You're Supposed to be Compassionate!

Nurses General Nursing

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I get this crap all the time, mostly off the job. Somehow, I'm supposed to be this sweet, squishy stereotype. The other day, I was expressing some of my political views, and someone told me, "I can't believe that you're a nurse. You're supposed to be compassionate." I work at a Nurse Aide school, and I had to tell a woman that her grades were not sufficient to enroll. Her daughter huffed, "She has a hard time with English, and you were rude. You're a nurse, you're supposed to be compassionate," even though her I had indeed patiently explained things to her mother. The daughter wanted me to basically sit alongside her mother and pretty much spell out the test for her. Also, my compassion lies with the people who she will be assigned to take care of that she will not have the ability to do. I refuse to get a diabetic woman ice cream for liability reasons, and she huffs, "Let me enjoy life. You're supposed to be compassionate." Uh, does risk of sending someone into diabetic shock count as compassion?

I'm a darn compassionate nurse. On the job, I will not say a word or judge others, even if there are 5 potential babydaddys in the delivery room with a crack-addicted mother. I will give indiscriminate care. I will never be above wiping butts, and I will always be willing to give kind words. However, I am also entitled to my opinions, and I separate work from personal life. These opinions do not define me as a nurse. There are many different types of nurses, liberal and conservative, strict and sweet, loud and quiet, type A and type B, etc. The job does not totally define the person. For example, comedian Mike Myers is actually quiet and reserved in real life.

Then again, I have doubts about how a lot of people define compassion nowadays. I just read an article about how you should never say no to your child. Apparently, it's bad to stop your child from weighing 150 lbs by age 4 by letting him eat as much as he wants, it's abuse to make your kids attend school and do their homework, and a teacher is automatically horrible if she flunks students for their obviously shoddy work.

'if' i'm known to be compassionate as a nurse, then i best be known as compassionate as a person.

i just don't turn on and off certain qualities when i work.

it is my own unique characteristics as an individual that also define me as the nurse that i am.

i've never appreciated the stereotypes that go along w/nsg: angel, merciful, compassionate, etc.

i'd much rather be appreciated for being who i am, at all times: impassioned, having hootzpah, intelligent, sensitive, assertive and possessing integrity...all of these qualities that i proudly display as a nurse, mother, wife, friend, sister.

commuter hit it head on, since many do equate compassion w/being a doormat.

that is so not me.

leslie

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Specializes in PICU, surgical post-op.
OH NO ITS THE SUGAR POLICE!! You're supposed to be Compassionate!!:nono:

Aaaaaand, I have tea all over my keyboard. Thanks. =)

Whenever I get a family who starts snarking me because I'm actually enforcing the visiting policy in the ICU (I dunno, maybe so I can keep the kid's ICP down and get to the bed in case he codes?) I just shrug, smile apologetically, and say "Unfortunately, one of my nicknames IS Nurse Ratched." That'll usually diffuse the situation just enough for me to shuffle the extra bodies out the door.

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Specializes in FNP, Peds, Epilepsy, Mgt., Occ. Ed.
for "you're supposed to be compassionate" read "if I don't get my own way I'll scweam and scweam till I'm sick" then blame you for it!!:lol2:

:yeahthat:

I agree completely. I also agree that people expect nurses to be doormats, and that they are trying to manipulate.

I work in a clinic and some of my (non-nursing) co-workers think I totally lack compassion because I refuse to lie down to be walked on and refuse to be manipulated.

"Even though I have no-showed my last three appointments, haven't been in to be seen in a year, and ran out of my medication three months ago, if you won't get me in to be seen today and something happens to me, it's all your fault!!!" :angryfire

Nope. Make an appointment. We can't squeeze another patient into the schedule with a shoehorn and a tube of K-Y. If it's waited three months, another three days probably won't make much difference.

And of course my family knows that unless there are bones sticking out or large amounts of blood, I'm not going to get too excited. :lol2:

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I agree with you all soooo much!!!

I try to be as compassionate as possible. However, I do expect there to be responsibility on BOTH sides. I will do my part and I expect you to do yours. I am not now, nor have I ever been a soft, wimpy person (I take after my mother) and there are times when tough love is in order.

Bottom line, I expect the patient to do their part in getting better - whether it be from getting OOB to walk, to letting me take the catheter out, I expect to see some work. I will do my part, but I have a HARD time being sympathetic to someone who refuses to do their part!!

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Boy, can I relate to this! I recently had a patient whining that I was a "mean nurse" because I wouldn't let him eat the Boston Cream Cake his wife had brought in earlier. Never mind that his blood glucose was through the roof (one of the reasons for his admission) and that he had failed a swallow eval and was on a thickened liquids diet (yet another). I was "mean" because there was "NO REASON" for him not to have that cake ("it's dietetic!). Ummm....yeah. His wife showed up in the morning, also mad. Ok, Sweetie, you drag that pathetic lump of a husband home with you, and YOU feed him that cake. I'm not killing him on my time.

See ya in the ED....:madface:

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Specializes in EC, IMU, LTAC.
Boy, can I relate to this! I recently had a patient whining that I was a "mean nurse" because I wouldn't let him eat the Boston Cream Cake his wife had brought in earlier. Never mind that his blood glucose was through the roof (one of the reasons for his admission) and that he had failed a swallow eval and was on a thickened liquids diet (yet another). I was "mean" because there was "NO REASON" for him not to have that cake ("it's dietetic!). Ummm....yeah. His wife showed up in the morning, also mad. Ok, Sweetie, you drag that pathetic lump of a husband home with you, and YOU feed him that cake. I'm not killing him on my time.

See ya in the ED....:madface:

Hehehe, he wanted to have his cake and eat it too!

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LOL!!! PeachPie!!!

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Hehehe, he wanted to have his cake and eat it too!

LOL!!

Thinking on this again, I suppose I could have handed him the cake, a fork, and sat down with popcorn myself to watch the festivities begin...!

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Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

very early in my career i got some of the same responses. what i've learned is that communication involves more than just words. you may feel compassionate inside, but if your body language and voice do not reflect that as well, then the people you are communicating with won't buy it. people will judge us instantaneously and unconsciously on our body language alone and if it doesn't match with what we are saying, we are immediately branded as phonies. i started listening to the people that patients would say were very compassionate nurses. one of them was my mom and i knew what a terror my mom was at home! one of the things i discovered is that they used their voices and facial expressions to inflect warmth and caring. they were soothing and very nurturing and had that nurse smile. my mother could be that way when she wasn't riding her broom (sorry, mom). i think that this is the perception that people, particularly the less educated, expect from nurses. they want those mrs. wilson (from the dennis the menace cartoon) and june cleaver kind of persons to care about them. i believe we can still be professional, but elude this motherly, nurturing quality. in a way, i believe you almost have to be a little bit of an actress to pull this off sometimes. i consider it to be part of my "professional face". if there is one thing that i can point to as being important over all my years in nursing it is communication skills.

then, again, there are always going to be jerks who are never satisfied with what gets dealt to them. no amount of playacting can help a bitter pill of truth go down easier with them.

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I had a lady call me a "uncaring mean nurse" because she was being transport form the ed to the floor and wanted me to clean her dishes she had brought from home and ate while in the ed. I told her no i was not going to clean them you can clean them yourself when you get up stairs. She than preceded to ask my tech who was transporting to do the same and again I stated That is not our job you can do it yourself up stairs or have a family member take them home and do them. Excuse me for not wanting to clean your dishes when I hate even doing my own.

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Specializes in Rodeo Nursing (Neuro).
Boy, can I relate to this! I recently had a patient whining that I was a "mean nurse" because I wouldn't let him eat the Boston Cream Cake his wife had brought in earlier. Never mind that his blood glucose was through the roof (one of the reasons for his admission) and that he had failed a swallow eval and was on a thickened liquids diet (yet another). I was "mean" because there was "NO REASON" for him not to have that cake ("it's dietetic!). Ummm....yeah. His wife showed up in the morning, also mad. Ok, Sweetie, you drag that pathetic lump of a husband home with you, and YOU feed him that cake. I'm not killing him on my time.

See ya in the ED....:madface:

Now, this is interesting to me, because my father is diabetic, and one evening a few years ago, had a craving for a piece of Boston Cream Pie. His FSBS was 144, and had been decent all day, so I said it would be okay to cheat just a little. I went out and bought the BCP and we each had a slice. At bedtime, 2.5 hours after the BCP, we checked and his glucose was 98. Apparently, BCP cures diabetes. I'm thinking if I could get FDA approval, I'd have diabetics lined up for miles for my clinic.

On the other hand, even before I was a nurse, I was assigned one night to sit with two patients, both on tight fluid restrictions, and one pt's family brought him a coke. I told them I would have to have the charge nurse call security to escort them from the building if they continued to interfere with his care. Sad part is, I had no idea, at the time, how far out on a limb I was putting my job--but neither did they.

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Specializes in Rodeo Nursing (Neuro).
I think I have compassion fatigue in my private life. At work I see people who are truly suffering. It's hard to pretend to feel so sorry for a friend who has gotten in a fight with her boyfriend over which restaurant to go to. "Can you believe he wanted me to go for Thai food? He's such a jerk!!!"... Right... and I should care about this because...?

Sounds more like common sense than fatigue, to me. Maybe I'm not as compassionate as I think I am, because there's a side of me that would be tempted to ask, "Has he had a check up, recently? Because last week we had a patient with a glioblastoma, and he developed a sudden craving for Thai food. Probably just a coincidence, but you never know..."

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