Would this bother you?

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Specializes in Psych.

Let's prentend...

You are a staff nurse in a busy cardiac care unit. It is a crazy morning shift and of all the annoying (and way more important) things that have already happened, an advanced practice diabetic teaching nurse hunts you down to check a blood sugar and then spends 20-minutes with the patient and another 20 writing a note.

Man that spins me out. I was so irritated because she hunted me down, interrupted me charting and then made me do it even after I told her I had not been there long enough to get a number for the machine. Classic burnt out horizontal crap that makes me not like my job. Give me anything but that kind of crap.... I'm probably more experienced and educated, but if I call her attitude, I know I'll go down.

Current restructure so maybe she's been given the axe!

And back to the happy place.

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Specializes in Cardiac Telemetry, ED.

Yes, that would bother me. Just the sound of my phone ringing increases my blood pressure by about ten points. It's usually in the middle of an IV push, and it's usually someone like dietary wanting to know if my patient down the hall would be okay with egg salad instead of tuna salad.

However, as a diabetic educator, she does not do bedside patient care. She probably does not have a number for the machine either. I'd have just taken a deep breath, asked for just a second to finish up what I was charting, then gone and done it, all very nicely and without an attitude. If another nurse who was caught up with their work were nearby, I might ask them to do me a favor and do it.

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Specializes in Telemetry, ICU, Resource Pool, Dialysis.

That would definitely not make me happy. Everywhere I've been, the "diabetic educator" is the one who ensures proper use of whatever glucometer is being used at the time, and should have a number, code, or whatever. I would feel like such a louse hunting down a busy nurse to do something like that. I swear, sometimes people get way too big for their britches.

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Specializes in Cardiac Telemetry, ED.

At my facility, the lab and nursing do glucomenter QC, and proper use is taught to nursing staff by our nurse educator. The diabetic educators do patient teaching.

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Specializes in Hospital Education Coordinator.

I am a diabetic educator. I have never had this situation but will know now to avoid it! Are nurses the only ones allowed to check blood sugars in your facility?

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Specializes in Cardiac Telemetry, ED.
I am a diabetic educator. I have never had this situation but will know now to avoid it! Are nurses the only ones allowed to check blood sugars in your facility?

At my facility, the CNAs can do fingersticks if trained to do so. Of course then, the nurse will have the CNA teed off for taking "ten minutes to track them down", when you "could have just done it yourself". Sometimes, you just can't win.

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I am a diabetic educator. I have never had this situation but will know now to avoid it! Are nurses the only ones allowed to check blood sugars in your facility?

PCA's are also allowed at my facility but they have to take a competancy like everyone else.

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Specializes in Med-Surg.

Wonder what she would have said if you said "I'm a bit busy right now, and I don't have a number, would you mind doing it for me?"

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Specializes in Psych.

Funny, I never even thought of this today. I hope I can remember to be extra nice next time. I don't think I was cross once today (honestly).

I don't work in the USA, but I have in the past. My own CNM would not ask me to do a blood sugar. She takes patients, works nights and we are always, always busy. Perhaps I mis-read the situation or just had my own little story goin' on. Sometimes the stress gets the best of me and I act like an idiot.

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