Why do unit nurses have bad reps?

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I will be transferring to ICU from general surg next week. When I told one of my co-workers (whom I respect) that I was going to the unit, she said "Just promise me you won't go up there and turn into a B***H." I asked around my unit and got the same type of response. I have not had many interactions with our ICU nurses, so I don't have much to go on, but my co-workers seem to think that unit nurses are holier-than-thou and that they all look down on "floor nurses", talking down to us. I realize that these are opinions, and are in all probabilty, stemming from isolated incidents, but I just wanted to get some perspective on what you all thought of this.

Okay I just wanted to jump in and give an outlook from the patient's family perspective. I lost my son about a year ago to a long illness. He was admitted to ICU three times over a year and my experience with the nursing staff was not good.

They took good care of my son, but they forgot that he also had another part of his life, he was someone's son. They were so wrapped up in taking care of the "patient", they would not let him be a human being. I cannot tell you how many times I had to ask if someone would let me come in earlier to sit by his bedside or explain to me what is going on. They were usually short, and too busy to talk to me. It did not matter that I traveled an hour to get there,...they told me that they would never get any work done....it did not occur to them that maybe it would help the patient feel better to have family there. What would it have hurt. After the experience of my child dieing in ICU I never wanted to work in the unit. I sent a letter in to the nursing director explaining how I was treated in an effort that the next family not have to go through what I did. This was at a large well known teaching hospital.

:stone So please remember to treat the whole person, there are nurses out there that are insensitive and cold to families and patients. Usually because they are overworked. But what is more important, the paycheck or the patient? Why are we nurses today?

I fully understand your concerns and am sorry about you losing a child.

I try my hardest not to be short with any family member but at the same time strongly believe that families are getting way too much control in these situations.

I don't know what kind of nursing you do but I currently work in the PACU and it's often a gamble as to whether or not to let someone in to see their loved one, it's 50/50.

Sometimes I let someone in and it's about the same as if I were the loved one, they are concientious about not being in the way or being there too long. I understand someone being nervous about a loved one having surgery so I figure that if I let them in to see their loved one, their anxiety will be lessened and that they will be ok. Not always true.

Often times it turns into a nightmare of:

"He's cold, why don't you have more blankets on him?"

"He's in pain, when is the last time you medicated him?"

"When is he going up to his room? Why is it taking so long?"

"That thing (the monitor) is beeping ,what does that mean?"

The questions and distractions ( believe it or not actually come from nurses at times looking at their loved one) can go on and on and my primary priority to actually recover a patient ends up getting compromised. I often end up being very sorry that I ever let someone in to see their loved one because I end up taking care of two people instead of one.

If loved ones would somehow guarantee me that they wouldn't be in the way or expect me to entertain their questions every time I turned around I'd let them all in but the vast majority of them end up slowing me down and get me distracted from the patient and instead focused on them which is not good.

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Specializes in ER, ICU, L&D, OR.
This is why nurses lack the political power that we should have; power that would make HUGE changes in America's healthcare system; we could, if we could get past who's better, who b***hier, who has a harder job, what degree makes a better nurse, and just sheer pettiness and discord, WE COULD RULE THE WORLD (or at least the healthcare part of it) and make some AWESOME changes. But as it is, we will continue to gripe about those "witches" from ICU, PACU, ED or those "terrible" floor nurses, who got break and who didn't,what so-and-so said, or did or didn't do, and we will continue to get what we we now have...... :crying2: :crying2: :crying2: :crying2: :crying2:

Are you trying to make a point here

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Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.
Are you trying to make a point here

The point was well-made.:rolleyes:

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I fully understand your concerns and am sorry about you losing a child.

I try my hardest not to be short with any family member but at the same time strongly believe that families are getting way too much control in these situations.

I don't know what kind of nursing you do but I currently work in the PACU and it's often a gamble as to whether or not to let someone in to see their loved one, it's 50/50.

Sometimes I let someone in and it's about the same as if I were the loved one, they are concientious about not being in the way or being there too long. I understand someone being nervous about a loved one having surgery so I figure that if I let them in to see their loved one, their anxiety will be lessened and that they will be ok. Not always true.

Often times it turns into a nightmare of:

"He's cold, why don't you have more blankets on him?"

"He's in pain, when is the last time you medicated him?"

"When is he going up to his room? Why is it taking so long?"

"That thing (the monitor) is beeping ,what does that mean?"

The questions and distractions ( believe it or not actually come from nurses at times looking at their loved one) can go on and on and my primary priority to actually recover a patient ends up getting compromised. I often end up being very sorry that I ever let someone in to see their loved one because I end up taking care of two people instead of one.

If loved ones would somehow guarantee me that they wouldn't be in the way or expect me to entertain their questions every time I turned around I'd let them all in but the vast majority of them end up slowing me down and get me distracted from the patient and instead focused on them which is not good.

I understand your point because I have been a nurse for eleven years, one as an RN; but all I was doing in the room was sitting and holding my son's hand most of the time. When his bed needed to be changed, I changed it, if he needed ice, food or whatever I got it. If I wanted to know how things were going I picked up the flow charts posted outside the door and read them. Remember I am an RN too.Very rarely did I ask them anything, except to have the time to spend with my child, who was dying. There really is no excuse for the inhumaneness that I was shown. I am just trying to say we need to put humility back into nursing.

:stone

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Specializes in Psych.
I think its sad when hospitals allow some units to act like divas and expect other units to pick up what they throw their way..like enemas. This is bad management. :(

Bad management? fuggedaboutit, I am surprised that an insurance co would even consider paying for sending a pt to another unit to give "enemas until clear". Who is picking up the tab for this?

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sayitgirl;

Maybe you should start a separate thread. I don't see what your post has to do with the issues we are talking about here.

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sayitgirl;

Maybe you should start a separate thread. I don't see what your post has to do with the issues we are talking about here.

That's true, a separate thread might be appropriate as it did get off topic (including my response to her being off topic as well) but I think she did intend to be relevent to the topic in the whole idea of ICU nurses having bad reputations.

Just yesterday I had two nurses snap at me on the phone when I called about sending them up patients from recovery and it reminded me of this discussion.

I try not to take it personally (as it is not uncommon to get treated badly by the floor nurses whenever they are getting yet another patient which I understand) because I remember how awful Med/Surg could be and that's why I had to get out of it and try to give credit to those who stay in it.

But the OR was winding down and we had hardly any cases remaining with plenty of nurses with open slots so I asked this nurse if he was ok with me bringing up a patient to him and he said "I don't know why you people bother asking, it's not like we have a choice, you do what you want to anyway."

I explained to him briefly that sometimes I can't hold patients for long because the OR is backed up and waiting for my slots to open as it is but whenever I can be flexible with the floor, I try to be and was able to hold off bringing up his patient until things settled for him. The patient wasn't anxious to get to his room either so it worked out fine.

I was supposed to go to lunch but instead stayed with my patient for an extra hour before sending him up and hung some meds that were coming due and drew labs so that he wouldn't have to worry about that either.

You know what? He didn't care. He told me upon arrival that he was so far behind that it really didn't make any difference to him if I'd sent the patient when I was originally supposed to or that I kept up on his labs and floor meds that I was able to get out of the PACU pyxis. He said that I "didn't do him any favors as long as I was still sending him a patient at all."

That of course, is not the first or tenth time that's happened to me but I still try to help out the floor whenever I can even though roughly half of the floor nurses in my experience are either indifferent, ungreatful, or still manage to find something you did wrong or forgot to do.

The other half that are appreciative are still worth it even if I only made their bad day a tiny bit better.

When I worked Med/Surg, I would have been happy to have a PACU nurse give me an extra hour to get caught up and not have meds and labs due upon arrival to the floor because many did little more than push pain and nausea meds in my mind in those days, then rush their dirty and bloody linened patients up to my floor because many didn't believe in changing linens or gowns either.

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RN34TX, I've been there too. It happens between every unit I think. I once kept a baby an extra 6 hours for the post partum floor (I'm in NICU). I brought the baby over and 4 am because the pp nurse was so busy when I called at 10pm. The baby had been fed and changed and assessed. All the PP nurse had to do was an accucheck at 6am and she still gave me attitude as though I'd been sitting on my butt all night or something. I finally just told her I'd do the 6 am accuckeck if she wanted to go look after my 800g baby with his pulmonary hemorrhage. I'm sure they all sat around talking about us mean NICU nurses after I left.... The thing that really bugged me was that all the nurses I work with in the NICU had told me to just bring the baby over at 10pm and I was the one who gave the "we're all a team" speech:D They all laughed when I came back and told them the pp nurse was such a pain in the %^$

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Specializes in Psych.
sayitgirl;

Maybe you should start a separate thread. I don't see what your post has to do with the issues we are talking about here.

Sorry, didn't mean to stray. I was referencing an earlier post about ER sending pts off unit to give enemas until clear. I couldn't believe that was actually happening in this day and age. And it sure is too bad we all have to suffer bad attitudes at work. These posts are a good argument for adequate staffing. Maybe the receiving units wouldn't be as snappy if we had the personnel to handle 3 ER/ICU admits at once (on top of our regular workload). Hello, administrative decision-makers/bean counters, are you listening? Customer service is being compromised. And that is NOT good for business especially in a competitive environment. My .02.

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Sorry, didn't mean to stray. I was referencing an earlier post about ER sending pts off unit to give enemas until clear. I couldn't believe that was actually happening in this day and age. And it sure is too bad we all have to suffer bad attitudes at work. These posts are a good argument for adequate staffing. Maybe the receiving units wouldn't be as snappy if we had the personnel to handle 3 ER/ICU admits at once (on top of our regular workload). Hello, administrative decision-makers/bean counters, are you listening? Customer service is being compromised. And that is NOT good for business especially in a competitive environment. My .02.

That's why I try not to take the attitude too personally. I'm not excusing it, but overall, Med/Surg nurses take way too big of an assignment and even on days when they are lucky enough to only have, say 5 patients, often times one or two of them can be as time consuming and demanding of constant care as some ICU patients and then they have admissions rolling through the door on top of it.

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Specializes in Oncology/Haemetology/HIV.
Sorry, didn't mean to stray. I was referencing an earlier post about ER sending pts off unit to give enemas until clear. I couldn't believe that was actually happening in this day and age.

The hospital in Central Florida was sending patients from ER to the floor 12 years ago, when it was my first job. I recently returned to said facility as a traveler two years ago....and the the practice still continues. Generally at least 1-3 times a week, we would have a patient come up for enemas until clear...this was to only one of the MS floors, so there were more than that, overall.

The scary part is that in a recent press release, the CEO of the facility was talking about trying to get Magnet status. Uhhhhh, I don't think so, dude.

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You know what? We are all nurses and we should all get along well - I see this all the time and it is not just Unit Vs Floor nurses, it ranges from same unit different wings, same floor different shifts, same hospital different floors, same company different facilities, it all depends on what attitude you put across. Just get focused here - remember when you met those minimum requirements for your license the state did not issue that for you be a B***H, look down on floor nurses, nor make judgments on personal behaviors but to practice nursing to the best of your knowledge.

I am an ICU nurse and I don't look down on floor nurses neither am I a "female dog"

David

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