Im a GN but still working as an ACP till I pass NCLEX. Last night I was assigned to be a patient sitter to a schizophrenic. He was alert and oriented to time, place, person and situation and ambulatory with minimal assist.
At first, everything seemed to be going fine. Made casual conversation with the patient, everything was calm. It all started when he told me he was going to crap and pee in the bed, and I told him that wasn't nessesary as we could get him to the toilet. He tells me he will do whatever he wants, and when I told him we would have to get him up to change the sheets anyways so he may as well use the toilet, he called me a dip****. Long story short, the next 7 hours consisted of him screaming at me at the top of his lungs, and insulting me with very personal insults. Im stupid, I have a measly pea brain, Im slow and don't know what Im doing, I'll never make it as a nurse and Im not even fit to clean up garbage, sit down and shut the **** up, I'll never make it in life cause I can't follow directions, he gives the orders and I have to do what he says, he knows everything about hospitals cause he's been in them before, don't try to hold my crappy education up to his cause it isn't s***....and the list goes on and on. Other patients were coming into the hallway to look and one even said she was calling the police. He also kept belting out insults and racial comments to visitors and housekeeping in the hallway, telling them they were fat, and calling them things like "smell puerto rican". Though it was extremly hard, I was not arguing back in any way shape or form. The only thing I did was tell him to please not yell, and to be nice. His nurse said I was not to repond to him in any way and just do what he asks because you can't reason with a mental illness. So the rest of the night was spent just sitting there while he called me every name in the book, told me how stupid i was, and ordered me around. Later that night, the ANM finally came in and told him to stop being rude and insulting me and people in the hall, and he told her all these hurtful lies about me, including that I was trying to make a pass at him and he doesnt involve himslef with married women.
Im trying to remember that he has a mental illness, but at what point has it gone far enough? Where is the line between the mental illness and just being plain hateful? I was so humiliated and degraded. The happiest moment of my life was when my shift was over
