#i've had to have multiple people removed by security this week alone

[the-cookie-of-doom]

I’m gonna rant for a second because I hate the shitty way visitors treat hospital staff, and I’ve spent all of my last 6 12 hour shifts dealing with it 

Yes, I know you want an update with the nurse, but they aren’t available right now. It’s shift change, last night’s nurses are exhausted and want to go home, today’s nurses don’t even know who their patients are yet. 

Yes, I know, it’s inconvenient. But every single fucking time I have to pull a nurse away from their patient so you can talk to them, that is CARE that the PATIENT ISNT GETTING. 

Like, I’m really sorry, but when it comes down to your feelings versus a patient’s actual life, I don’t care about you. I’m sorry that you’re worried and anxious. I sympathize with it. But if you want your loved one to get the care they need, you need to handle yourself because you are a distraction to the nurse, you are hindering patient care, and the more often this happens, the worse your loved one will be, and I don’t get why that’s so hard to understand. If something significant happens, the nurse will call YOU. If they haven’t called, that means there’s no meaningful updates! 

I’ve seen it time and again that people think by being the loudest voice in the room, they’re showing how much they care about the patient. These are usually the people that couldn’t give a shit about them when they were healthy. The son that hasn’t seen his mother more than once a month since putting her in a nursing home suddenly needs to be up everyone’s ass all the time. The daughter that hasn’t called her father in months screaming at the nurses over every little thing. It’s such performative bullshit and I hate it. We are not here to be your emotional punching bags so you can feel better about how you’ve neglected your relationships, as if abusing us makes up for your lack of contact and caring. 

And the families that like to stand in the doorway staring at everyone who walks by, or come up to the nursing station demanding to speak to the nurse/a charge nurse, because they feel like that care isn’t happening patient care is done on a schedule. Everything is planned down to the hour. Yes, sometimes there are delays. But if a nurse should be providing something at a certain time and doesn’t, that usually means something more important is happening with another patient. Example: you want to tell me to remind the nurse that someone’s pain medication is due in exactly 11 minutes? believe me, that nurse knows down to the exact second when the last dose was given, she’ll be there on time, she does NOT need a reminder. (this is my BIGGEST pet peeve) 

Even the people that are well-meaning about their calls, it’s still so self-centered to constantly demand a nurse’s attention every hour, every two hours. Again, I understand when you’re anxious, but the nurse isn’t here to reassure you. Work out your anxiety with a loved one that isn’t the current patient. Because all you’re doing is taking up the nurse’s valuable time, which is taking away from patient care, so that you can have your nerves soothed when there is ultimately no update to be had, other than “everything’s the same.” 

If there is a significant change, good or bad, the nurse will call you. 

If the patient codes/almost/actually dies, the nurse will call you. 

If your loved one spontaneously wakes up from a coma, the nurse will call you. 

If there is a major procedure, the nurse will (probably, it’s complicated) call you.

I am so done fielding phone calls from people that are passive aggressive, angry, or straight up yelling at me over the smallest thing. You are not helping anyone when you’re calling the nurse to demand whether the patient has eaten or not yet. Either they did, or they’re not able due to illness, or they’re not allowed to due to an upcoming procedure. Nothing you say or shout will change anything. Medications are added/changed/discontinued practically daily, don’t start freaking out just because the patient was on one blood pressure med one day and a different one/none the next. 

If you don’t get a call for a day or two, the nurse isn’t refusing to communicate with you. They just have no significant updates to give, and their time is better spent on patient care than on the phone with you talking about how much the patient did or didn’t urinate. 

This goes doubly for patients that are fully conscious/aware of their surroundings, and able to advocate for themselves. In those cases, any family members become entirely superfluous, because we do not need you. We don’t need you to understand what’s going on with the patient, because we don’t need you to consent to their procedures as a medical proxy. Your input doesn’t matter. And you better be damn grateful when the nurse is willing to give you any information at all, because at that point, it should really be up to the patient to disseminate the news of their condition.

Except because nurses are saints and recognize the mental and emotional strain that will put on the patient, they take care of that too. People need to start showing some gratitude instead of attitude, because contact with the nurse is a privilege, not a right, and people like me are incredibly happy to remove it when you can’t be respectful of everyone’s time. 

Tl;dr not to be rude but if you’re not the patient, or the patient’s medical proxy, you don’t matter, so you better be nice