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!
This individuals "visits" regularly. This was the cumulative effect of 1 long hospitalization. Our teams have already met once to figure out whether or not we can get this person into a Board and Care, Assisted Living Facility, or something. I heard the patient has returned again since the above mentioned scenario, which was last month. I get frustrated, but I feel badly for the patient. It is nice to be able to vent here where it is safe.
Wouldn't those photos have been a good teaching tool to discourage other teens from OD'ing? If I'm wrong, I apologize, but I would think it might bring some sense of reality to his friends.
You're right that it probably would discourage drug use; I have often had that thought myself when I have a particularly sad or tragic OD pt - if only people could see what happens when they abuse drugs! That being said, since the pt couldn't consent to the photo or it's being passed around via texting, I considered it a HIPAA violation (the picture-taker was not a family member, just an acquaintance). Plus, many facilities have a policy about taking photos and what can & can't be included, even those for legal and wound documentation.
More than that, though, I just felt it was in poor taste. It was the latest social gossip, not a learning moment. I wouldn't ever want somebody to take a picture of me like that, and I wasn't going to take a chance that he would be embarassed by having it circulated around to all his friends/acquaintances.
If you are so stoned you can't stay conscious long enough to say, "I want Dilaud-z-z-z--z-z-z-z-z-" then you're not getting any.
If you take narcotics from home, you get narcan. And if I could figure out a way to keep a low dose in your IV, I would. You are going to kill yourself from drug abuse. And I'm sick of putting people into body bags where the death certificate should read "stupidity" as the cause of death.
Stop telling me you don't drink or do drugs because you were "saved." I'm getting drunk off the ETOH on your breath, I've seen the drug screen, and I took care of you two weeks ago when you were drunk off your A** just like you are now. If you're saved, brush up on the 10 Commandments, because you keep busting the fool out of "thou shalt not lie."
If you touch that IV pump again, I'm going to rig it with a shock collar.
Stop telling me how to do my job because you're a "nurse." I know nurses, I am a nurse, and I can tell you aren't one the minute you open your mouth.
No, I won't want to have lunch with you after you're discharged. You don't know that we all do a "rock/paper/scissors" to see you gets you each shift, and I lost.
Just this past weekend I had one of our (non emergent) frequent fliers....I had come out of a code and saw that her call light was on, she informed me that the MD had ordered her meds sometime ago and she had not received them. I told her it was unfortunate that she was not my only pt. and I was busy saving a life but now I would save hers and get her meds.
no, i won't give you your percocet 1 hour early... you'll live.
stay 5 feet away from my medication cart at ALL TIMES... it's called personal space.
you are not the priority on this floor.
while i'm in the middle of giving out medication to 60 residents, NO i don't give a crap about heating up your tea or getting you a tuna sandwich. ask one of the nurses aides or go home where you can do that all day by yourself.
this is a nursing home, not a hotel.
to those "family members and friends" who visit once a year, the one day that you ARE here, i don't have to waste my time explaining to you what medications i'm giving and what they do. i know more about your "loved one" than you ever will, so don't waste my time. call the doctor if you care that badly. or show up more than once a year.
Why oh why do you present to the hospital with your problems? It seems as soon as you get here, as soon as we have done even the first set of vitals, you are badgering me to "get you out of here." I mean -- WHYYY?? Why don't you just stay home and take an aspirin, like 95% of the rest of the folks in the world??
Don't you have anything else to do than to come into the ER and admit yourself for your issues? All you want to do is to "go home" ASAP, not five minutes after you've arrived and we spend the rest of our time fighting to get you to stay until the doc even sees you.
Because for me it will involve 3 hours of admitting you, getting your orders, getting report, only to have to page the doc to get you discharged, AGAIN, and you will walk out of here perfectly fine!
I don't get it. Life is nice. Go to the park, clean your house, whatever. Just stay the heck out of this hospital for a change.
Specializes in acute rehab, med surg, LTC, peds, home c.
You fat, lazy, pathetic man. Why do your symptoms suddenly flare up when you have visitors? Why do you tell them that nobody is doing anything for you when most of my time has been spent running around trying to accomodate you with your multiple somatic complaints. You are miserable and pathetic. If you did not complain, you would have nothing to talk about.
There is a darned good reason why you have no friends and everyone leaves you eventually: You are a toxic person with no social skills or sense of basic decency, you take your emotions out on anyone around you, it's never your fault, you never learn, and you interpret hep or suggestions as personal attacks. You take for granted that people are going to listen to you listening to yourself talk. You don't even try to have conversations, you just conquer the conversation and don't notice that people are trying to back away or ask you important questions. What you idealize as a friendship is what most people know as emotional monopoly, worship of you, and jealous possession. You worship and praise people you "like," and hate them when they don't concur with the aforementioned idealisms. Even the nurses you "like" request not to be assigned to you because they know it's only a matter of time before you hate them. The only reason why therapists stick around as long as they do is because they are required and paid to listen nonjudgmentally and respect your autonomy to harm yourself all you want, and you fire them soon anyway. You're not going to learn, and I really hope that you run out of nurses you'll allow to take care of you and decide to go to another hospital because as unfounded as they are, your complaints are taken seriously. I hope that your wolf-calling catches up to you someday.
Specializes in acute rehab, med surg, LTC, peds, home c.
There is a darned good reason why you have no friends and everyone leaves you eventually: You are a toxic person with no social skills or sense of basic decency, you take your emotions out on anyone around you, it's never your fault, you never learn, and you interpret hep or suggestions as personal attacks. You take for granted that people are going to listen to you listening to yourself talk. You don't even try to have conversations, you just conquer the conversation and don't notice that people are trying to back away or ask you important questions. What you idealize as a friendship is what most people know as emotional monopoly, worship of you, and jealous possession. You worship and praise people you "like," and hate them when they don't concur with the aforementioned idealisms. Even the nurses you "like" request not to be assigned to you because they know it's only a matter of time before you hate them. The only reason why therapists stick around as long as they do is because they are required and paid to listen nonjudgmentally and respect your autonomy to harm yourself all you want, and you fire them soon anyway. You're not going to learn, and I really hope that you run out of nurses you'll allow to take care of you and decide to go to another hospital because as unfounded as they are, your complaints are taken seriously. I hope that your wolf-calling catches up to you someday.
Specializes in med-surg, psych, ER, school nurse-CRNP.
How in God's name did you GET yourself into this state? You aren't that much older than me, yet you have a surgery list as long as my arm, and a med list that's even longer. Good grief, I almost DIED last year, and I don't have a tenth of your ailments wrong with me! Either you really drew the short straw on bad genes, or you REALLY need to consider some major lifestyle changes.
Looking at your 460 lb naked body has given me new motivation to stay on my diet.
How the H-E- double hockey sticks did you manage to reach this weight? (no - he does not have a medical problem to blame this on). Wouldn't you realize you had a weight problem when you hit 250? 300?
gentle
395 Posts
This individuals "visits" regularly. This was the cumulative effect of 1 long hospitalization. Our teams have already met once to figure out whether or not we can get this person into a Board and Care, Assisted Living Facility, or something. I heard the patient has returned again since the above mentioned scenario, which was last month. I get frustrated, but I feel badly for the patient. It is nice to be able to vent here where it is safe.