Hi, my name is AngelfireRN, I'll be your nurse tonight.
I am not a waitress, nor am I your slave.
Yelling and hurling obscenities at me will not get you your pain meds any sooner than they are ordered. Nor will having your family member or entourage do the same.
Threatening lawsuits and having umpteen family members camp out in the halls or hold up the nurse's station will not get you preferential treatment.
Physically grabbing me as I go down the hall is NOT a good idea.
I do not give the orders, but I do have to follow/enforce them. This is something that you should take up with your doctor.
No, I will not call him again to ask him for more pain medicine. He has been called twice and has said no both times.
No, I will not give you his number so you can "straighten him out".
No, you are not my only patient, and I highly doubt that you are single-handedly paying my salary. On the off chance that you are, let's talk about a raise.
NO, NO, NO, I most empahatically will NOT come get you when it is time for your next pain shot while you are having a smoke break. I also will not bring it to you in the smoking room. (Have actually said that, I am allergic to cigarettes. I did it once, had an asthma attack, desatted to 83, and turned blue, according to the patient and my charge nurse, after the patient had to help me back to the floor).
No, I don't really care if your family has not eaten all day, they drove here by themselves, they are not sick, and no, I will not call for 6 guest trays. (This of course, is if the patient in question does not need all 6 family members present, and is not at death's door).
No, you may not have 3 six-packs of soda from the kitchen, there are other people that would like a snack, too.
No, they will not open up the kitchen up just for you, at 1 in the morning, because you don't like the snacks we have on the floor.
I could think of hundreds, but those will do for a start. I know it sounds mean, but this is why I got out of bedside nursing. When a hospital becomes the Hilton, I'm gone!
We've all had the relative who states "I'm a nurse/OT/PT/Pharmacist/Doctor back home. We just nod and smile
"Fantastic! So you understand why you legally cannot have access to the file/lab tests/more information. You know , so many family members/friends/neighbours/random passers by think they should be allowed to know protected information - it is a pleasure to be dealing with a professional, who understands the legal situation here."
Actually told a patient this.."No, for the hundredth time, your boyfriend is not in the waiting room, and i will not go back out to look for him.I have very sick patients to deal with, and i will not be your runner. I know you think he called you and said he was waiting outside and we wont let him in, but i find that hard to believe since you do not have a phone in here. No, he is not climbing in the window, nor walking though that wall in the back. No you cannot walk to the waiting room yourself in your underpants only. You have to stay in bed, and your IV has to stay where it is. Now sit down and behave, and if your boyfriend shows up, he will find you"
This was toward a patient that came in to our ICU last week after being caught yet again huffing computer duster. Long psych history, including bipolar mania, manic depressive, and paranoid schizo. Later in the day, she was discharged home with a taxi voucher, and...still not boyfriend..we even paged said "imaginary" boyfriend overhead to no avail..she was eventually escorted out by security....long day!!!! Not to mention, all the while i was trying to babysit her and keep her from running around the unit in her G strings, i was TRYING to assist with a vas cath placement so i could start CRRT!
And i repeat..i am NOT a psych nurse..if i wanted to be a psych nurse, i would be working in psych, not ICU....
What I did say to a family member yesterday, if I even think I smell alcohol on your sisters breath, I will have her removed from the room. She was verbally and physically abusive to her husband yesterday, that is why I called the cops. Her husband is dying, I understand it is hard for her to cope. However, screaming so loud I can hear her at the end of the hallway for him to get his f'ing a$$ out of that bed while shaking him violently is going to get another call placed to the nice men in blue. Ugh, just when you think you have seen it all.
I do not understand this mentality of patients. As I have said to one of my nurses before when she was upset because she felt like she had been ignoring me all shift:
"I am HAPPY you were not in here all the time. You NOT being in here means you do not think I am your most serious patient. If you WERE in here all the time it would mean that I was REALLY sick and I don't want that"
I haven't posted or responded in quite a while, but I still read these updates through my e-mail. I couldn't not respond...
I do not understand this mentality of patients. As I have said to one of my nurses before when she was upset because she felt like she had been ignoring me all shift:
"I am HAPPY you were not in here all the time. You NOT being in here means you do not think I am your most serious patient. If you WERE in here all the time it would mean that I was REALLY sick and I don't want that"
THANK YOU!!
Very few people TRULY understand this.
On the flipside, that can also backfire. I checked on a patient of someone else's the other night, as they were in report at 7p (I work until 11p). She had called to say her IV was leaking and her arm felt heavy (she had a subclavian line), so I went to go check it. Sure enough, it was leaking from around it, and I measured it (external length now 12.5 cm, had been zero!). Not sure how that happened, but anyway. I went back to the nurses in report and told them what was up. They both went down to look at it, since the day RN knew what it looked like before, and the night RN was going to have to deal with whatever we had to do (which was obviously take it out). CNA was also in there, changing the wet gown, and I peeked my head in to see if I could help since I knew they were in the process of changing over. The patient was looking at all the faces in the room and going, "is this really bad? Why are there so many people in here, am I OK?"
I felt bad for making her worry just because I offered a helping hand! We explained why there WERE so many faces, and she understood but was still nervous.
On the flipside, that can also backfire. I checked on a patient of someone else's the other night, as they were in report at 7p (I work until 11p). She had called to say her IV was leaking and her arm felt heavy (she had a subclavian line), so I went to go check it. Sure enough, it was leaking from around it, and I measured it (external length now 12.5 cm, had been zero!). Not sure how that happened, but anyway. I went back to the nurses in report and told them what was up. They both went down to look at it, since the day RN knew what it looked like before, and the night RN was going to have to deal with whatever we had to do (which was obviously take it out). CNA was also in there, changing the wet gown, and I peeked my head in to see if I could help since I knew they were in the process of changing over. The patient was looking at all the faces in the room and going, "is this really bad? Why are there so many people in here, am I OK?"
I felt bad for making her worry just because I offered a helping hand! We explained why there WERE so many faces, and she understood but was still nervous.
I would probably get unnerved by that many people, though it leaking like that would unnerve me to. One of my more recent surgeries, I had 2 faces anytime anyone came in the room. My nurse and the nurse she was precepting. They did everything for me, the one who had been a nurse said, I have 2 patients and there are 2 of us, we can deal with checking vital signs on 2 patients. They had a low pt. ratio because it was short term stays and transplant ward (seems a wierd mix to me I would think they would want just transplant kiddos there since they are immuno compramized but their choice) so i got used to a few faces for little things then.
and i know that I have had multiple nurses trying to calm me down after surgries/procedures (I always go banannas) most I ever had was 3 after this last surgery and I ended up hitting one (i was not with it and was freaking out felt really bad after)
I'm sitting here giggling -- we had a pt one night that was really, really sick -- EF was 10, couldn't get his sats much above 85, even on a bipap (pt was a full code, but had a "no intubation" order...), and we'd been jerking him back from the edge of death for about a week, seemed like every night shift we'd be bagging him, etc., all while he wanted everything done but intubation....
So, next night sift, we get a call from the tele room "V-tach, room X" -- the new shift coming on grabs our toys and bolts into the room....to find a new patient standing at the sink brushing his teeth....and getting paler and paler as more and more people come into his room, dragging ambu bags and pushing the code cart. He wobbles back to the bed as we're all doing a collective "this ain't Mr. Smith" and the patient says, "what's wrong, am I dying?" He had a nice case of "teeth tach" and we found out later that Mr. "Smith" had went to his celestial abode on first shift....
We all talked about it later, it would have been some really embarrassing paperwork..."Mr. Jones was fine until night shift thought he was Mr. Smith and scared Mr. Jones into a MI."
We all talked about it later, it would have been some really embarrassing paperwork..."Mr. Jones was fine until night shift thought he was Mr. Smith and scared Mr. Jones into a MI."
I'm sitting here giggling -- we had a pt one night that was really, really sick -- EF was 10, couldn't get his sats much above 85, even on a bipap (pt was a full code, but had a "no intubation" order...), and we'd been jerking him back from the edge of death for about a week, seemed like every night shift we'd be bagging him, etc., all while he wanted everything done but intubation....
So, next night sift, we get a call from the tele room "V-tach, room X" -- the new shift coming on grabs our toys and bolts into the room....to find a new patient standing at the sink brushing his teeth....and getting paler and paler as more and more people come into his room, dragging ambu bags and pushing the code cart. He wobbles back to the bed as we're all doing a collective "this ain't Mr. Smith" and the patient says, "what's wrong, am I dying?" He had a nice case of "teeth tach" and we found out later that Mr. "Smith" had went to his celestial abode on first shift....
We all talked about it later, it would have been some really embarrassing paperwork..."Mr. Jones was fine until night shift thought he was Mr. Smith and scared Mr. Jones into a MI."
I'm sitting here giggling -- we had a pt one night that was really, really sick -- EF was 10, couldn't get his sats much above 85, even on a bipap (pt was a full code, but had a "no intubation" order...), and we'd been jerking him back from the edge of death for about a week, seemed like every night shift we'd be bagging him, etc., all while he wanted everything done but intubation....
So, next night sift, we get a call from the tele room "V-tach, room X" -- the new shift coming on grabs our toys and bolts into the room....to find a new patient standing at the sink brushing his teeth....and getting paler and paler as more and more people come into his room, dragging ambu bags and pushing the code cart. He wobbles back to the bed as we're all doing a collective "this ain't Mr. Smith" and the patient says, "what's wrong, am I dying?" He had a nice case of "teeth tach" and we found out later that Mr. "Smith" had went to his celestial abode on first shift....
We all talked about it later, it would have been some really embarrassing paperwork..."Mr. Jones was fine until night shift thought he was Mr. Smith and scared Mr. Jones into a MI."
had I been him, I would have been getting paler and paler to, that would have scared the crud monkeys out of me
talaxandra
3,037 Posts
"Fantastic! So you understand why you legally cannot have access to the file/lab tests/more information. You know , so many family members/friends/neighbours/random passers by think they should be allowed to know protected information - it is a pleasure to be dealing with a professional, who understands the legal situation here."