Why do we tolerate terrible nursing?

[Bacchus]

Advertisement - Members don't see this ad

OP, this quote stuck out to me. What were you trying to accomplish with this question? Did you expect that she would suddenly bow to your superior medical knowledge? Were you actually trying to teach her something? Belittling someone out of anger is never going to accomplish anything for you. Lets look at that interaction from the nurse's perspective: you just yelled? at her because she hadn't called you with a BP. Now she had an abnormal BP, which was not concerning to you as you understand that you need to wait on the nifedipine and she called you. So, you belittled her.

When you told her not to wake you up when you were on call, you put your career in her hands.

You also are failing to see that your brutal OB resident experience is not because of the nurses. They chose their career. You volunteered for yours. They work far fewer hours and way less hard than you and make a decent living. That isn't going to change and they have no reason to walk a mile in your shoes. I can't imagine any OB resident not experiencing burnout but my last experience on an OB service as anything other than "wide-eyed useless husband thing" was almost 20 years ago.

You've probably significantly damaged your relationship with the nursing staff in your program's unit (I noticed you switched between she and they) and you need to step back and protect your career. This isn't your place of business so stop caring.

For everyone above who sees this as caving or giving up or whatever, its not. My nurses treat me very well and the ones that weren't on board aren't here anymore. If anything, they are too protective of me. But the OP is a resident and she won't be there much longer, as long as she graduates.

DING DING DING. You win the prize.

 

[npappasan]

***sigh****

I was just relaying a teaching point about antepartum hypertensive emergency physiology. Please, by all means do with it what you will.

 

[Siggy]

***sigh****

I was just relaying a teaching point about antepartum hypertensive emergency physiology. Please, by all means do with it what you will.

I'm just trying to relay that we're our own worse enemy when treating inpatient hypertension on medicine patients. If it's an antepartum patient, I would be wondering why they're calling me and not OB.

 

[brillohead]

Best way to avoid "stupid" calls/pages from nurses? Make sure every patient has all necessary PRNs in place upon admission. At the very least, cover the three Ps -- pain, puke, and poop.

Trust me, the nurse doesn't want to page you at 0200 for ibuprofen/acetaminophen for a headache, or ondansetron/phenergan for nausea, or docusate/MoM/senna/PEG3350 for constipation, etc., any more than you want to receive that page.

If you're covering nights and you get a lot of "stupid" calls to cover the 3Ps, start getting on all your colleagues to make sure they're writing ALL necessary orders for ALL patients on admission.

If a patient lists a PRN sleep aid on their home medication list, make sure you order their PRN sleep aid for their hospital stay (if they can't sleep at home, they sure as heck won't be able to sleep in the hospital!). Heck, even if they don't usually take a sleep aid at home, go ahead and give them orders for PRN diphenhydramine or melatonin (as long as it's not contraindicated, obviously).

Consider sleep to be the "fourth P" (for "passing out") and make sure all four Ps are covered for PRN orders: pain, puke, poop, and passing out.

Your nurses will thank you, your patients will thank you, your pager will thank you, and you just may get some sleep once in a while.

 

[thehundredthone]

Best way to avoid "stupid" calls/pages from nurses? Make sure every patient has all necessary PRNs in place upon admission. At the very least, cover the three Ps -- pain, puke, and poop.

Trust me, the nurse doesn't want to page you at 0200 for ibuprofen/acetaminophen for a headache, or ondansetron/phenergan for nausea, or docusate/MoM/senna/PEG3350 for constipation, etc., any more than you want to receive that page.

If you're covering nights and you get a lot of "stupid" calls to cover the 3Ps, start getting on all your colleagues to make sure they're writing ALL necessary orders for ALL patients on admission.

If a patient lists a PRN sleep aid on their home medication list, make sure you order their PRN sleep aid for their hospital stay (if they can't sleep at home, they sure as heck won't be able to sleep in the hospital!). Heck, even if they don't usually take a sleep aid at home, go ahead and give them orders for PRN diphenhydramine or melatonin (as long as it's not contraindicated, obviously).

Consider sleep to be the "fourth P" (for "passing out") and make sure all four Ps are covered for PRN orders: pain, puke, poop, and passing out.

Your nurses will thank you, your patients will thank you, your pager will thank you, and you just may get some sleep once in a while.

So instead of being alerted to what could be a sign of new physiological derangement (2 or even all 3 of your Ps) and giving it some thought first, you'd rather just cover everyone's symptoms just to get shut-eye at night? I would rephrase that carefully to be addressed only to patients in whom you know the underlying causes for each of those symptoms is benign. Unless you want to give your newly nauseated and constipated patient senna and ondansetron for their obstruction, or treat the headache and nausea symptomatically until the primary team can diagnose the raised ICT. And if you think everyone is smart enough to understand this major caveat, you'd be surprised.

 

[Unbelievable4]

Why do we tolerate horrible doctors? Nurses having been getting crapped on by md's forever, are you kidding? In 15 years of nursing and working on different fields, I have never once not experienced abuse from md's. one was so verbally abusive that I had to quit after talking with her several times. We get **** on by all the patient's too, bc we are faaaar more involved with patients that don't feel good and are stressed and they take it out on the nurse. I've seen patients be so nasty to me and as soon as the doctor walks and they're like oh hi Dr. all happy. Without us you guys would be completely lost. I have saved so many doctors from errors, or calm down a patient who is upset about her doctor. And do we get appreciation from anyone? We are constantly short staffed. I worked in a detox rehab or the doctor so the patient wants and then for the rest of the entire stay I dealt with the patient as a nursing supervisor of the building and every time and there's cold out I would have 3 to 4 for floors of patient stand medication out to. One doctor was afraid of her own shadow. She couldn't decide what she should order I basically had to guide her through it . You guys have no clue!

 

[Gastrapathy]

Wrong forum

 

[Siggy]

Why do we tolerate horrible doctors? Nurses having been getting crapped on by md's forever, are you kidding? In 15 years of nursing and working on different fields, I have never once not experienced abuse from md's. one was so verbally abusive that I had to quit after talking with her several times. We get **** on by all the patient's too, bc we are faaaar more involved with patients that don't feel good and are stressed and they take it out on the nurse. I've seen patients be so nasty to me and as soon as the doctor walks and they're like oh hi Dr. all happy. Without us you guys would be completely lost. I have saved so many doctors from errors, or calm down a patient who is upset about her doctor. And do we get appreciation from anyone? We are constantly short staffed. I worked in a detox rehab or the doctor so the patient wants and then for the rest of the entire stay I dealt with the patient as a nursing supervisor of the building and every time and there's cold out I would have 3 to 4 for floors of patient stand medication out to. One doctor was afraid of her own shadow. She couldn't decide what she should order I basically had to guide her through it . You guys have no clue!

I believe you meant to post at www.allnurses.com

 

[ThoracicGuy]

Why do we tolerate horrible doctors? Nurses having been getting crapped on by md's forever, are you kidding? In 15 years of nursing and working on different fields, I have never once not experienced abuse from md's. one was so verbally abusive that I had to quit after talking with her several times. We get **** on by all the patient's too, bc we are faaaar more involved with patients that don't feel good and are stressed and they take it out on the nurse. I've seen patients be so nasty to me and as soon as the doctor walks and they're like oh hi Dr. all happy. Without us you guys would be completely lost. I have saved so many doctors from errors, or calm down a patient who is upset about her doctor. And do we get appreciation from anyone? We are constantly short staffed. I worked in a detox rehab or the doctor so the patient wants and then for the rest of the entire stay I dealt with the patient as a nursing supervisor of the building and every time and there's cold out I would have 3 to 4 for floors of patient stand medication out to. One doctor was afraid of her own shadow. She couldn't decide what she should order I basically had to guide her through it . You guys have no clue!

 

[Winged Scapula]

Why do we tolerate horrible doctors? Nurses having been getting crapped on by md's forever, are you kidding? In 15 years of nursing and working on different fields, I have never once not experienced abuse from md's. one was so verbally abusive that I had to quit after talking with her several times. We get **** on by all the patient's too, bc we are faaaar more involved with patients that don't feel good and are stressed and they take it out on the nurse. I've seen patients be so nasty to me and as soon as the doctor walks and they're like oh hi Dr. all happy. Without us you guys would be completely lost. I have saved so many doctors from errors, or calm down a patient who is upset about her doctor. And do we get appreciation from anyone? We are constantly short staffed. I worked in a detox rehab or the doctor so the patient wants and then for the rest of the entire stay I dealt with the patient as a nursing supervisor of the building and every time and there's cold out I would have 3 to 4 for floors of patient stand medication out to. One doctor was afraid of her own shadow. She couldn't decide what she should order I basically had to guide her through it . You guys have no clue!

I'm not going to get into an argument with someone who clearly has an ax to grind.

However, I would advise you not to use your own personal picture as your avatar, especially when posting in a critical fashion on an internet forum full of educated people.

 

[bannie22]

Because they are unionized

 

[evilbooyaa]

Why do we tolerate horrible doctors? Nurses having been getting crapped on by md's forever, are you kidding? In 15 years of nursing and working on different fields, I have never once not experienced abuse from md's. one was so verbally abusive that I had to quit after talking with her several times. We get **** on by all the patient's too, bc we are faaaar more involved with patients that don't feel good and are stressed and they take it out on the nurse. I've seen patients be so nasty to me and as soon as the doctor walks and they're like oh hi Dr. all happy. Without us you guys would be completely lost. I have saved so many doctors from errors, or calm down a patient who is upset about her doctor. And do we get appreciation from anyone? We are constantly short staffed. I worked in a detox rehab or the doctor so the patient wants and then for the rest of the entire stay I dealt with the patient as a nursing supervisor of the building and every time and there's cold out I would have 3 to 4 for floors of patient stand medication out to. One doctor was afraid of her own shadow. She couldn't decide what she should order I basically had to guide her through it . You guys have no clue!

You're Unbelieveable, oh!