Tired and burnt out from the abuse

[NurseK93]

Hi everyone.

I’ve been working as a bedside RPN on a medical floor for the past three years. And I am starting to feel extreme burnout and overwhelmed. I feel more stressed now after three years with my feet on the floor then when I first started if that makes any sense at all. I have been feeling this way for a while, but have also just started at a new hospital which has made all my feelings 100x worse.

Being at the bedside is really starting to take an emotional toll on me. For example, I just finished up a night shift where I was covering a nurse on break who had a patient alert/oriented who just kept hammering on the bell all night.

She wanted her primary nurse, we explained to her she was on break but she’ll come see her when she’s back. Kept calling because she felt “bloated” (at 1am) her bed wasn’t as “comfortable” as at home etc. Finally after a time she had called, and I went back in and she was snoring just to call me 5 minutes later, I told her it was 2am try to use the call bell for urgent issues, I had just been in here and it’s very disruptive to all the other patients when the call bell is ringing in the hall.

Well this lady becomes absolutely irate. Talking to me so condescendingly that she doesn’t care and she’s a patient I can’t talk to her like that, and that I’m incompetent, and that I’m “scolding her”.

The charge nurse was in when this was happening and comes over and she started getting snippy with her telling her to mind her own business and why was she even in this conversation. Until she found out she was the nurse in charge of course. Then proceeds to tell her that I am “insubordinate” and wants the contact information of a manager that I have no business being in this profession and belittling me with every insult under the sun for the next 5 minutes. And it is times like these, when I’m standing here listening to this, not being able to defend myself at 2am while my fiancée is sleeping alone so I can come work these night shifts to “help people”. But really it’s me holding back tears for the rest of my shift as I’m condescended and verbally assaulted like a 2nd rate citizen. And then I stop and think what the actual f am I doing with my life?!?! NONE of my friends/fiancée EVER leave work with stories even CLOSE to that type of treatment/disrespect.

And we all know that’s really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to abuse. That doesn’t even touch into the violence, management and safety issues on the floors everyday.

Anyway, I guess I just needed to rant. Now I’m going to have a large glass of wine and stress until I have to go back and do it all over again ?

[MunoRN, RN]

There's certainly nothing acceptable or appropriate about the patient's behavior, but how personally you choose to take their comments is also largely up to your control.

People who, at their best, are generally unpleasant get far more intolerable when they're not feeling their best, so their behavior is largely a symptom of their underlying reason for hospitalization, and just as it's not a good use of your energy to take a person's acute heart failure on existing chronic heart failure as being your fault, it also makes no sense to take personal ownership of a patient's lack of coping skills.

Set boundaries, make the patient aware of those boundaries, and move on to your next priorities and don't allow a manipulative patient to alter those priorities.

[MunoRN, RN]

On 11/17/2019 at 9:38 PM, mmc51264 said:

They have no choice. No one has never NOT signed it.

They are under no obligation to sign a behavior contract. The only reason to tolerate an abusive patient is that there are legal obligations to continuing to care for the patient (EMTALA), in which case the facility is obligated to continue to provide treatment regardless of whether the patient agrees to a behavior contract. Outside of IV drug users seeking new valves, the only patient I've had who 'signed' one just wrote "*** you" on it.

[KCLSEA]

Wow, I am sorry that the patient treated you so poorly. The charge nurse should have stepped up and alleviated the situation. Is this sort of treatment very common in the profession? I am a pre-nursing student, and none of the nurses that I talk to seem to ever bring up the hard parts of their job.

[LovingLife123]

I had a patient like this recently. I’m dayshift and had the pt complain about the night shift nurse to everyone who would listen, including the doctor. She just could not believe that nurses got one hour breaks.

I set her in her place a little. Kindly, but firmly. I was not going to tolerate her shenanigans. She got a little huffy with me and I’m sure will write a bad review. But I truly think I could have been Mother Teresa herself and she would have had an issue. Some people cannot be pleased.

A glass of wine is well deserved and just forget about this one. You’ll make that difference the next shift.

[brownbook]

Every one who has any dealings with customers, any body who works in the food service or hospitality business, clerks from grocery stores to high end boutiques, tech support workers, etc., gets mistreated, yelled at, by customers.

I know I can get very short tempered trying to explain or understand technical issues related to computers when I'm on the phone to tech support. Not proud of it.

It is not just nurses!

[MSO4foru, ADN]

KCLSEA..... I graduated nursing school in 2005. My first RN job was on a Medical Cardiology Stepdown Unit, rather quickly one of my mentors was a Master's degree RN who had been on that unit for 10+ yrs. One of the first things she told me was " I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you missed when bedside nursing was good by about 10 yrs". I have an occasional " good" night , but am inclined to say she was Very right.

[Kooky Korky, BSN, RN]

On 11/18/2019 at 1:35 PM, KCLSEA said:

Wow, I am sorry that the patient treated you so poorly. The charge nurse should have stepped up and alleviated the situation. Is this sort of treatment very common in the profession? I am a pre-nursing student, and none of the nurses that I talk to seem to ever bring up the hard parts of their job.

I think life happens all the time, in every line of work.

Some jobs, like law enforcement, nursing frequently see people at their worst. People are scared, in psychic and/or physical pain, or they are worried about their sick loved ones, etc.

Imagine being dependent on someone else, often a total stranger, for using the bedpan or toilet, for washing, for intimate hygiene matters, for getting a drink of water, getting in and out of bed, and so on. Put yourself in the shoes of a weak, sick person, perhaps old and lonely and exhausted and everything else bad you can think of. Then you will begin to get a picture of what it's like to take care of sick folk.

You might want to volunteer or work a little in a hospital or other nursing facility to start seeing some of this first hand.

Best wishes.