What's The Meanest Thing A Dr. or Co-worker Ever Said To You?

VinoLover2030 · Jul 6, 2009

Wow That would be a rather long list but I will give you one atleast .......lol.

"Have you lost your God D**n mind calling me this late!!!Who the H**l is this!!!"(mind you I was calling because my pt was leaking fluid from a botched Gtube job that this MD had performed.He was the medical director as well.If you dont want to be paged at midnight....yes I said midnight ...then have someone on call for you.He kept cursing me and I kept asking what his orders were so I could get back to work...he kept going on and I told him if your going to keep cursing I will write you up(at our hospital we can write up the docs if they are inappropriate to us)now please tell me what your orders are.We finished that up real quick. He came in the next day looking for me but I was off but he wanted to write me up.....ummm yeah that didnt happen. I was doing my job!my super agreed with me

tishirajan · Jul 6, 2009

That amazes me how some doctors think that they shouldn't EVER be bothered, even though they knew darn well that it goes with the job! Nurses have to have all their bases covered, even if it means he gets a phone call in the middle of the night or on the golf course.

gonzo1, ASN, RN · Jul 6, 2009

Over the last 6 years I would need a few pages to list. After a while you learn to not care, unless it comes from someone you respect. Fortunately that hasn't happened to me.

It's good that you spoke up for yourself and the resident. It took me years to learn to do that. You will be fine.

Doctor yelled at me and wrote me up for calling in the night to tell him a hemoglobin was 6.6. After he had ordered them every 6 hours. Made a ruling that I was never to call him without clearing the reason with the charge nurse first.

Found out he had done this to about every nurse in the hospital

SweetLemon · Jul 6, 2009

For me it was a patient who was 86 years old, 4'11 (I am 5'2) looked up and told me I was not worth the paper my nursing license was printed on!!!! She was very psychotic at the time and invited me to her house the following night for dinner after apologizing.

Ruby Vee, BSN · Jul 6, 2009

i was about 22, tall, thin and blonde. but i had bad skin. i got on an elevator and the physician that was on the elevator already leaned over and took a really close look at my skin (and down my shirt as well) and then said "you'd be a really pretty girl if your skin weren't so bad. come and see me in my office." and handed me his card.

and then there was the physician who was a world famous neurosurgeon. he fired off verbal orders right and left. and because i was new at that hospital (and in town), i didn't understand half of what he said. (who knew that an "elastic" was a rubber band or that a "comer" was a coma?") when i asked him to repeat himself, he said "what are you, stupid?" and then when i asked him to spell his last name for me, he drew himself up to his full height of about 5 foot 4 inches (i'm 5' 8") and announced, "i'm a world famous neurosurgeon. have you been living in a box? or are you just mentally retarded?"

and the physician who, although i don't remember what precipitated it, chased me and my preceptor down the hall with a (full) bedpan, attempting to throw the contents at us. she (the preceptor) hustled me down the stairwell, whereupon the physician hurled the bedpan after us, splashing waste and bouncing off walls and stairs. it was a metal bedpan -- made a real ruckas. nurse manager wanted to know what we'd done to **** him off. i'll never forget my preceptor saying "it doesn't matter what we did that made him angry. he was out of line."

there was the coworker who (although even she didn't know it at the time) had grave's disease. she had a total meltdown one nightshift when we were working together, and stood in the exact center of where the two hallways that made up our unit intersected screaming "i hate you, you fat, ugly *****!" and other endearments along that vein. every patient in the unit who was able to walk and talk poked their head out of their doorway to see what was causing the ruckas. i was mortified. and then *i* was called into the nurse manager's office for unprofessional behavior. all i had done was stand there and cry!

and then there was the physician that actually said "you know, you look really fat. but you aren't, really are you? it's just that your tits are too big. i know someone who could fix that for you." by then, i was older, wiser and probably meaner. "i cannot imagine why you'd think i'd be interested in your opinion on that," i replied. "unless it's because your over-large ego is compensating for your extremely small dick." my nurse manager gulped, the assistant nurse manager gasped and the physician mumbled something about "just trying to help" as he scurried away. i got called into the office, but both the nurse manager and the assistant nurse manager were laughing too hard to "counsel" me. and that was the last time anyone thought they could get away with saying anything like that to me.

but tact still isn't my strongest suit.

SweetLemon · Jul 6, 2009

i was about 22, tall, thin and blonde. but i had bad skin. i got on an elevator and the physician that was on the elevator already leaned over and took a really close look at my skin (and down my shirt as well) and then said "you'd be a really pretty girl if your skin weren't so bad. come and see me in my office." and handed me his card.

and then there was the physician who was a world famous neurosurgeon. he fired off verbal orders right and left. and because i was new at that hospital (and in town), i didn't understand half of what he said. (who knew that an "elastic" was a rubber band or that a "comer" was a coma?") when i asked him to repeat himself, he said "what are you, stupid?" and then when i asked him to spell his last name for me, he drew himself up to his full height of about 5 foot 4 inches (i'm 5' 8") and announced, "i'm a world famous neurosurgeon. have you been living in a box? or are you just mentally retarded?"

and the physician who, although i don't remember what precipitated it, chased me and my preceptor down the hall with a (full) bedpan, attempting to throw the contents at us. she (the preceptor) hustled me down the stairwell, whereupon the physician hurled the bedpan after us, splashing waste and bouncing off walls and stairs. it was a metal bedpan -- made a real ruckas. nurse manager wanted to know what we'd done to **** him off. i'll never forget my preceptor saying "it doesn't matter what we did that made him angry. he was out of line."

there was the coworker who (although even she didn't know it at the time) had grave's disease. she had a total meltdown one nightshift when we were working together, and stood in the exact center of where the two hallways that made up our unit intersected screaming "i hate you, you fat, ugly *****!" and other endearments along that vein. every patient in the unit who was able to walk and talk poked their head out of their doorway to see what was causing the ruckas. i was mortified. and then *i* was called into the nurse manager's office for unprofessional behavior. all i had done was stand there and cry!

and then there was the physician that actually said "you know, you look really fat. but you aren't, really are you? it's just that your tits are too big. i know someone who could fix that for you." by then, i was older, wiser and probably meaner. "i cannot imagine why you'd think i'd be interested in your opinion on that," i replied. "unless it's because your over-large ego is compensating for your extremely small dick." my nurse manager gulped, the assistant nurse manager gasped and the physician mumbled something about "just trying to help" as he scurried away. i got called into the office, but both the nurse manager and the assistant nurse manager were laughing too hard to "counsel" me. and that was the last time anyone thought they could get away with saying anything like that to me.

but tact still isn't my strongest suit.

wow!!! your post makes me both want to laugh and cry!

TheCommuter, BSN, RN · Jul 6, 2009

One of my former coworkers is a nurse with poor bedside manner, dishonesty, sloppy procedural skills, financial problems, and an attitude problem. She's been disciplined by my state's board of nursing on at least 3 occasions for issues with patient care.

Anyhow, she once told me, "If only you were prettier..."

I was surprised by the comment because I had never been unkind to her or given her a reason to say anything insulting to me. I was also surprised because this particular nurse was not much of a looker, either (looked older than her stated age, thin hair, overweight, bland facial features, and so forth).

RedSox33RN · Jul 6, 2009

I got yelled at by a surgeon once because I couldn't understand him. I work in the ER, and I was taking telephone orders for him because he couldn't get in to see the patient before he was admitted to the floor. He spoke VERY broken English, and with the heavy accent (not sure from where, but I was told he had only been in the US a year or so), he was just impossible to understand. I DID, however, understand the gist of his yelling when I kept asking him to repeat what he said, and I would TRY and repeat it back (incorrectly, as it was)! lol I finally said he would need to come write orders or fax them over. I was not taking any chance of a missing or incorrect order! That p'd him off to no end.

allnurses Guide · Jul 6, 2009

I had a coworker say "I went to the gym last night. Do YOU know what a gym is?". I said "Yes - do you know what antipsychotic medication is?". Can't really get upset because she is a fruitloop.

Most of the time, it doesn't bother me, although I am amazed how many bad-tempered, cranky folks you run into. I just vent to my lovely coworkers about people mostly.

The usual negative ("constructive") feedback I get is about being wary of how I come across - especially since i got to the US. I am an Aussie, and we are very blunt, and matter-of-fact. Also, I am used to working in a healthcare "team", where we called the docs by their first names (as they did us), joked around, and were good colleagues. I don't think we had such a pronounced "god" syndrome as the docs over here do, since they are the money makers here. I really need to watch that I don't joke with docs here, because they take it as disrespect (and I don't intend it that way at all, I'm just irreverent).

I agree that I am older and meaner though - I don't put up with being spoken to like crap or yelled at. I take call too, and when I get called at 2 or 4am I am just as polite as I can be while half asleep, so I expect the same in return.

bluegeegoo2, LPN · Jul 6, 2009

I got chewed up one side and down another by a super who proclaimed, "I don't need no super-nurse on my floor!", then proceeded to threaten my job. When I told her I wasn't afraid of unemployment, she upped it to "...you'll be blackballed all over (town) and won't work here again!", all because I handled 3 separate situations with 3 separate residents (that occured within about 10 min of each other) without "consulting" her first! (One was an actively dying res whose pain was not adequately controlled, one was a fall w/o injury, and the last was a ST). All conveniently had the same MD, so I handled them all at once. Duh! Turns out she was upset d/t not being able to tell her super's how she "had to handle the "situation" because those floor nurses are too stupid to figure it out themselves". Naturally, I quit about 2 wks later. Oh! And she dragged the other nurse on the unit into it as well, just to look good I suppose? The other nurse quit, too. What a freak!

oramar · Jul 6, 2009

"you are useless, you are useless", the doc was complaining about a policy the hospital had the forbade pushing Morphine by med/surg nurses. I calmly explained that I thought the policy was stupid also, but I knew if I drew up the Morphine and gave it I would be written up. He kept screaming "you are useless" over and over again. Eventually the IV nurse came and gave the Morphine like the hospital policy required. I then wrote him up officially and then wrote an unofficial note to the manager complaining about the situation. I waited a week to ten days and went in to ask her about the situation. She started screaming at me also, blamed me for whole situation. Thing was she never intended to acknowledge the complaint and was hoping I would drop it. I was fairly new nurses at time and that is how I learned how low on totum poll nurses were and how no matter what happened we were the ones that would get the blame. I think I had a little nervous break down. Moved on to another job not to long after wards.