girl in greenwood

May posted today about (among other things) what she does when a patient has something negative to say about another nurse. This is what May said:

sometimes, they have bad things to say. to that i say something to this effect: “i’m sorry you had some problems with your nurse today, i’m sure she/he had reasons. sometimes, we do get crazily busy around here.” this is not because i am some sort of a saint or a hypocrite or something, but i just think it is unprofessional to fire up negative issues. there are a lot of real issues we need to deal with, and nurse bashing, or the implication of it, in my opinion, should not be one of them.

I appreciate May's tact! I dealt with a similar situation at work recently, where a patient called me in to ask me to get some clean linens, and spent the whole time I was changing the bed ranting about the nurse who had been taking care of him all day. He complained about his pain control, his perception that his nurse had been ignoring him, and about his frustration with being sick and not knowing why he was sick or when he would get better. My first reaction was to feel defensive about his nurse - she is a terrific nurse and had been taking good care of him - but before I opened my mouth I realized that this didn't have anything to do with his nurse. So instead I said something like "I'm not going to defend the nurse because I wasn't here and I don't know what happened between you" and then followed up with "Of course you're frustrated, you don't feel well and you are hurting!" and he visibly calmed down. He continued to vent and I continued to acknowledge his feelings and by the time I finished making the bed, he was much calmer and apologized for unloading on me. I told him it was no problem, that I was glad he felt better after getting it off his chest.

Labels: nursing