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why your nurse may seem grumpy
- Sep 11, 2008 at 8:16 AM
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- Comments (14) Total Views (451) Everyone can see this journal post.
For those of you who may not have friends that are nurses or you may not spend your free time hanging around an ER....let me fill you in on why your nurse may seem grumpy...
1) People call ambulances for hang nails (no...really, I'm not kidding!)
2) People who try to kill themselves by smoking marijuana and taking melatonin (all they do is sleep in the ER bed and take up room for dieing patients...if you want to get it right..we can teach you how!)
3) People get drunk and do "stupid people tricks" and want to yell at their nurse because they hurt themselves.
4) Drug addicts who get MRSA infections and then freak out about having to have an IV and say "I hate needles" when they have 100 pock marks all over their arms from skin popping meth.
5) Doctors expect nurses to be mind readers and then when you remind them they are about to make a mistake or forgot something they treat you like you're an idiot.
6) Chronic Back Pain patients who chroniclly use the ER as their personal pharmacy
7) Charting that makes us repeat the same information 3 times
8) WE NEVER GET TO PEE OR EAT!
9) We hear "I only had two beers" or "I was minding my own business.." nine times a day
10) People that come in with stomach pain or nausea and vomitting are always eating a Big Mac in the lobby when we go out to call them back
Comments:
The emergency room is not a treatment center, that is what their personal physicians are for or a chronic pain management clinic. The ER is just that an EMERGENCY ROOM...we treat life threatening situations. People wouldn't have to wait so long if people sought appropriate care...and as far as complaining, yes I am because I hate using an ER bed for a hangnail when someone with chest pain or shortness of breath needs it more.
Maybe if they got appropriate care with their family physicians they wouldn't have to make that weekly trip to the ER.
Sorry, hon, you're not getting off the hook for this one. Until doctors and nurses start doing their jobs outside of emergencies, don't expect people to stop coming to you with what they feel like is an emergency. When you start living with chronic pain and your idiot doctor and nursing staff won't do anything for you, then maybe you can add that complaint to this list without a retort.
(And no, I don't speak personally, I choose not to deal with doctors and hospitals at all, I know how useless the staff are)
I am sorry that you or a loved one have had such a difficult time with your hospital experience but if family physicians did a better job of managing patients pain it would be a different story. Chronic pain patients get the same attention and care that anyone else does that comes into the ER but it angers us that it cloggs up the system when their own doctors should be managing it. I can't imaging you would be OK coming in an ambulance with SOB or chest pain and having to be put in a "hall" bed because someone with back pain is taking up a bed...everyone has their own idea of what an emergency is, but no one has ever died from back pain, as much as I would like to eleviate everyones pain with a magic pill, it isn't going to happen.
This is why I don't do ER. More power to ya, sister!
We used to call them GOMERS...Get Out of My Emergency Room...LOL We had our fair share of drug seekers, people who couldn't breathe because they were smokers (gee, maybe if you had QUIT while your lungs were still functioning), and the list goes on. They took up time and beds that made the TRUE emergencies have to wait endless hours while the doctors and nurses were having to deal with problems that should have been dealt with through therapy years before! People don't want "treatment" especially preventative...they want BANDAIDS!
The point is- when you come into the ER complaining of abd pain for 3 months- it is 2am and you expect to only be there 20 min. I agree with NBELL- the minute you go to the ER and have a hall cart or sit in the waiting room for an hour or more or anytime at all remember it is the drug seekers, alcoholics, people that don't see their primary physcians, chronic back pain- that just helped his neighbor move, and so forth that are taking up the beds for the true Emergencies. The ER is not meant to be a primary physcian- we try and find out if the problem is an EMERGENCY if it is not then we send you off to your primary doctor- if you do not call then you will not get better or find out a real diagnosis. We do not do MRI or any other test that is considered NON EMERGENT. We do have rules we have to follow and if we don't follow those rules then we don't get paid!
"Not getting off the hook for this one"??????? Liyoness wth are you talking about? She isnt ON the hook! She is an ER nurse not a family physican nurse. Why are you taking your crap out on her for your own issues? Perhaps next time you should go to the pediatrics clinic since you insist on acting like a child!!!
You gals are awesome! Thanks!
As a fellow ER nurse...you go girl! I agree with you one hundred percent. You hit the nail on the head about the non emergencies taking up the beds. I have worked local hospitals to inner city gang lands. It is the same every where you go, ambulances used as taxi's and a total sense of entitlement from these patients. The worst thing I think I see though is the elderly couple that doesn't want to call 911 cuz' they don't want to be a burden, and they drive in with their other half nearly dying (or sometimes truly dying). This generation wouldn't take a charity form for assistance, wont ask for pain meds because they don't want to be a bother, and smile and thank you for every step of the way. All the while sitting next to a twenty year old drug addict screaming at the tops of his lungs that the 8 of dilaudid you have already given them isn't helping a bit.
Whew...I guess I needed to vent. Anywhoo...thanks for the chuckle!
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Meet jessicasmom1
This Pennsylvania mom of a 12-year-old girl wishes her daughter's father was still alive to see his little girl all grown up now.
Hmm.. Maybe if you'd actually TREAT people with chronic backpain rather than keep shooting them up they wouldn't have to waste THEIR time coming to you every week!!
But golly, that would be too simple, wouldn't it? And you wouldn't be able to complain about it.
- Liyoness
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