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?
nurses walk around with little haloes over thier heads
and a string of bad words muttered under their breath
I am totally convinced that if Florence Nightingale was alive today and working the floors, she would spend her shift with smoke shooting out of her ears, and swearing bad enough to shock a sailor.
I am totally convinced that if Florence Nightingale was alive today and working the floors, she would spend her shift with smoke shooting out of her ears, and swearing bad enough to shock a sailor.
Maybe, maybe not. But she would have a great time writing "The Art of Being a Patient/Visitor".
Industry does not have those damn press gainey reports which then dictate how good we doing. Wait until this next phase begins this year which is unless a patient gives the answer always, the hospital doesn't paid. god help us all.
OK, now i'm pist and need to vent. pardon me while i take my halo off for this post....
a little backstory first...
this incident with crazythumblady came at the very tail end of the worst work weekend of my life! having recently been bought out by a LTC company, staffing numbers have been cut and everyone is stressed out and on edge. of course, if you mention this to management you get the old "what do you mean we dont have enough staff".
remember when we all sat glued to our TVs and watched what happend in New Orleans during Katrina? remember all the crime we saw, all the horror stories the news people were brave to report, how the government abandoned them? and then suddenly one day the coverage stopped on those stories and we were basically told "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. none of that was true".
it's kinda like that.....
so anyhoo...worst weekend of my life! CNAs at literal war with each other, fighting all weekend long, fighting with their charge nurses, fighting with each other, nurses so stressed they were ready to cry and me along with them. ontop of all that, sick patients atop of sick patients...in and out of the ER, IVs out the butt, families yelling....it was horrid! i swear it was if all hell had broke loose in our building. i remember standing in the hallway sunday afternoon telling another nurse "i dont know how it happened but i have lost total control of this building".
it was so bad with the CNAs that by sunday afternoon i'd had enough and called them all together and tried to get them out of the problem and into the solution. yeah..that went over like a ton of bricks.
then at the end of this wonderful weekend, sunday night...enter crazythumblady.
so not only did i NOT lose it with crazythumblady, i hadnt lost it with anyone. i was kinda proud of myself for that because i actually went home sunday night and just cried.
so yesterday i get this call from my DON and ADON...speaker call...you know the kind...
she starts by telling me it's took her and the admin 3 days to deal with "the weekend". i say welcome to MY world. i'm expecting her to tell me the outcomes of all the issues with the staff and crazythumblady.
instead...she starts asking me questions about this and questions about that and saying that the CNAs were complaining about me. well hellofuzzy! when have we ever seen CNAs in trouble not try to point the blame on the supervisor?? i expected it...why didnt she?
oh wait! let me tell you this...over the past 2 months, I have been threatened by 2 family memebers of one CNA. her boyfriend, who i found out afterwards is in a real gang, threatened to kill me and then her sister threatend to cut me because i wouldnt pull the CNA off patient care to talk to her on the phone. what did we do about either of these??? oh nothing! even discouraged me from getting a restraining order against said gang member.
so she tells me that this cna complained i was picking on her. i wont go into listing all her "shortcomings" as a CNA. but i did give her a verbal warning over the weekend for not offering a patient his supper tray and saying he refused it.
so she (DON) goes on and on about how I should have reacted this weekend. seriously, she did! without answering my direct questions she implies that the new administrator is not happy with my performance and how i'd "better watch how i react and keep my cool because you know he can watch the cameras from his home dont you?"
oh give me a damn break!
I say "excuse me??? all i dealt with this weekend without losing my cool with the staff then i get physically assaulted and didnt lose my cool then either and he's not satisfied with my performance? are you kidding me???? i got PHYSICALLY ASAULTED! what did he say about that?"
i swear to all thats holy this is what she said "oh, i forgot to tell him that part."
so let me get this straight...you have spent the last 3 days throwing ME under the bus because YOU have let these CNAs run rampant for years and not be held accountable for their actions and not only do you throw me under the bus but you forget to tell him how a family member physically assaulted me and i kept a smile on my face??? are you kidding me??
i have worked there for years. love my DON with all my heart...shes also my friend. but with the new company, i know she feels insecure with her position as well. but never, and i mean NEVER would i have ever thought she would have thrown me under the bus as the result of her inactions in the past causing the staffing problems.
so today I am feeling very sad but i'm looking for other positions. it's time to go.
let her find someone else that crazythumblady can assault.
Good for you..you need to get out of that environment. Oh, and about the boss watching the cameras from home? I'd be sorely tempted to find out where these cameras were and drop my scrubs. They keep telling us to smile, right? So just give em' the ol' "vertical smile":D
I know, it's not good to burn bridges but it sure makes you feel better to just think of it!
Good for you..you need to get out of that environment. Oh, and about the boss watching the cameras from home? I'd be sorely tempted to find out where these cameras were and drop my scrubs. They keep telling us to smile, right? So just give em' the ol' "vertical smile":D
I know, it's not good to burn bridges but it sure makes you feel better to just think of it!
Industry does not have those damn press gainey reports which then dictate how good we doing. Wait until this next phase begins this year which is unless a patient gives the answer always, the hospital doesn't paid. god help us all.
are you serious?? is this in all hospitals?
cuz i was thinking of going back to the hospital. i'm telling yall..the yarn store looks better every minute!
i'm just so torn! granted, i know not to make any decisions with this mindset and even if i really do decide to take another job it will be after the holidays. but i'm just so disgusted with health care! i want to work in a yarn store!
i went back to work today and everybody that works there is now calling her crazythumblady! haha!
she walked up to the desk today and the unit clerk looked at me and we couldnt help it, we both cracked up! she just walked away and that made us laff harder.
What nursing needs is a new class in Nursing School that runs from day 1 with refreshers throughout a Nurses career, I call it the "Nurse Ninja", imagine crazythumblady and her friends get physically abusive and finding themselves thrown to the floor and tied up in a knot. They wouldn't do it again.
I know it is just fantasy but it illustrates the dilemma that we are in, we dont hold the power to stop this rot. While people get away with it, it will continue. Maybe a law similar to that of "Assault Police" should be bought in with similar penalties. If Admin gets all sad with Nurses calling the Police I believe a phonecall to the State OH&S board stating an "unsafe" workplace and citing reasons should ensure a crippling investigation which would change Admins attitude very quickly.
Patients...we used to have patients... then it was residents....then patients....now clients. Like we are the latest hotel and spa! LOL.
I work in long term care/rehab/sub acute/twilight zone Abuse is some one who did not get his sandwich at HS. This comes from dietay,not nursing....abuse is someone whose P.J.s are missing....this comes from laundry, not nursing.....My favorite......someone called me today from therapy, but I don't know why? (time of call? 9 am)
Better yet.....Can I speak to the DON? at 11 pm. Then there is the most commen one......."I got this bill today and I would like to speak to the office".....at 8 pm. My very, very favorite...... (on a 26 bed unit) "is my mom sleeping now?" and your mom is........
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.
Abuse is some one who did not get his sandwich at HS. This comes from dietay,not nursing....abuse is someone whose P.J.s are missing....this comes from laundry, not nursing.....My favorite......someone called me today from therapy, but I don't know why? (time of call? 9 am)
lpnflorida, LPN
1,304 Posts
I would love to be paid to stay home and do what ever I wanted to do. I use to think that would come with retirement someday.
Perhaps in my next life.