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!
OH yeah...forgot to add this. In the pamphlet...patients should be reminded that please and thank you should be directed toward their nurse at every opportunity.
I have on many occasions kindly reminded patients that I am human deserving of basic courtesy, such as please and thank you. I find when you educate an adult on use of proper manners, they are usually (not always) embarassed.
Yes ladies, when I answered your call light and you asked for us to help your mother get out of bed for mass, I was truly honestly telling the truth when I informed you that her CNA was in with another Resident and had informed me that your Mother was next. And I was telling you the truth when I said she would be there in less than 5 minutes. She was finishing up with the other resident and is a quick, efficient CNA.
So imagine my surprise when said CNA comes to me not 5 minutes later to inform me that you two elderly ladies just couldn't wait an entire 5 minutes for the CNA to assist you and decided to lift your fragile 100 year old mother out of bed and throw her into a wheelchair yourself, and that she now has a skin tear on her hand.
And imagine my horror when coming in to assess said skin tear and lifting the cloth you are holding on her hand to find that you had managed to basically DEGLOVE!!! THE TOP OF YOUR MOTHERS HAND in the process and that I'm now staring at tendons and bones!!!!! Did you hear my gasp? Because I wasn't able to bite that back.
And imagine my anger when I inform you that your Mother is now making a trip to the ER instead of going to mass, and you get POed about it and make several snide comments trying to not only downplay the seriousness of the situation but also make it sound as if it were all our fault. I mean I know your call light was on for entire 1 minute before I answered it, and that you waited an additional 3 to 4 minutes waiting for the CNA's help. I'm sure those 5 minutes total was an eternity and totally worth the harm you caused to your helpless mother.
GRRRRRRR!!! To be honest I did say alot of this, but worded in a very very different professional way. Our Unit Manager had already warned these ladies not to transfer their Mother several times before but apparently some people are just very impatient.
- When you yell at people, especially techs who don't get paid nearly enough to put up with your crap, it makes them not want to come back in your room to help you at all.
- I have been a nurse for a while now, and know perfectly well how to work bedside tables, how to work around IV lines without you telling me a dozen times in five minutes to be careful, and how to move a foley without yanking it without you telling me a dozen times in five minutes not to yank it out. I don't need you micromanaging every move I make.
- It's your right to take your meds or not, I don't care one way or the other but I'm not going to stand here and twiddle my thumbs while you take half an hour to decide. It's a stool softener, for Pete's sake.
This is a response to the "Refusing meds" comment.. and I so hate to sound evil.. but sometimes I just want to say.. either take your meds and the care that we're offering.. or LEAVE AND STOP WASTING EVERYONE'S TAX DOLLARS AND TIME WHEN THERE ARE TRULY SICK PATIENTS THAT REQUIRE THIS BED, YOU LAZY SELFISH ABSOLUTE PIECE OF DO NOTHING CRUDOLA!!!!
MEGA kudos to NocturneNurse for his/her comment. THIS is something I can second, over and over. Why oh why do these people present themselves to our ER's, with the taxpayer dollar meter ticking away, and then FIGHT US tooth and nail over every last med, every last treatment, every last everything threaten to go AMA, etc. If you don't want it, GO HOME!! You're NOT paying for it anyway, so why worry!!!
Specializes in med-surg, psych, ER, school nurse-CRNP.
If you are going to take on like your favorite whale just sank, and berate the entire medical staff at large because you don't agree with the tests we as providers think you need to make sure you're not going to crump over dead any time soon, then for the love of Heaven, go HOME!
But do not, and I'm going to repeat this, DO NOT call your SO who is in the medical field and complain to them and have them call and complain that "no one has seen him all day", when I know and you know darn well that I was just in there this morning, explaining, apologizing, and asking what else I could do for you. I may not be the doc, and I can't help that your doc has not been in yet, but I WAS there, and you best believe I will call you on it in a heartbeat.
What the HELL have you been doing with your feet for the past 20 years? I mean -- COME ON. Those toenails haven't been clipped in at least five years. Do you even SEE the dirt in and around those nails? Do the scales and flakes even matter to you?
And to the family of these foot offenders -- come on. Cut mom's/dad's toes once in a while. It is not ok to allow the nails to grow so long they curl up and around several times. That is just the ultimate in laziness and sloth.
Once and only once have I ever seen a person over the age of 70 come in w/ a pedicure done. It was the cute little old lady who had her toes done in pink w/ little designs on them. it was SO cute on her.
There are few things that frustrate me more than neglect no matter how "insignificant" it may seem. People don't seem to realize that neglect is a form of abuse.
A while back, I had a pt who came in with toenails that CURLED and went under her toes. They must have been at least 6" long each. I'm talking World Record style. Anyway, they smelled HORRIBLE. Feet were swollen and red. Full of ulcers from the toenails resting against the skin and digging away at it. When I b#$@#ed the family out about it semi-nicely, they said that she always wore socks when they were around. I felt my brains hit the ceiling when my head exploded.
It took the med nurses MONTHS full of qid soaks and weekly foot care to get this poor LOL's feet in slightly better shape. She had to go into the OR and undergo a GA just to get them cut by a foot care nurse. I wanted to kick some butt. Argh! This poor lady ended up going septic and dying. Guess where the infection originated? Yup...the ulcers from the toenails.
I actually used #1 last week. I substituted "so mean" for extra annoying. This was a pt that only liked male nurses. I am not male.
I've said those too.
There was a girl who kept talking on her cell in super annoying "Valley Girl" talk circa 1990, but talked normal when her mom was in the room. So I said "OMG! As if! Like why are you being so like totally annoying?!"
"No, I don't have a magic pill to fix you when you won't take your meds, keep smoking, and have pancakes and syrup for breakfast ever morning when you are a Type II diabetic with hypertension and kidney disease. Oh yeah, and about all those endocrine and nutrition appointments you no-showed for....." Grrrrrrrrr........
Your loved one has assitis. They were born with it. Its incurable and terminal. They will die a victim of assitis. See the way you get yelled at when you try to help them? And they know you and supposedly love you? Well, its worse when I "Nurse Rachett" do something so horrible as to offer them their medication while they are watching t.v. So don't come complaining to me that your loved one isn't getting better, I've done the best I can, but as far as I know the only treatment for assitis is prohibited by law.
jessiern, BSN, RN
611 Posts
I have on many occasions kindly reminded patients that I am human deserving of basic courtesy, such as please and thank you. I find when you educate an adult on use of proper manners, they are usually (not always) embarassed.