I touched on this on another thread, but doing peer evaluations not too long ago, I came across a new question asking whether the nurse was too respectful or too friendly with the doctors. I don't recall the exact wording, unfortunately, but I took it to mean whether the nurse was able to act independently as an advocate for his/her patients. It gave me a bit to think about, because I do tend to have a lot of respect for doctors and will defer to their judgement if I don't feel strongly that they're wrong. It's not that I particularly want to be their buddy (although I generally do like most of them) but in a lot of cases I can understand their rationale, even when I don't entirely agree. Pain meds would be a prime example. I have let a doc slide on waiting for the day shift to reevaluate pain meds when I was already giving a lot, but the patient was still complaining of severe pain. (For what it's worth, and I know we aren't supposed to do this, I do firmly believe the patient was overstating her pain, but I also believe her actual pain was higher than acceptable, and in the case I'm thinking of, I wish I had advocated a little harder.)
So I'm curious to hear what others think about where to draw the line. I'm too old and too ugly to be interested in being anybody's handmaiden, but I don't want to be a jerk or exceed my scope of practice, either.
GrumpyRN63, ADN, RN
833 Posts
Great chatting with you nursemike, I'm sure your pts really appreciate you, BTW gotta love the Frank Zappa reference :rckn: