very important to make sure that you carefully documented this scenario in an incident report.

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Specializes in Med/Surge, Psych, LTC, Home Health.

Don't beat yourself up; I'm with David, I would have been way to shocked at that moment to say anything.

This doc really does need to be reported though. Call his licensing board and let them know what you saw.

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Specializes in ER.

Speak to your supervisor, call him/her if you're not back soon, and make out an incident report.

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Report the MD to the state medical board--obviously the "talking to's" didn't work!

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Specializes in Medical Surgical.

I feel for you, I really do. But the fact is the doctor committed assault and battery and your license required you to try to stop it. You MUST report it; it is cut and dried legally.

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Specializes in Psych, corrections.

sweetlemon, may i offer that nothing in your training or experience prepares you to respond to a situation like this? most of us have no frame of reference for what you described. we are taught to respect and not challenge authority figures, and physicians can certainly be seen as authority figures.

of all the scenarios you ever imagined you would respond to as a nurse, i'm very sure that the idea of preventing a doctor from jamming medications into a patient's mouth was not one you could have ever been prepared for.

you didn't do anything wrong, sweetlemon. the physician did. and the management who have allowed his behaviour to progress to the point where he thought his actions were acceptable or appropriate.

best to you,

mary

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Specializes in Psych, corrections.

o-o-o-ps, my bad.

please substitute "she" for "he" in the above post.

:o :o :o

(so embarrased!)

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