Tired and burnt out from the abuse

[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.