I'm the weekend supervisor in a LTC/Rehab facility. We are 75% rehab so dealing with unbelievable family members is par for the course. but last night....i had one that just took the cake!
I'm walking around the desk when this woman, about my age...well dressed...looked like someone that would have common sense and "know how to act in public" type person. until she opened her mouth anyways...
she walks straight up to me, got right in my personal face and put her nose about 2 inches from mine screaming "I dont want my mother to have any pain medicine!! She's immune to pain!"
um..ok. btw...who's your mom? lol. doncha love it when people yell at you about their loved one but dont tell you who or what room? yep, i can read your mind.
anyhoo...smile plastered on my face I attempt toget the the details of what we were talking about. she keeps yelling at me that she cant believe we offered her mom pain medicine! then she tells me "some woman came in the room last night and actually asked my mom if she was in pain and did she need anything!! icant believe yall would ask that!!" (i swear i'm not making this up)
i say "ma'am. we are a rehab center. therapy often causes pain and our nurses always ask the patients if they need any pain meds or if they are in pain because many times older patients dont want to 'bother' us by asking for pain meds"
she says "are you kidding me? you really ask people if they are hurting?? thats just setting people up for trouble and thats terrible nursing!!!"
(pick your mouths up of the floor people...i swear i'm not making this up,lol)
so then she says "well my friend is a nurse and she said you shouldnt be asking people if they are in pain"
I couldnt resist a little sarcasm at this point. indulge me, it was just a little, lol. so i tell her "ma'am, actually pain is considered the 5th vital sign by joint commission so it is something we not only ask people every night, but we ask them every shift and many times during the day and if your friend who is a nurse is not doing that with her patients then she is not assessing them properly as ALL nurses are supposed to assess pain level as it is as important as taking a blood pressure"
(heck, i was proud for ONLY saying that,lol)
so then she proceeds to start yelling at me and saying (all the while, almost nose to nose with me...despite me continually backing up until my back was up against the desk) saying..."my mother is immune to pain!" and telling me how her mother never hurts and we will NOT ask her if she hurts. (btw..her mom has in fact asked for pain meds because she was IN PAIN, lol)
so on and on she goes until she starts saying "she even broke her thumb and when i grabbed it like this and pulled as hard as i could it didnt hurt her!" and as she said that, she grabbed my thumb on my right hand and proceeded to pull it as hard as she could. she pulled it so hard it actually popped! and then she continued to hold onto it as hard as she could saying "i did that and it didnt hurt her!!!"
I said "ma'am, that might not have hurt your mom but it is darned sure hurting me and take your hands off me right now!"
(i told, i am not making this up, lol)
she looked at me like i'd offended her and didnt even apologize.
i ended up telling her it would be my pleasure (thats what we are supposed to say,lol) to let the NP know in the morning that she'd like the pain meds d/c'd. she then says "i do not have the time to come wait on her so you just have her call me so i can tell her how my mother doesnt feel pain ever". i just smiled and said "i'd be more than happy to leave her that note":D and i did! shoot, i wanted to tell her if her mom was immune to pain she was a medical miracle and i was telling everyone! not just the NP. lol, but i didnt. she'd allready tried to pull my thumb off...i didnt know what she'd do next,lol. oh, she also had pointed her finger in my face and hit my nose with her finger too during her tirade.
everyday that i think it cant get any worse with family members...somebody comes along and proves me wrong.
can yall believe this? anyone else meet this woman or someone like her?
and can anyone tell me in what other career something like this could happen? somewhere where people think it is perfectly fine to come into a facility and act like this and in the eyes of the law, literally assault someone and it be perfectly fine?
i guess her demands were just par for the course for me.
...
it's the confrontational manner that these people come into the building with that drives me nuts! they walk thru the door and you can see on their face sometimes that they are there for a fight. you know it from the way they walk up to the desk and demand the supervisor. it's the irrational thinking, the insane demands that leave me wondering what they think gives them the right to treat us like that!
where does that mindset come from??
...
so thus my search continues for the root cause of what right these people have to treat us like the poo on the bottom of their shoe!
I think it's a combination of multiple societal factors. But nurses who fail to react in the same manner they would if the same set of events occurred while standing on line at the supermarket certainly contribute to the perpetuation of the situation.
If Adult Protective Services hasn't already been called they need to be. She admits to pulling on her mother's broken thumb which is abusive and then was nuts enough to do it to this nurse as well. The patient needs to be protected here ASAP.
And these people who want to withhold meds from injured family members are nuts. If the doctor orders it and it's right dose, etc. we give it. Period.
I'm glad your NM got involved and that this could all be on tape. What nerve!! I hope your thumb is okay. I also agree that in the future you call security and/or the police to file charges. No one has the right to do that to you.
like 'who is your family member'..or what room are we talking about. Like you're supposed to know....that is your one and only patient....
LOL, I work in home health and we get calls all the time, start in telling us about mom or dad, or asking questions, and we have no idea who they are talking about....we only have little over 100 patients in our office...so we should know right off the bat who mom or dad is..right???
Gosh if she did this to you with out thinking twice then i can only imagine what she is doing to her poor mother. I would notify adult protective services about this psycho.
I have to tell yall...we had absolutely what i thought was the worst family in the world. every day they were attacking nurses and threatening to get them fired. unreal at the demands.
anyhoo...one day her son decided to take her out for a car ride. they were forever insisting we get her up to walk when she was very obese and hadnt walked in years! lol.
so this day he takes her out. i asked therapy to help get her in the car cuz i was just over him. but when they came back, therapy was gone. we have cameras in our facility. we saw him pull up at the door and were sitting there groaing cuz they were back.
until.......
when he got her out of the car, he couldnt lift her and barely got her on the edge of her wheelchair and dumped her in the flower bed!
i know, i know...i'm going straight to hell but so are yall so just get on the bus,lol...
we laffed till we cried!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and when he came in to scream at us to go pick her up and he was drenched in sweat and dirt...we were still laffing!
This EXACT scenario happened at my facility but the poor lady broke her ankle and had to have surgery and pins!
I just want yall all to know that i did everything to protect the patient by notifying the admin and social services and of course my DON.
istarted this thread because i needed to vent to people that can empathize and understand my frustration. we can tell our friends and family these stories but they just dont "know" like our nurse sisters and brothers. people outside of healthcare dont understand how unbelievable people can be to us.
i try so hard to be empathetic to family members even when they are acting insane. i try to remember that all they care about is their loved one. i try to remember that they are all aprehensive about putting their loved one in a rehab facility because of all the horror stories they hear. i wanttheir interactions with me to put them at ease that their mom/dad will be well taken care of. i try to put myself in their shoes. but sometimes you just cant when you meet crazythumblady or her friends!
had i done the same to her? ha! i'd be sitting in jail i'm sure and i sure wouldnt have a job.
one poster in this thread said (paraphrasing) that until we hold them accountable for their actions things like this won't stop. she is so right!
this thread has got me going from "who do they think they are to think they can treat us that way" to "why do i allow it?"
i have no answer yet. but then i've only had one cup of coffee.
I think the daughter was or is a drug addict. I've seen family members act similar to this because they are so afraid the pt. will become addicted to pain killers, like they did to illicit drugs.
This woman sounds like she needs to be admitted into a psych facility or her mom should be on a medical miracle show of some type.
shoot, i wanted to tell her if her mom was immune to pain she was a medical miracle and i was telling everyone! not just the NP. lol, but i didnt. she'd allready tried to pull my thumb off...i didnt know what she'd do next,lol. oh, she also had pointed her finger in my face and hit my nose with her finger too during her tirade.
Straydandelion
630 Posts
Hmmm, so while her Mom's thumb was broken, she pulled on it? Doesn't that sound almost abusive?