55 Surprising Patient Habits That Actually Make Care Harder for Doctors and Nurses
Please stop blaming and being angry at the nurses for everything. We are part of a team, not THE team. We aren’t dietary, transport, social work, pharmacy, respiratory, bed control, or the Dr – and we don’t work FOR any of them, we work WITH them, and we can only do so much. If you are frustrated about something, chances are we are, too, and we are trying to rectify it. Please talk to us like adults – yelling/chastising/threatening/calling your adult children and having them call us from home is not going to get you faster results.
Also, if you are a family member in the ER, please do not walk into a room where CPR is being performed and ask what is taking your mother’s ginger ale so long. Yes. This has happened. More than once.
ZoraTheDucky:
Saw the frustration of nurses first hand when my mother was in the hospital a couple years ago. Basically the in house GI team was trying to defer to my mothers pre-existing GI doc and the pre-existing GI doc was more or less just not answering the phone. Wasted a whole day. Eventually got through to the pre-existing GI doc (on day 2 of trying to get through to them) who declined to treat my mother further and it got punted back to the in house GI team and things eventually got rolling…
A couple nurses were really pissed off that my mother was in the hospital for a full day with absolutely nothing being done but waiting on a phone call because the in house team wouldn’t do anything without hearing from the pre-existing team first.
My mother changed doctors after that.
Esteraceae:
Hey i have an explanation for that – in my country, some private specialists are very protective of their patients. Going against the private dr can be met with their disapproval and also the risk of changing their treatment plan drastically. Not to mention that private records are not kept on the public system, so sometimes its hard to figure out exactly what is happening with the patient without chasing their records first. And sometimes, the patient themselves may prefer to be transferred over to the private dr’s care for the rest of their admission (sounds like that wasn’t the case here) That’s probably why they wanted advice from the previous doctor first.
Yes it can be frustrating to get through to private dr’s as they may not be at work every day of the week, or may be on leave. I once had someone’s cardiologist call me back while they were at the airport about to board a plane!
When heavily incontinent patients try to help you clean themselves and end up making it ten times worse. I get it, sir, you’re used to your independence and I am all for letting you do what you can..But in certain situations, I really just need you to lay back, keep your hands to yourself, and let me take care of you this time, because you got poop all over your hands and bed rails and pulse ox and the bottom sheet! Nooo— i couldn’t avoid the full bed change :/
As I like to quote Lloyd Christmas “this is a lot easier if you just lay back!”.
Using Chinese / Alternative/ Herbal / Traditional / Faith Medicine to “remove” or “melt” tumors that should have been surgically excised… And… using all that before coming to the good ‘ol surgeon, sometimes at late stage disease already (wherein the mass is already to dangerous to debulk).
Dry-Stop1629:
That black salve thing that was going around for a while.
Psychiatrist here- Using jargon or medical terms that they’ve decided describes what they’re going through rather than describing the symptoms themselves. They may think it saves time or makes it easier for me, but are sometimes irritated that I will ask them to tell me what they mean or give examples of every single one. I’m not doing this to make life harder or challenge a patient, I actually need to know what a patient means when they say they “get manic.” Most of the time, the term that the patient has used isn’t accurate.
So many medical terms have basically been hijacked by social media and twisted or diluted to the point of being meaningless, and most people don’t see serious mental illness up close to appreciate what certain terms actually mean in a clinical sense. TV and movies are notorious for showing inaccurate portrayals of mental health conditions. And overall, there seems to be a wildly idealistic expectation of what “normal” looks like, to the point that people think they are severely mentally ill because they’re not a happy, perfect, productive robot 24/7. .
Shaving their site too soon before surgery. some patients will shave their leg, groin, or belly a couple days or the week of surgery. alot of the time this causes the site to be irritated and even start ingrown hairs by the time u get to us. thats actually not ideal for surgery, its an infection risk, depending on what youre having done. ive seen a doctor cancel a knee replacement over an ingrown hair that looked infected. causes issues on both ends, for us its rescheduling, losing time and money from wasted supplies. for the patient, its just super inconvenient id imagine, they probably have to reschedule all their post op care (ride to and from, time off work, etc) and depending on how far out they get reschedule redo all their pre op things too cause labs and H&P need to be within 30 days at most facilities.
Dentist here. I hate when parents tell their scared kids that if they don’t brush their teeth, I ( the dr) will have to give them a “big shot”. It’s usually accompanied with side eye to me and a look that says I’m the devil. Like my job isn’t hard enough!! Please STFU!!!
nicbloodhorde:
Parents: the dentist is evil and will punish you if you misbehave!!!!
Also parents: why is my child afraid of the dentist??????
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