Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Attention patients!

I'm sorry that you landed in the hospital, or that your nurse there isn't as responsive to your call light as you feel she should be. I'm sure she has several other patients, and is doing her best.

BUT

Mary and Annie are NOT your nurses. Just because your nurse is busy doesn't mean you should call my office to see if they can drive over to bring you pain medicine, have someone come fix your TV's volume, or get you coffee or a warm blanket.

So stop calling my damn office.

Thank you.

18 comments:

ER's Mom said...

Obviously, they need your help. They have no brain!

Poor Mary and Annie!

Andy Syms said...

WTF!!!

Where do you manage to find these guys Ibee?

Anonymous said...

I had a patient who had been in our VA and then transferred to a higher level out state VA a few years ago. Apparantly the other VA's nurses were busy and he was aggitated, so he called our VA's nurses station to ask them to contact his current VA's nurses station to try to get them to pay more attention to him there. I think they hung up on his phone call!

Moose said...

WOW.

Li'l Azathoth said...

"But 911 told me to stop calling. What am I supposed to do?"

Packer said...

I don't think it possible for the hospital nurses to have too many paitents--my nurse daughter says she has 8 per shift, more on night shift. It only really screws things up if one of them codes or worse yet wakes up and pulls out the IVs, otherwise ....it is a walk in the park. :)

April said...

I once had a patient complain (I'm an RN) to my manager that I was 20 minutes late on their pain medicine. I even explained to the patient that there was a life/death situation (CODE BLUE!!!) who then said, "well, couldn't you let someone else handle that??" SMH!!

bobbie said...

Unbelievable!! Though as a nurse, I DO believe it!!!

Walks away, shaking head in disgust...

Anonymous said...

"But the White House switchboard keeps hanging up on me. What am I supposed to do?"

Special Sauce said...

We used to get family members calling us "Uncle Bob said he's too hot/thirsty/wants pain meds while I was on the phone with him."

OldSquid said...

currently at my wive's hospital (small rehab) they have 70's patients, which isn't so bad, except they are staffed for 35. Looking like they will break 90 by the weekend.

Anonymous said...

"I don't get it. That ALWAYS works in porno movies."

AzAdrianRN said...

Or the Emegency room.......

Trish said...

Unfortunately truth really is stranger than fiction. We had a lady call 911 one night FROM the ER because 'we were taking too long to see her and she wanted an ambulance to take her to a real hospital.' *sigh* Some days I look in the mirror and wonder why I haven't pulled the last few hairs out of my head yet.

Anonymous said...

Is there a medical term for "Hypertrophy of sense of entitlement"? If not, there should be...

jenniferarb said...

"hypertrophy of sense of entitlement" AMEN! One thing I try to explain to people is that when i have 8 patients to take care of someone is #1 and someone is #8 and that can change at any moment. You are not always #1! And I give an example: if I was helping you to the bathroom and someone else pushed their call light would you like it very much if I just dropped you on the floor to run to the other call light? No? Well I won't do that to you and I won't do that to them either.

Anonymous said...

Nurses are angels. I won't bother them unless I'm in really dire straits. Subsequently they get all flustered with me wandering around the room when I'm supposed to be in bed. Shucks, I can turn up the vacuum on a chest drain pump myself, or empty a cath bag.

NurseAlex said...

I wish I could say "I don't believe it" but sadly, I do.
I have had several patients call 911 to complain about the lack of service on the ward.
Sigh....

 
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