Too many know it "allnurses"

[TigerGalLE]

Who are these "know it all" nurses that frequent this forum? Are you here just to drive me crazy? I hate that we are no longer allowed to vent about our bad day or complain about annoying patients. Heaven forbid we say something negative or we will be labeled as "heartless" and "unprofessional." Are these people who know everything really nurses? Do they really deal with the public day in and day out like I do?

Sometimes patients need to be put in their place. That doesn't make me a bad nurse for telling them so. Yes I do have negative thoughts about my non compliant patient who doesn't have insurance and frequents my hospital 4 times a week for the same thing. Yes, getting your prescription filled and taking your medicine would save everyone a lot of time and headache... Whoops maybe I shouldn't have said that... that makes me a "complainer" and "uncaring." I guess I AM "what is wrong with nursing today."

And heaven forbid I wear my Tom and Jerry scrub top to work.. That makes me "brainless."

I bet now I will be labeled "cruel" or "harsh" for starting this "hateful" thread.

Oh and I better not use too many smileys!!

Tiger

[CrazierThanYou]

Oh,and those same threads that keep getting posted over and over again,such as "shall I go for rn or lpn? And "adn vs bsn?" as if they are beating a dead horse.

Amen.

[Otessa, BSN, RN]

To the OP-I have thought many of the same thoughts but the difference is in the outward appearance while thinking those thoughts.

Don't let on that the 'frequent flier' is back because they didn't follow directions and you are annoyed by their incompetence.

I have been accused of a Pollyana Attitude. Believe me, I would lose my job if I said what I was thinking or shot daggers from my eyes for what patients and co-workers have said and done.

Sometimes you have to Fake It To Make It.

Cheers,

otessa

[nursemike, ASN, RN]

I agree with the ToS that personal attacks are never appropriate, even though they can be hard to resist from time to time. I'm not impressed with "holier than thou" attitudes. And I must think people have a right to vent, because I continue to look at threads that are vents, although I've been working on finding an internal filter so my brain will just click out of the ones that seem like "Wah, wah, wah..."

So, my comments aren't aimed at TigerGale, but I do have some gripes (venting) about the whole "vent" thing. To wit: Someone comes on to vent about something, and you dare to post a contradictory opinion, and you're a big jerk (knowitall, even) and can't you see they just needed to vent? (Often, they start with "My Preceptor is such a--)

I don't agree with the suggestion, if you can't say something nice, don't say anything. I was still a newbie when one of the doctors I worked with called me to discuss a situation in which my patient didn't receive the care she needed as promptly as necessary. Some of this was due to my lack of skill, but a lot of it was not my fault, or at least not directly. I was taking some criticism from a more senior resident for decisions made or not made by the resident on call. I was taking some criticism for some things beyond anyone's control. And, as I said, I was taking some criticism for my own failures. And what really stung was I was taking some criticism--polite, completely professional, constructive criticism--from one of my favorite docs, one you never minded paging, because she wouldn't make you feel like an idiot, even when you were. And, the thing is, I learned a ton from that incident. Way more than all of the "You're doing greats," you get when you're a struggling newbie. Only time and practice could improve my skills, but that butt chewing improved my thinking dramatically over the next day or so. If I had that same patient, I still might not be able to get an IV started--people who were way better than I was, better than I am yet, tried and failed. But I'd be a better advocate and more aware of my options, because I don't want another favorite doc telling me, "That's unacceptable..."

My long-winded point is, sometimes things you'd rather not hear are more helpful than support and encouragement. So my challenge to venter is, do you really just want everyone to agree how stupid your patients are, or how mean your co-workers are, or arrogant doctors are? Or do you think you could maybe handle an occassional suggestion as to how you might do something to improve things?

So, to get to "flaming," the OP: if you have a pt who won't take his pills, do you consider coming allnurses to gripe about him adequate intervention? Would I be out of line if I offered an idea--getting one of those "day of the week" pill boxes, for example--to do more than complain? Now, this is a hypothetical flame. I do get that the OP was blowing off steam and trust that she has tried to get patients to take better care of themselves, and I know my suggestion is both elementary and lame--lame because I have one of those boxes and still forget to take my pills. But a lot of the other vents are about problems a lot less intractable than non-compliant patients, and more than a few times one of the solutions may involve the nurse changing her attitude. I have no doubt TigerGale realizes that patients are not noncompliant because they want to annoy her. But I wouldn't feel I was attacking anyone if I said that. That's quite a different statement than "Where's your compassion?" But, too often, it's apt to be about as well received. And, frankly, I've seen a few posts where people venting really do need to just grow up, and I'm working on just skipping them.

So, I dunno. Maybe we just need a special vent forum with no reply function. Or maybe we should adopt a convention that "Vent" means please don't disagree with me, because I'm not interested in discussion. Maybe the world needs an allcrybabies.com board with a special "There, there," key. But, hey, I'm just venting...

[Fiona59]

Mike have you ever worked in LTC? I remember a patient who would refuse to take his meds (he only had six and in LTC that's not a lot) if certain nurses were working. He had a favourite nurse. Did she administer his meds in any different manner from the others? No. He just liked her.

Your name always makes me smile, we used to have a "Nurse Mike" on my unit some shifts. He was a medic moonlighting from the local garrison. All 6 foot of him, would march into a room and say "hi, I'm Mike your nurse" look around him and walk out. The Charge used to give him the crankiest old ladies who were stuck in surgery while waiting discharge. They'd have driven us all nuts with their demands and then Mike would appear and they'd behave. After telling us how that "charming young man" made them do things for themselves. I never knew if they became compliant because he was kinda hot or if it was just his bluntness.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

good points canoehead and ruby! i'm in such a good mood i'm not even upset that ruby makes me feel old by forcing me to enlarge her responses to 125% even though she's near my age and should know better. ha ha ha, i kid you, ruby. :)

hey, i'm older than you. i just have better trifocals!

[metal_m0nk, BSN, RN]

[

That used to bug me, but it doesn't anymore. Posting on allnurses doesn't follow the Google search model. In fact, they might get more info from doing the Google search than they will by tossing it out to the members and awaiting a response- which sometimes takes 3 or 4 days. People come here for immediacy and a need to interact with others. If it came to a choice- I'd rather have a bazillion "shut off at 75- what does that mean????" thread titles than someone search "shut off at 75", get their avalanche of results, and go away without posting anything. They miss quite a bit of what's unique about allnurses- it's dynamic format.

Back to the OP's points that refer to "the Other" thread, I'm totally generalizing here- but every couple of months or so, a pre-nursing student will descend from on high and bless us with "The Ten Problems You Have" or "Just Some Observations"(code for verbal evisceration) They were a somethin-or-other at XYZ Corporation, you see. That means they're special. It also means, at long last, someone has finally rescued us from ourselves. :bow: Thank you, oh thank you so much! Teamwork! Who knew? The thing is, these posts all sound the same. Also, to borrow a phrase I am talking about SOME, not ALL people who come from prior careers that caused their egos to grow into monstrous proportions.

The people who want to tell us how negative we are! So catty! "I've read this entire thread and---" Why? Seriously, what really motivates a person to torture themselves reading through 95 posts just so they can tell us how messed up we are? Geez, go read Success Stories in Nursing or keyword search "hugs" (197 posts-hugs 38 posts-hugz :)) and leave us to do our thing- we have some really great moderators here. Uh, oh. I turned this into a rant, didn't I? I'm sorry. :angthts:

Thank you sincerely for posting this, for cutting through the BS and having the guts to say something about it.

[metal_m0nk, BSN, RN]

what bugs me is the folks who jump in and say "i haven't got time to read the whole thread, but you guys have it all wrong because . . ." if you're going to verbally eviscerate a whole group of people, make sure what you're talking about first! don't just make blanket judgments based on the first few posts in a lively thread!

very much in agreement.

...or those who don't admit it, but it is quite evident that they haven't.

[nursemike, ASN, RN]

Mike have you ever worked in LTC? I remember a patient who would refuse to take his meds (he only had six and in LTC that's not a lot) if certain nurses were working. He had a favourite nurse. Did she administer his meds in any different manner from the others? No. He just liked her.

Your name always makes me smile, we used to have a "Nurse Mike" on my unit some shifts. He was a medic moonlighting from the local garrison. All 6 foot of him, would march into a room and say "hi, I'm Mike your nurse" look around him and walk out. The Charge used to give him the crankiest old ladies who were stuck in surgery while waiting discharge. They'd have driven us all nuts with their demands and then Mike would appear and they'd behave. After telling us how that "charming young man" made them do things for themselves. I never knew if they became compliant because he was kinda hot or if it was just his bluntness.

Never worked LTC, not 6 feet tall, and as for hotness...well, let's just say I have a nice personality. I have occassionally been told I do well with difficult patients--i.e., behaviorally difficult. Medically difficult, I do my best for them, and sometimes that's good enough, but sometimes my best is finding someone who knows what they're doing.

I hope I didn't come across as busting the OP's chops. I've followed nurses I like and admire who've told me in report that a patient was the world's greatest jerk, then gotten along just fine with that patient. It doesn't mean the other nurse was doing anything wrong. There truly are some patients who are easier if you have a Y chromosome, and others who are just more compatible with certain personalities. If all my patients were happy with me, I could maybe think I was doing something better than others, although I've now been around long enough to know it would probably really mean I wasn't being assertive enough. But I've been cussed at and swung at and talked down to enough to figure I'm a pretty average nurse. I also gripe, sometimes just because I like to gripe, and I cuss at the med cart and kick the Pyxis far too often to qualify for sainthood, but I usually do refrain from acting upon my worst impulses, and I keep coming back. After one particularly bad shift, not long after orientation, I decided that if I came back to work the next night, I'd call myself a nurse, and I did, so I am.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

my long-winded point is, sometimes things you'd rather not hear are more helpful than support and encouragement. so my challenge to venter is, do you really just want everyone to agree how stupid your patients are, or how mean your co-workers are, or arrogant doctors are? or do you think you could maybe handle an occassional suggestion as to how you might do something to improve things?

.

and sometimes, i think, it's easier to "hear" these things from strangers on the internet than from someone you have to work with day after day and week after week. for instance, wouldn't you rather be told that chewing gum with your mouth open, snapping and popping and blowing bubbles looks juvenile and unprofessional by strangers on the internet so you could pretend that your colleagues might actually have not noticed you doing so?

[cherrybreeze, ADN, RN]

I've been here about three years and it is pretty much the same. There are threads that heat up and I honestly think that is a good thing. As many know, I love a good...discussion even if I'm on the loosing end. I know some take my posts as being harsh; however, candid conversation without the passive aggressiveness of the working environment we all know and love is a good thing IMHO. We do not help our selves by avoiding discussion.

Regarding students, the ability to do your own work and to find information will make or break you in nursing school. Asking for a spoon feeding without doing any leg work is a recipe for failure. Of course, we use our peers when we have questions at work; however, your ability to find quality, evidenced based information will make or break you as a student and will make or break you as a provider. Much information thrown out is false or not based on good evidence based practice. A good student should take most everything said on public forums as suspect and verify that information by use of good resources. Sorry if you get your feelings hurt, but the lessons you learn by finding information will be worth their weight in the souls of people whose lives depend on you providing good care based on the best information available.

With that I do not advocate personal attacks. Yeah, things can get heated and even aggressive, but I try to stay away from attacking somebody on a personal level.

The bolded statement is one of the things that has always bothered me. Heaven forbid you suggest to a student asking a homework question that they do the work themselves; inevitably, someone else will come along and tell you how "mean" you are. It's not done in a "mean" spirit, it truly IS in their best interests, but perceived as "mean" nonetheless.

[cherrybreeze, ADN, RN]

I also think people have different definitions of "personal attacks" and what is "mean." I work with some people that will run to the boss and complain about every little thing about a colleague...one day, maybe they were having a bad day and were a little "short" compared to normal. Better run to the boss and tell them that that person has a bad attitude. Etc, etc. I've heard of complaints made to the boss that I could not imagine going and making, I mean....some things you just have to let roll. If someone snaps at me, one time, I consider that maybe, they're having a stressful day. Maybe something is going on at home, that I don't know about. "Tattling" on them sure isn't going to make their situation BETTER. I cut them a little slack. I think a similar principle applies here.

I know I'm probably considered someone that's "mean"....I consider it, being honest. I don't blow smoke, and speaking a contrary opinion is NOT an attack on the poster themselves. I HAVE been outright put down here before, but it never crossed my mind to PM a mod and whine about it. It hurt, yes, but it's one faceless person on the internet. I realize that they do NOT know me, my life, or how I do my job. They can take one typed post, with no inflection, and twist it anyway they like to create an image of me. They can turn ANY criticism, constructive, whatever, and turn it around and think it's an insult to them personally. It's not. I don't know them, either. People tend to forget that, I think.

As far as forums in general go, I have belonged on a few over the years, of varying themes. I think this one is MILD, in terms of how "heated" threads get. Very mild. I have seen SO much worse, and on a regular basis. When you get this many people together (this is by far the forum with the largest membership I've been a part of), you're going to have personalities that do not mesh. It's just a fact. You're not going to like everyone. You're not going to get all responses that you "like" when you post something. Take from it what you need to, and move on. Sometimes, it's a matter of not being so sensitive and taking things so personally....it's not.

[nursel56]

Triquee- thank you for the kind words

Ruby- gonna stop by CVS and pick up a pair of those magnifier glasses- but no beaded chain attached " :) please resume previous text size --

I think one of the things that bothered me most was the original post that prompted the Problem With Nursing thread was a short, half joking post titled "hugs to you floor nurses" that I'd guess 90% of nurses would have understood. To anyone else, it might have been interpreted differently- but this individual clobbered the author of the post and brought out the "if you hate people so much why are you a nurse" etc. If an experienced nurse was offended by the lighthearted crack about the vexing behavior of the patient, they likely would have addressed the issue of burnout, not dropped the anvil, and suggested that author seek out another line of work.