What Baffles You?

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So I have come across this a few times. I am holding a straw to a persons lips and they drink and drink and drink and pretty soon they are waving their hands for me to stop. Stop what?! You don't have to keep sucking on the straw just because it is in your mouth. I think the universal sign of I'm done please remove the straw should be to stop sucking on it and open your mouth! I have had a few people have to catch their breath and make comments about me giving them too much! What? I don't get it.

Specializes in PCCN.

Cause Jacho says so. :(

( or however its spelled)

I think the number pain scale is bogus.Someone who is writhing in pain will be >10.

Someone who wants their pain meds will be >10.

This is beating a dead horse.

I hope all you who have pain get some relief, no matter what the "number " is.

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Specializes in Pulmonary, Lung Transplant, Med/Surg.

I'll break the streak I started :)

When I was still working in the hospital we had a woman who's son was totally creepy. Only child and just totally creepy with how he behaved around his mother. She was very, very ill/late disease state and he just couldn't see it.

Anyway, she was stablized (after MONTHS) and transferred to a SNF. Two nights later I'm at the nurses station and the phone rings, it's the son DEMANDING to know what's going on with his mother at the SNF, apparently they had left a message on his phone saying they were transporting her back to the hospital. I tried repeatedly to explain to him that we are separate facilities and we don't receive any information after the patient leaves our building and he needs to contact the SNF for the information he wants. This went on for ten minutes, I offered to transfer him to the ER to see if she was down there. I put him on hold (sorry I didn't memorize the ER number!) and within the 10 seconds it took me to find the number he had hung up. (Thankfully after some investigating we figured out she was sent to another hospital in the system, phew!)

But seriously, how in God's name would I know ANYTHING about a patient that left two days ago?! This man was so nasty about it, too!

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Specializes in LTC, CPR instructor, First aid instructor..

I have had chest pain so severe I wasn't able to tell the doctor what type of pain meds I'm allergic to.

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Specializes in LTC, med/surg, hospice.

Patients who are admitted and complain from day one about being discharged. You could have stayed at home. I did not bring you here.

Patients that treat you like a maid. I do throw things away from the bedside table and empty the small trash. But I'm not mopping just because or cleaning your toilet.

Patients that act like they are harming us by leaving AMA. Umm..I don't care if you leave or stay. That is your body and health. I won't hold you against your will or beg you to stay.

Patients that wait until 1930 to ask about food from room service. Where I work they close at 6pm and it is written on the board and told to patients. I cannot get you a specific sandwich, fries etc after hours no matter how much you tell me you want it.

Family members that stay overnight with a nursing home patient. Do you stay at the nursing home also?

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Specializes in ED; Med Surg.

Yeah -- go ahead and sign out AMA! I don't care...perhaps in the crapshoot that is a new admission I will get lucky and get someone who appreciates my efforts.

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Argh! No- the pain cannot be "off the charts." If 10/10 is the very WORST pain you've ever had/ you can imagine (depending on who's asking) then it CANNOT be higher than 10. Just like when someone says that they've given 110% ... This makes me CRAZY! It's NOT possible to give more than 100%!! Look I'm all for dramatic effect and the use of hyperbole when the situation calls for it. I've been known to describe my own headaches as "an ice pick being driven into my left eye with a hammer wielded by the world's most enthusiastic carpenter." But numbers are numbers. People who rate pain anything higher than 10, and people who give/try/go 110% make me want to yell "don't you understand basic math???"[/quote']

Lol I once had an ER doctor tell me he had read a study where the majority of people who rated their pain higher than 10/10 also had a psych issue and thus couldn't be held in by boundaries like that.

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Specializes in Pulmonary, Lung Transplant, Med/Surg.
Lol I once had an ER doctor tell me he had read a study where the majority of people who rated their pain higher than 10/10 also had a psych issue and thus couldn't be held in by boundaries like that.

I can assure you I do not have psych issues. I can also nearly guarantee that physician has never had such severe pain where you'd be okay with someone hitting you over the head with a brick to knock you out.

Nobody should be judging anybody's pain, especially those who have unlikely experienced anything like the patient is. I'm done with this thread.

Sent from my iPhone using allnurses.com

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Specializes in Med-Surg.

I can assure you I do not have psych issues. I can also nearly guarantee that physician has never had such severe pain where you'd be okay with someone hitting you over the head with a brick to knock you out.

Nobody should be judging anybody's pain, especially those who have unlikely experienced anything like the patient is. I'm done with this thread.

Sent from my iPhone using allnurses.com

Well yea, and the kind of pain you describe, with the brick and all, that's what I explain to pts as being 10/10 pain. I've been in labor, had kidney stones more than once, and bilateral pyelonephritis. I have chronic migraines since the age of 6. I've writhed in pain, cried, and threw up from it. And still never answered the question with anything more than 10. Because I guess I understand the question and get annoyed with dramatic hyperbole. Just my two cents.

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Drives me nuts when patients complain about (insert complaint) and continually want me to call the doctor. I finally told one person I had called the doctor too many times already and quite frankly the doc had truly sick patients who needed his care. As expected that didn't go over so great. But after a while some people need the freaking truth.

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Specializes in Gerontology.

Re: pain

If 10/10 isthe worst pain you've ever had, and the current pain is worse than that, then Yes, you can rate it 12/10!

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I don't get why people get so worked up over patients going off the pain scale by saying their pain is 11/10 or whatever.

Yes, by definition one cannot have pain above a '10' on a scale that only goes up to ten. But it's clearly just their way of saying they're really painful. Just chart what they said in quotation marks.

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Well yea, and the kind of pain you describe, with the brick and all, that's what I explain to pts as being 10/10 pain. I've been in labor, had kidney stones more than once, and bilateral pyelonephritis. I have chronic migraines since the age of 6. I've writhed in pain, cried, and threw up from it. And still never answered the question with anything more than 10. Because I guess I understand the question and get annoyed with dramatic hyperbole. Just my two cents.

Pain is subjective. What might not be THE worst pain to you might be to someone else whose never had to go through childbirth or have to suffer from kidney stones. Do your job and leave the judgemental attitude at the door of where you work. You're not being paid for your opinion on whether someone is or isn't in the worst pain of their life.

And when I mean you, I'm referring to anyone who rolls their eyes and gets annoyed with the "dramatic hyperbole" because a patient doesn't "understand the question".

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