11 Things Your Nurse Thinks (But Will Never Tell You)
Since I've presented my top 10 list of the things I love about nursing, it's time now for a visit to the darker side. Here are some decidedly UN-lovely thoughts I've entertained from time to time:
1) If you yell "HELP!" one. more. time. without a really, really, REALLY good reason for it, I am going to come down there, shut the door, and give you a good dose of pillow therapy.
2) Sure, go ahead and sign out AMA. It's your choice. Just a reminder, though: if you leave, your insurance won't pay for your stay. Better yet, you won't be my responsibility anymore.........and believe me, I won't miss you.
3) I don't give a rodent's rump that you're related to the hospital administrator! The AMI patient down the hall who just went into V-tach needs me more than you need another blanket.
4) Thank you for asking me to check out your grandchildrens' photos, but I have a strict policy of never touching patients' wallets, and frankly, I don't have the time to breathe, let alone stand here looking at pictures of people I don't even know.
5) Yanno, when MY doctor prescribes water pills, I take them no matter how much I hate having to pee every 20 minutes. That's why I'm not in here for CHF, and you are.
6) No, "Mamma" is NOT going to get better, and if I were in her shoes, I'd haunt you for the rest of your days for keeping me 'alive' on a ventilator with my wrists tied down so I don't yank on the tubes coming out of my every orifice. She's had two major strokes and an MI, she's full of osteoporosis, and she has an advanced directive saying she didn't want any heroic measures if she ever got into a situation like this. What part of 'Do Not Resuscitate' don't you understand?
7) Please don't come to the ER for a sore throat that you've had for two weeks, demand refills on your soda pop every five minutes, and then complain loudly to your companion about the "lousy service" you're getting.
?Yes, I have seen something like that before. In fact, I've seen things you can't even imagine that are a whole lot worse.
9) It is NOT my job to: answer your phone/find you some napkins/take out your trash/send out for pizza/pick up after your visitors/run a message to your friend down the hall/go to the kitchen to fetch a tray for your brother/cater to your every whim. (I've done all these things and more for my patients; it's just not what I was educated and trained for, and you need to know that.)
10) I apologize for my cynicism, but experience has taught me that multiplying the number of drinks/pills/hits you admit to having taken by three or more tends to give me a more accurate picture of what's really going on with you.
11) I'm actually a very kind, compassionate, caring individual, but some folks make me wonder if God made man NOT in His own image, but so that skunks wouldn't think they've been given a dirty deal.
Specializes in Management, Emergency, Psych, Med Surg.
Dear OncRN77: I worked forever in one of the largest county hospitals in the country (level I trauma center) and we saw about 300-400 patients per day. There is absolutely nothing that I have not seen or heard. I have been assaulted, threatened, followed home, cussed out, asked out on dates, cleaned maggots out of wounds, seen toes eaten off by rats, seen every body part amputated or shot off and found a lot of people having sex in the stairwell. I know oncology is different. My mom had cancer and I spent all my time in the cancer hospital with her when she was being treated. It is a different environment and bless you for doing it because I could not. But PLEASE give us the pleasure of getting this stuff off our chest. You might get tried of oncology one of these days and do something else. In some other areas you run into people who are not so sweet.
Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.
You know, I understand that this post is funny but as I reviewed it I found that I had ACTUALLY said similar things to people in the past (and might in the future). After all these years I have finally learned that these people are adults. And they have to suffer the consequences of their actions (or rather WE have to suffer). So when the guy can't breath but wants to go down and smoke, go ahead. Just sign this AMA form first. You don't want your antibiotics, OK, that's fine with me. It is your foot that is going to rot and fall off, not mine. You want to call your lawyer, let me get the phone for you and you can call him now. You want to talk to the administrator, let me call him for you. I have said all these things to people. Not these old, little confused people, but this walking, talking stupid people who expect you to look and act like the "nurse" in the Media movie or something.
When I worked in Houston there was this consumer reporter for one of the news stations named Marvin Zindler. He had a very loud mouth and was always on someone's rear end about something (but in reality he was a real nice guy). I had this lady walk up to triage and express her profound dislike of the time she was having to wait to be seen. " I am going to call Marvin Zindler about this!!" she yells at me. I handed her the phone and told her "call him now. Perhaps he can get me some help up here". She went away.
You know, I will take all the time in the world to explain medications, treatments and the plan of care to any patient or their family. I do it every day. As the charge nurse on my floor sometimes I have the extra time to do this and I don't mind at all. But if I explain it and they still don't want it, then it is their choice. I hate it when the doctor writes an order that says "DO NOT ALLOW PATIENT TO LEAVE THE FLOOR" for a patient who is awake, alert and oriented. I am not the police. These people are not under arrest. I can't make these people stay on the floor. I can stop their PCA and pull their IV out but that's about it. I can't tie them down. I am 54 years old. Do they expect me to take down these patients? Then they tell me to call security. Well, they can't hold them either. They are not the police. Sometimes I just want to throw up my hands and just tell everyone around me "just do what ever you want to do. Just pretend I am not here".
This is why I left acute care for the relative calm of LTC. Thank you for reminding me of how much I really have to be grateful for!
In LTC, there are always a few 'special' residents and the hovercraft families, but overall, most of them are wonderful. Where I work, we have family members who are practically staff: they not only help feed, groom, and bathe their own loved ones, but look after the other residents as well and report any problems or concerns (which is valuable because they know the residents almost as well as we do). They serve juice and coffee and help pass trays. They fetch condiments from the kitchen and linens from the closet, and they'll even make beds to help us out. Needless to say, we are enormously appreciative of their assistance, and once in a while we hold a Family Appreciation day to thank them for all they do, because without them this job would be even harder than it is.
Of course, there are also the troublemakers whom I call "Pampers", basically because they are full of it and all over our butts from the minute they walk in the door in the morning. And I wonder: if we are so incompetent that they need to be in the building from dawn's early light until long after sundown, why don't they just take their relative home and care for him/her there? Why pay thousands of $ a month for nursing-home care when they don't trust us even to brush the resident's teeth twice a day?
But again, these are relatively few and far between when compared with what an acute-care nurse has to deal with, and indeed most of my OP came from my own Med/Surg experiences. From what I can see from others' posts, it's only gotten worse in the years since I ran, almost literally screaming, from my last hospital job........My hat's off to all of you who remain
in the trenches of acute care---you are braver nurses than I am, that's for sure!
To be fair, if you're an Onc. nurse (going by your profile), all of your patients have very real problems and complaints. Perhaps that gives you a different perspective?
I hate to break this to ya, but I can tell you as a longtime hemo/onco nurse and as a survivor of chemo (back when the good symptom management meds didn't exist and what was available was not nearly effective enough)....cancer does not make a saint out of a jerk, and I have had the patients that can prove it.
While we should never blame anyone for their disease, many of those w/cancer do have lifestyle issues/noncompliance issues/psych issues that have contributed substantially to development of the disease and difficulty coping w/cancer issues. Chronic drinkers/druggers w/liver cancer and renal damage. Smokers with stage 4 lung met. cancer that are on 100% O2 that request to outside to smoke, want me to TAKE them, and refuse to be made a DNR. I had a Paraplegic cancer pt ( knifed ), that would get mad if we would not take him to smoke IMMEDIATELY - drag himself to the floor and down the hall, buck naked, pulling out tubes and dressings, draining resistant bacterial secretions the length of the hall. His companions were barred from enterring the facility - something about some pesky legal and weapons charges. And upon occasion, when he returned, we found evidence that his IV (if he didn't pull them out) had been tampered with.
Just because people develop cancer...they don't necessarily become better people. A few do, many more do not.
As such the OP rings true for me, and thus my additional post about unique uses for the laundry chute.
I am sorry but I do not see cruelty or hatefulness in the OP - it is a vent and we ALL should be permitted to vent. It is safer here and less stressful to our families and loved ones.
Some people can paste a smile on their face and never let anger or other emotions get to them. These people worry me more than those that vent.
Oh, far from it! In fact, I think most nurses would admit to having the occasional not-so-angelic thought, especially when they're dealing with a patient or family that's being a PITA.
I'm ordinarily a very patient human being myself, but even I have my limits. Like when this one resident on my wing has been yelling "Help! Help! Help!' in a loud monotone for two solid hours. And beating the living snot out of the aides who try to help him. And causing 28 other people to lose sleep. And the Ativan, trazadone and Vicodin I gave him an hour ago haven't even fazed him............I mean, who WOULDN'T want to rock him to sleep with a 10-pound rock?? :chuckle
Been there sister nurse, been there! Thanks for putting a smile on my face.:)
:cheers: Thanks for the best laugh all day long, just got done with 3 long 12s, precepting as well (got to behave for the new RN,I have to appear to know all the answers, not i just ask lots of ?s of anyone handy). I must say I really could relate to wanting to have said all of those and possibly a few more went through the thought processes. One pt was coding, another was screaming & trying to punch and kick the newbie,(love the you tube haldol song will be singing that tomorrow at work), and BP climbing through the roof on 3rd, as the bp pt family asks have you been turning mom, OH PILLOW THERAPY for families thought popped up, and thank god it was shift change and a day off to rest and gain my sanity back to face another 3 shifts in a row. Keep the laughs coming. It is great to just relax and unwind and realize this is every nurse's day at work and not just mine. :idntdt:
Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.
Yanno, I was just thinking about what my next blog entry should be..........something along the lines of What Nurses Wish The Public Knew About Who We Are and What We Do........and Don't.
Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.
And as long as they consume ETOH to excess........take drugs.......overeat........and pull stupid stunts like they show on World's Most Shocking Police Chases/Bad Driving/Party Disasters/fill in the blank, we will most certainly remain employed.
My first job as an RN was in Oncology. Talk about work! It was crazy busy! Re; #6; while I cared deeply for my Oncology patients, what really got me was the denial the family's could be in. I wanted to scream "no, she's not going to get better, didn't the Dr tell you?" (probably not) It always took me by surprise when they would ask such naive-sounding questions like "when can she come home?" (Um, do you hear that rattle in her chest?) I never felt it was my place to be giving them such shocking news, but I would manage to tell them in my own way.
i don't know how many times i wished i could tell the pita parents of pediatric patients that if they weren't going to let us put in ivs, draw blood for tests, assess their children, and medicate them then why'd they take them to the hospital in the first place?
:cheers: Thanks for the best laugh all day long, just got done with 3 long 12s, precepting as well (got to behave for the new RN,I have to appear to know all the answers, not i just ask lots of ?s of anyone handy). I must say I really could relate to wanting to have said all of those and possibly a few more went through the thought processes. One pt was coding, another was screaming & trying to punch and kick the newbie,(love the you tube haldol song will be singing that tomorrow at work), and BP climbing through the roof on 3rd, as the bp pt family asks have you been turning mom, OH PILLOW THERAPY for families thought popped up, and thank god it was shift change and a day off to rest and gain my sanity back to face another 3 shifts in a row. Keep the laughs coming. It is great to just relax and unwind and realize this is every nurse's day at work and not just mine. :idntdt:
diane227, LPN, RN
1,941 Posts
Dear OncRN77: I worked forever in one of the largest county hospitals in the country (level I trauma center) and we saw about 300-400 patients per day. There is absolutely nothing that I have not seen or heard. I have been assaulted, threatened, followed home, cussed out, asked out on dates, cleaned maggots out of wounds, seen toes eaten off by rats, seen every body part amputated or shot off and found a lot of people having sex in the stairwell. I know oncology is different. My mom had cancer and I spent all my time in the cancer hospital with her when she was being treated. It is a different environment and bless you for doing it because I could not. But PLEASE give us the pleasure of getting this stuff off our chest. You might get tried of oncology one of these days and do something else. In some other areas you run into people who are not so sweet.