We had an incident on my unit a few nights ago where the visitors of a patient were demanding everything under the sun and more. The family demanded a private room. Our entire hospital has semi-priavate or 3 bed room - No privates. The family had NUMEROUS visitors (up to 10) for this patient who was in the first bed. Although I was not caring for patient in question, I was assigned the patient in the second bed - I literally had to force my way past big heavy sweaty bodies to get to my patient. No respect at all - excuse me sir - Nothing! The family was overbearing and middle eastern - giving me and everyone else dirty looks and invading personal boundries.
Cut to an hour or so later. I am charting in the nurse station. Our charge nurse is being verbally berated by 5 or 6 of these individual - Complaining about everything. "She (patient) is getting terrible medical care - Noboby know how to do a job - You guy will kill her - yada yada yada". At this point I saw the situation escalating and I paged security to our unit along with the house supervisor. Long storu short, we had to play musical beds - transfer some patients into other rooms so that these idiots could have a private room.
When I told my charge nurse that it was I who had paged the house supervisor and the security department, she blamed me for "Dramatizing" the situation and I had over-reacted. I am sorry people. I have worked in facilities where situations have escalated VERY QUICKLY into physical violence. Better to be safe than sorry - Most often a show of force is all people need to realize they need to cut the crap. I have your back - I would HOPE they would have my back if the tables were turned. What am I missing here?
