I really like the Reader's Digest new monthly article. 13 things_____ won't tell you. This month it was teachers. So here are some I would like to see listed for nursing:
I really resent when you call and say you need a nurse immediately and when I get to the room you tell me you need a drink of water with a lot of ice. That is NOT something you need immediately and not something you need a nurse to do for you. Next time I won't hurry.
Standing at the desk staring at me isn't going to get me moving any faster, I am on the phone with the doctor getting orders. Glaring doesn't help either.
I understand you just had surgery, part of your recovery process is getting up and walking, so get up and walk.
Your doctor is an #@$hole, he will kill you sooner or later. Please don't sit there and say to me "well, my doctor says..."
Your family is crazy. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
If you hit me, I will prosecute. I am not your punching bag.
You break my heart. You have been sick for so many years and yet you still smile when I walk into the room. AND manage to make me smile.
I love my work, but it is my work. My life is outside this place with people I love.
Please don't talk to me like I am stupid or deaf. I have a four year college degree and great hearing.
Use your call bell and your inside voice. Screaming nurse, nurse, nurse and banging your cup on the tray table will have people thinking your crazy and they will just ignore you.
When you come in acting like an idiot, your not advocating for your mom. The second you leave every nurse on the floor will avoid that room because they don't want to do a thing to tick you off.
That hug you gave me meant the world to me. The thank you for your great care? Made my day. Yes, I will be back tomarrow and one way or another you will be my patient.
Nursing is hard physical work. Nursing is hard physical work. Nursing is hard physical work.
I don't like making multiple trips to your room for minor things. Please tell me ALL that you need before I leave.
I'm busy. Just because I'm not sweating, running and there isn't an emergency going on..I'm busy.
To the pt. family member..I'm sorry you are allergic to whatever pain medicine..this patient is not. We do not need to hear about the reaction you had.
I really don't know when the doctor is coming in. No I will not give you an estimate because you will try to complain later if they are even an hour past what I said.
You don't have to want something everytime I come into the room.
I believe you if you say you are in pain. The extra moaning and writhing is really not necessary.
I can see how some of this can seem callous, jrw. On the other hand, for example, interrupting handover every single morning and delaying two nurses' start to a really busy shift because your patient always decides to use the pan at 7:05 (even after being asked at 6:45 if she'd like the pan) and needs the assistance of two to do it gets tired really quickly.
It would be lovely if we were able to provide wholly individualised care to all our patients, independant of any other considerations. All of us, however, are cogs in the hospital machine, working within a large framework whose schedule is based not on individual need and preference but on equal parts the best interest of the institution's smooth running and tradition.
If I interrupt handover every morning for ten minutes then the morning staff don't have time to get BSLs, insulin and other pre-prandial meds to patients before breakfast arrives. They can't set up the patients who need assistance to eat, or chart intake and output before the meal trays are removed. They don't get to obs before the units round, and I don't get out on time.
Also keep in mind that the ways members speak here is not necessarily a reflection of how they behave at work - AN gives us a place to vent surrounded by people who (mostly) ubderstand where we're coming from.
I understand a place is always needed to vent. It just seems that some stuff should be filed away in your head and left unsaid. I am new at all of this and trying to understand the lingo and irritation towards pt's. I come from a 13 year career of being a leading veterinary tech. Now, we used to say callous and hateful things about the owners b/c they were hateful and callous! But, the pt's were different. They can't help it and needed me. Forgive me of not "getting" it yet on some of this (seriously). I do mean it though that a lot of what was said was freaking hilarious but some of it was really disturbing.
Specializes in med-surg, psych, ER, school nurse-CRNP.
I invite you to look in the upper right hand corner of your screen. See that little red box with the white X? That'll cure what ails you, should you not like what you're reading. Just click and POOF!, all the bad people go away. You truly DON'T get it, or you would not say the things you do, and by reprimanding the people that come to vent on a VENT THREAD (which is a thread specifically for the purposes of venting), you only serve to further alienate yourself from those of us who would otherwise be more than willing to enlighten you.
No one likes to be judged for being human, and getting mad about the crap you have to put up with in this three-ring-circus we call a career is more than human. Look at it this way, venting about it here may be what's keeping us from following through in real life.
And the main difference between your previous fur-and-feather-bearing patients and the ones we are debating? They CAN help it in most cases, and while the DO need our help, the lengths that they go to to make this known sometimes verge on the ridiculous.
Angelfire's right that the key difference between animal and human patients is that the latter have a lot more control over both the condition - at least some of the time - and their behaviour.
I sometimes think students should only have access to their own vent threads because sometimes you really can only get it when you've been out there, and when an unsuspecting and idealistic student wanders in and speaks up about what s/he sees as callous and cold comments s/he gets smacked down. It's not eating our young or horizontal violence - it's experience, frustration and annoyance at being judged by someone who hasn't even tried on our shoes, let alone walked a mile in them through every human body fluid.
PS Some patients are just as hateful and callous as the owners you mentioned
Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.
Angelfire's right that the key difference between animal and human patients is that the latter have a lot more control over both the condition - at least some of the time - and their behaviour.
I sometimes think students should only have access to their own vent threads because sometimes you really can only get it when you've been out there, and when an unsuspecting and idealistic student wanders in and speaks up about what s/he sees as callous and cold comments s/he gets smacked down. It's not eating our young or horizontal violence - it's experience, frustration and annoyance at being judged by someone who hasn't even tried on our shoes, let alone walked a mile in them through every human body fluid.
PS Some patients are just as hateful and callous as the owners you mentioned
With all due respect, some Nurses spoke up about the bedpan post as well. So it isn't just students that are shocked by that comment.
I am a student, I have been a patient many times, I enjoyed reading 99% of this thread, I like reading a lot of these types of threads because I feel like it gives me an inside look as to what I am getting myself into. A lot of students are in Clincals so they are out their shadowing nurses and seeing a bit of what is going on.
Like I said, I enjoyed just about all of this thread, the Bedpan comment and vent comment seemed appalling to me. I do know what it is like to ask for a bed pan and have the nurse show annoyance and attitude like you are burdening her (her in this case). Regardless, my point was, it was not just idealistic and unsuspecting students that were rubbed wrong by that particular comment. Some nurses were as well.
You truly DON'T get it, or you would not say the things you do, and by reprimanding the people that come to vent on a VENT THREAD (which is a thread specifically for the purposes of venting), you only serve to further alienate yourself from those of us who would otherwise be more than willing to enlighten you.
When I said "Forgive me of not "getting" it yet on some of this (seriously)", I meant it. I was thanking him/her for trying to enlighten me. I was not being smartalicked or rude. I seriously DON'T get it. I am new BUT I am not new to knowing when to say some pretty crass stuff and when not to.
I am not sorry for my previous post. I meant that, too. I do not want to alienate myself from anyone that can help me further myself. I didn't want to make anyone mad BUT I did and that's ok. I can deal with it.
I am not here today and gone tomorrow after a nasty posting. I am not meek and mild either. I will say what I need to say but I won't be vulgar, hateful or sorry about saying it.
Anyway, nice to meet you and hope we can post again soon under a happier circumstance :trc:
I'd like to point out that the bedpan post wasn't by me, and I haven't ever consciously expressed annoyance or the impression that I'm being burdened by my patients in this context.
My response to this subsection of the thread was to contextualise how one can feel this way, and how an apparently little thing like interrupting handover to provide a pan can have ramifications that are most likely invisible to both the patient and to less experienced nurses. You're right, Mi Vida Loca, it wasn't only students who responded unfavourably to the first bedpan post, and it was unfair of me to imply otherwise.
In my defense, there have been other occasions when vents of all kinds have been protested in a similar vein, and it's been my experience that only students include in their criticism/concern admonitions to take retraining, accusations of burnout and heartlessness based solely on one post, or "reminders" about what a nurse is and where nursing came from. It was that, and jrw's final comment that I responded to:
Have some of you been out of school too long to remember why you wanted to be a nurse in the first place? Has the bureaucracy burned you out? If so, the University's and local college's are offering some GREAT courses for re-training America's work force. The taxpaying public is even paying for it. I will get you the number if you are too busy to look it up.
This is jrw's first post on AN. That tone goes beyond being rubbed the wrong way. The original bed pan post also made me uncomfortable, but my first response wasn't to assume that the poster was a heartless burnout who ought to retrain or retire.
Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.
I'd like to point out that the bedpan post wasn't by me, and I haven't ever consciously expressed annoyance or the impression that I'm being burdened by my patients in this context.
My response to this subsection of the thread was to contextualise how one can feel this way, and how an apparently little thing like interrupting handover to provide a pan can have ramifications that are most likely invisible to both the patient and to less experienced nurses. You're right, Mi Vida Loca, it wasn't only students who responded unfavourably to the first bedpan post, and it was unfair of me to imply otherwise.
In my defense, there have been other occasions when vents of all kinds have been protested in a similar vein, and it's been my experience that only students include in their criticism/concern admonitions to take retraining, accusations of burnout and heartlessness based solely on one post, or "reminders" about what a nurse is and where nursing came from. It was that, and jrw's final comment that I responded to:
This is jrw's first post on AN. That tone goes beyond being rubbed the wrong way. The original bed pan post also made me uncomfortable, but my first response wasn't to assume that the poster was a heartless burnout who ought to retrain or retire.
It's all good, I knew it wasn't your post, I happen to enjoy most of your posts (most because I am sure I don't see all of them, but most of the times I enjoy your posts that I do see) the person that posted it didn't say anything about it happening constantly or anything, so going off what was said, it seemed hmmmm I dunno, I don't know the poster, I have no idea what type of nurse they are etc. etc. but it was a bit shocking to read.
I mean I don't know the circumstance that sparked the post, and I can imagine having report interrupted can set things back, as a patient though I also know the humiliation of having to ask for a bed pan, (especially when the nurse wants to stand there and stare at you waiting for you to go even when you say you got it *hinting for privacy*) and how urgent the need to void can come and fear of not making it when waiting. So maybe that post was a bit of a touchy subject for me, and I am a bit biased, I dunno.
But none the less. I have nothing but respect for you Talaxandra, I was just bringing light that even fellow nurses were taken aback by the post :)
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Caffeine_IV
1,198 Posts
I don't like making multiple trips to your room for minor things. Please tell me ALL that you need before I leave.
I'm busy. Just because I'm not sweating, running and there isn't an emergency going on..I'm busy.
To the pt. family member..I'm sorry you are allergic to whatever pain medicine..this patient is not. We do not need to hear about the reaction you had.
I really don't know when the doctor is coming in. No I will not give you an estimate because you will try to complain later if they are even an hour past what I said.
You don't have to want something everytime I come into the room.
I believe you if you say you are in pain. The extra moaning and writhing is really not necessary.
You're my favorite patient.