Surgeons - ugh!

[Melanin]

I work in ambulatory with surgeons, and I have been told that the RNs should not venture so far as to recommend conservative pain relief strategies such as icing or warm compresses because we are practicing "out of our scope." I have approached a surgeon to ask his opinion about a new formulation for a very specialized & frequently prescribed medication that the surgeons needed and in the middle of my first sentence he cut me off by yelling "I don't care." I've had a surgeon literally turn his back to me and begin speaking to another provider as soon as I started contributing to a discussion about the experiences of a certain population of patients who I triage all day and who provide their own perspective of what they experience in terms of a very specific and subjective condition.

No matter what I do or say, they think I am a complete imbecile. They want me to shut up and fax stuff. I try not to care about this every single minute of every day. I tell myself that it doesn't matter what they think, since I am not doing anything terrible or dangerous. But every single day I also consider whether I can go on like this. I wonder if this is even healthy - maybe the stress of all this is shortening my life span. Why should I kill myself for a surgeon? Even if I love what I am learning with all my heart and brain, I wonder if I should just go back to being poor and yet treated with decency and respect. I don't know what to do.

I have worked in this clinic for about 10 months now. Will it ever get better?

[JKL33]

On 9/1/2019 at 12:15 PM, Melanin said:

At my practice, the surgeons have made a practice of reporting the RNs directly to our manager who then passes their complaints along to the RNs every week at our meeting. Some complaints are fully or partially legit, and we work on those. But it's hard not to get discouraged because a good portion of those complaints are, upon further investigation, unjustified (the RN did not call my patient, the RN did not respond in a timely manner, etc) and based on assumptions about our work rather than what the documentation shows and/or what actually took place. Our manager has asked the surgeons if they would please complain directly to the individual RNs when they have a concern, but the surgeons responded that this would be too time-consuming for them.

Another thought: Is your manager some part of this problem? It kind of sounds like it. Part of the reason some individuals' j-a behavior wreaks such havoc is because others enable it and even dump fuel onto the fires.

If the manager is passing on unsubstantiated complaints, then s/he is most certainly part of the problem; part of that role is exercising some iota of discretion in the things with which you burden your staff.

It's possible that the manager could be successful in asking surgeons to address concerns directly, but in doing so must take a stance and then frame the issue in a way that encourages professionalism. "If you believe there is a concern, please professionally approach the nurse to work it out." Etc.

Either that or s/he he needs to do the legwork personally and report findings back to the surgeon ("I'm sorry but the RN did follow up with your patient and your patient did not follow the instructions given") or report them on to the nurse if they are legitimate concerns.