Something that was said on another thread reminded me of an incident I had when I was on clinicals as a student.
Sock puppets.
Got your attention?
Here is what happened:
My clinical group was doing it's rotation on a M/S unit with tele. This specific unit utilized Telemetry Techs (is that the right word?). The techs would watch the monitors, take care of beeping that was just a result of the pt disconnecting (for instance, to go to the bathroom) types of things and of course alert the nurse if there was a problem.
One of the techs was a middle aged man, I say....oh, 35ish. He was always joking with the nurses which at first seemed nice. We can all use some humor in the day, right? Not his humor. I noticed the nurses often gave him the cold shoulder, or just gave him one word responses while he was carrying on. To be honest, his jokes weren't funny so, I wrote it off as that being the reason for it all.
Nope. There was more. He was a creep. One day he kept following me around with a sock puppet and flirting with me. The sock puppet would say "Hey, you're cute" then he'd apologize for his friend's rudeness. On and on he kept going and all my social ques that he was annoying me went ignored.
Then he started with the "Hi, I'm ToeRiffic, what's your name? I like long walks on the beach, country music, romantic dinners at McDonald's................."
Thank goodness the nurse assigned to the patient I was watching stepped in at this point. She was so casual and smooth about it too: "Oh, hi Autumn. I see you're going to do the dressing our patient is ordered. Why don't you go introduce yourself to the patient while I get your instructor so she can have a little chat with our tech here. I'll be in to join you in just a few."
I loved my clinical instructor at the time. She was detail oriented without being OCD, if that makes sense. Smart too, loved how she always seemed to know what was going to happen before it did. Well, I don't know what she said to that tech but for the remainder of our rotation that semester, he never once rose from his seat or approached another student.
So, we're all aware of how nursing is often turned into a sex symbol thing. Some in the general public still believe this nonsense and think all flirting with nurses is always appreciated.
What's your story about being flirted with while you were nursing?
