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Tuesday, October 22, 2013

The rare, exceptional evil nurse

I'm the kind of guy who gets along pretty much with anyone. If you can't get along with me, chances are there's something wrong with you.  My parents pretty much inculcated into my head that things go so much smoother when, even during the toughest times, you are calm, cool, and polite.

I find that most of the people I work with treat me as I treat them: with respect and dignity.  On the few occasions I get irritated and show it, I generally apologize by bringing in cookies or some kind of treats.  Although it's rare that I need to do this.  Most of the people I work with are the same way: kind and generous.

As a rule of thumb, you almost have to be this way in order to work in a hospital.  However, for every rule, there is a person who breaks it.  We have one nurse that is very rude to patients.  I had this one patient say to me: "I hate that nurse."

He was surprised by my response:  "I don't really like her either."

We shared a good laugh and a good discussion.

This one nurse is rude, rude, rude.  If I could name her I would.  The fact that she's been divorced five times should say a lot about her.

The other day I left the EKG stickers on a patient, something I rarely, if ever do.  She said, bluntly:
"At this hospital we take stickers off patients."
She said once after I said albuterol is not indicated when a patient is not short of breath:
"See, that patient coughed.  That's why you give the treatment.  You need to just listen to the doctor and do what you are told." 
Today I asked a question:  "Hey, who has the patient in room 21?"

She said:
"Let's make this a teaching moment.  The tracker is right here.  All you have to do is look at it."
Tired of her poor behavior, I chimed:
"You don't have to be rude."
The neat thing was there were three other nurses right there that heard her be rude to me.  Later on one of those nurses came to me and said:
"I just want you to know that the rest of us love working with you."
I said:
"I appreciate it."  
We both smiled, and went happily about our business.

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1 comment:

migrainer said...

I've seen that flavor of healthcare worker too. I've got an aide on one unit who persists in offering pts breathing treatments while she's gathering their vitals. I've caught her doing it, and told her that it like me offering all her patients percocets, but she persists. She makes the RT who has that unit insane, because she calls for unnecessary PRN treatments. I was paged 26 times from that unit on one shift. This was one of 4 units I had, and it meant the other units didn't get the quality of care, because I had to keep running off their units to take care of pts that really didn't need me.