It's rare when I complain about another person's experience at work. That didn't sound too clear. Let me explain. Usually when I'm telling tales about work, I'm talking about stuff that happened to me, not about other people, but something happened to a colleague of mine that made me and my other co-workers angry for her. The names in the following story have been changed to protect me from getting my ass sued and my license revoked.
Every once in a while...scratch that...very often we can get a patient on the floor that can make huge demands on everyone on the staff. So what usually happens is that the other patients end up getting less attention, which is unfair and quite dangerous. A lot of times its not the patient themselves that are the troublemakers but their family members. The demands wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for all the abusive behavior that goes with it. There are threats, insults, screaming, and sometimes physical confrontations. Over the weekend one such family engaged in all four. Thankfully I wasn't there for any of it, but everyone was telling me about it. One co-worker actually called me on Sunday to tell me the poor unfortunate patient was sent to the intensive care unit that day. The man had initially come to our floor from the ICU. In fact I was the nurse who had to admit him. He came during the last hour of my shift, and in that hour his family managed to make a million and one demands on me. I knew right away they were gonna be a problem. But then the next day I called in sick because my back was sore (courtesy of their demands I might add). In the three days I was off they wreaked havoc on the staff. In fact the nurses decided to rotate who got them each day, so no nurse would have to put up with them for more than one day. One nurse, Lynn, who is the sweetest, smartest and most responsible person you'll ever come across, had to take care of him on one of those days. The family chewed her out and told her she wasn't doing enough for him. Poor Lynn was neglecting her other patients for this one man who wasn't in any emergent danger. And when one of the other nurses told the family to stop screaming at Lynn and that she was doing her best, they had the nerve to say to her, "Who are you? Her spokesperson?" Lynn was so distraught over their treatment of her that she ended up crying and couldn't stop. This upset me greatly when I heard about it. Lynn, would never deserve such treatment. And being such an accomodating person it is very hard for me to believe that she wasn't doing everything in her power to meet their demands. Sunday finally saw our floor's emancipation from their tyranny. I know thats melodramatic but thats how everyone was acting so I can only express it in that way.
You would think that would be the end of that misadventure, but the man's son, who, by the way, was the worst of all of them, actually had the nerve to come back to our floor three separate times on Wednesday. Why? He wanted a piece of equipment that his father had previously had before being sent back to the ICU. Not only was this item not all that important but we're not the ones that provide it. The first time he came he was looking for his father's doctor to provide the item. The second and third time he came it was to find Lynn so he could ask her for it. THE NERVE!!! This man and his family were so abusive to her that they made her cry her eyes out. And now he comes back to her, not to apologize, but to demand even more from her. The second time he came he didn't find her, but the third time he found her and the rest of us when we found out he was talking to her, got angry. One of the nurses, Charlie, went running to go and tell him to leave Lynn alone, leave the floor and to not come back again. When he got to where Lynn and the son were talking he was surprised to find Lynn smiling during her interaction with him. He immediately left as soon as he saw Charlie coming. When we questioned Lynn about what he said, and why she was smiling, we were further outraged to find out he hadn't even apologized, that he was still asking for that damn item, and that she was still smiling and polite to him after the way he treated her. We told her she should've told him to direct all his questions to the nursing office. She definitely shouldn't have smiled at him. After all of us gave Lynn a stern lecture about developing a backbone we reported this whole incident to our nurse manager. She told us that if he showed up again to call security and get his ass booted off our floor. Needless to say I was hoping that he would show up again just so we could have the pleasure of seeing that happen.
I will say one thing right now, even nurses have rights. Just because you have a relative in the hospital does not give you leave to hurl abuses at the people trying to take care of said relative. This is not Terms of Endearment. If you turn into Shirley MacLaine and start screaming at the nurses because they're not moving fast enough for you, they will not hop to it like you want to. Instead they will tell you to stop screaming at them and if that doesn't work then they make a quick call to security and, if it is warranted, you can very possibly expect to find yourself banned from the floor.
