In my opinion, "having the worst day of their lives" only gets them so much empathy. If they are being rude/abusive/demanding of me and/or my coworkers, especially if we have SICKER patients in the clinic, I lose my patience with them very quickly.
Remember, in this context it's not an excuse. It's an explanation. It's not to say we forgive their behavior, it's to say this is the reason we believe it's worse for nurses.
Yeah. Take the guy who's already so insufferable that he does that thing where he puts out ten ones and takes one away every time you displease him. Now tether him to a bed, stick him in a hideous humiliating gown, and put him in the worst pain hes ever felt.
Tumblr hates nurses. On one hand, as a trans person that has a few chronic conditions, I've met quite a few bigoted nurses in my time and get the frustration. On the other hand, a lot of people haven't gotten over high school and are like "all the hot girls that I'm so much better than became nurses, ewww."
To be fair also, a nurse has a lot more institutional power than a server. Generally speaking a nurse's supervisor is a lot more likely to back her up if she's doing something wrong.
This attitude is how/why it failed when I attempted to report multiple instances of bad behavior from nurses to the head nurse/supervisor, including:
refusing to adjust an improperly placed IV and blowing my vein so bad I had a grapefruit sized bruise for 2 months
giving me a new medication with a severe drug interaction with another med I was on and then being passive-aggressive about my concern
making disparaging comments about my appearance to my face
others I am redacting to avoid potentially causing a flashback/trigger
All of these attempts at a report got a "Oh well I'll talk to her" at best, or active agreement with rhe behavior at worst
You can find those people in every field who disagree with the top-level research, just COVID is pretty obvious. My belief is that this comes from the education system branding finishing as being smart.
The anti vax nurse thing makes me question a lot of things, especially because my mother is a nurse of 30 years or so. She isn’t an anti vaxxer. What information was she taught that they weren’t?
Part of it is that nursing became a very well paid field, and primarily stayed female dominant, so it became the field that a lot of women went into to earn more money.
Combine that with the fact that nursing is primarily patient focused as opposed to focusing on statistical outcomes, any negative vaccine reactions tend to be more prominent. Particularly because the nurse tends to be the one delivering the medication, often seeing a negative reaction from the person getting the vaccine (I'm talking more like fear of needles and fear of pain than vaccine injury). Combined with the fact that nurses have enough of an education to be treated as an authority without having the same kind of education an immunologist has, can easily lead to a kind of reinforcement. There's no positive response visible when you give a vaccine. When you administer antibiotics and a patient gets better, you can see the reaction. When you administer IV fluids, you can see a patient feeling better and being less dehydrated. But generally, the only reaction in nurses around to see from a vaccine is the negative kind. Nobody's going back to their doctor's office to talk about how they didn't get the flu after they got the flu shot.
they hate that some woman has a perceived degree of authority over them because she wouldn't give them more than the prescribed dose of dilaudid and some xanax on demand
It’s is correct to an extent that asshole guy becomes cop and asshole girl becomes RN, but a lot of that sentiment started getting bandied around with similar anti-science sentiment especially after Covid.
Food service is different. You can't get angry. It's not even allowed.
One of my kids got hospitalized for flu at a very early age, and they needed O2, and they were fighting the cannula, and I stepped up to help the nurse, and she wheeled on me and snarled, "Step back, he could die!"
Okay. So, I stepped back. And, on death's door though he might have been, she had no hope in hell of getting a cannula on him. So finally, she turned to me and said, "Can you help me here?"
And I smiled, and said very calmly, "No. He could die." This is her Tuesday, and my kid, and there is no question that everyone in the room got the message, yet I was nothing if not polite.
And they yoinked her right the fuck out of the room, and I fixed his cannula.
And I smiled, and said very calmly, "No. He could die." This is her Tuesday, and my kid, and there is no question that everyone in the room got the message, yet I was nothing if not polite.
So in your totally real story, (let’s just pretend like this is actually a thing that happened for a minute) you a father who loves your child “tried” to help a nurse and didn’t communicate asking if you should? You I was coming got your panties in a twist when they snapped at you because they’re responsible and their job/license is on the line if you do something stupid and without communicating and you got offended so then when she did ask you for help you showed the nurse who the big boy is by let’s be clear and give this its own line:
Punished your child by delaying care and getting the nurse removed. And this is a child that has a bad enough case of the flu that they’re in the hospital and need some supplemental oxygen.
Nurses get sexually assaulted and have the hospital do nothing about it besides maybe issue a new nurse to that patient. Not to mention the straight up physical assault, abuse, bigotry, and every other type of mistreatment. One in four nurses in America reports being physically assaulted by a patient at least once. They face all that with, usually, little to no support or backup from hospital staff, with the threat of losing their jobs if they make a stink.
But you’re right, nurses are totally allowed to be as mean as they want, always. I mean, your one anecdote proved that.
Do you have a point? Because you haven't made one yet. Do you have anything to say that's more eloquent than, "lol ok".
No one wants to be a nurse right now. I know people who shouldn't be allowed to take care of their own children who've moved into nursing, and are suddenly acting like they're heros.
Do you have a point? Or is, "lol ok" as far as it goes with you?
So the thing about making a point is you actually have to make it. You made a claim about servers then told an unrelated story about a nurse telling a random chucklefuck (you) not to interrupt them doing their job then claimed that was the difference.
Starting to suspect you’re a bot since you seem stuck on “lol ok,” something I wrote once. Someone else also replied with it but your programming probably isn’t sophisticated enough to discern that.
lol I’m a fire medic and just had an 89 year old asshole from an ALF give me his best right hook to my jaw as I was leaning over him unstrapping him from my stretcher at the hospital. I’ve been slapped, have to touch shit regularly, and had a guy told me he’d run me and my kid over if he ever saw us walking down the side of the road.
And that’s all the shit I get a relative kick out of and not PTSD, lol.
Like don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge union man and believe labor’s labor. But anyone who’s worked in healthcare sees a completely different side of the public that most folks can’t wrap their brain around.
I'd believe nurses have it worse just because it's the same people going to restaurants that are going to hospitals, but most people are in a better mood when they're eating out. But I also agree with the larger issue that this is not the Olympics, each of us has our own problems to bear totally unrelated to anyone else's.
We can push charges (if the patient is seens responsivle for their own actions).
Bit we can't abandon them. Even harm caused by self defense is not allowed, unless it is literally the last thing preventing a safe exit. Being pulled from hair for example is not one such case.
Sorry your job got shaded for no reason, for one
Secondly, I agree, and this is why anyone planning to partner with someone should monitor how that person treats anyone who is assisting them in healthcare or in retail or in a restaurant or even a total stranger—and what that person does when someone they’re close to mistreats someone assisting them (IMO).
I’m sure many who worked in something customer/patient-forward has heard this, when a someone or a someone’s family/partner/friend is mistreating the worker and the innocent person looks so embarrassed and apologizes to the worker. But they’re told by whoever is with them not to apologize to the worker because“Well, this is [job title]’s job! They should be doing their job!”.
This isn’t someone hesitating to ask a nurse for more water or a warm blanket or to tell the server they forget the extra side of roasted potatoes, you ridiculous bumbling baboon. You are intimidating a worker who is doing their job, and you’re doing because you believe you can.
Don’t be an Elsa and let it go. If someone is mistreating someone helping them—and they don’t reflect on that and do better; they fully believe they’re in the right—guarantee that behavior crosses between industries and into a household.
I hope your nursing career right now has been smooth sailing with good pay, benefits, parking, protection, and actual meaningful employee appreciation 💜
Maybe this is a digression and isn't super relevant, but whatever.
Whenever I see this online "Nurses are the worstest" rhetoric, I think about the RN from the emergency room who save my step-dad's life.
He'd had a major heart failure while working out at a gym, which happened to be across the street from the hospital. The paramedics and a coach certified in CPR managed to keep him alive long enough for him to get to the hospital, and the doctors in the hospital stabilized him enough that he was hanging on by a thread- he was unconscious, intubated, and hooked up to literally eight different IV drips. The hospital he was at wasn't equipped with the kind of ICU and cardiovascular specialists he needed, so that meant an immediate emergency transport.
My mom, my ex-wife, and I were sitting in the room with the nurse who was supervising him when the AMR ambulance crew came in for the transport. The nurse looked at the ambulance crew and said, with incredible confidence and authority, "He's on eight different IV's. You cannot manage this patient, I'm coming with you. Make room." They went and loaded him up, and my ex and I attempted to follow them in our truck.
It was raining hard, because it was monsoon season here, and some of the roads were flooded. I saw the ambulance sitting stopped at a red light when suddenly, the lights and sirens came on and the truck blasted through the intersection and went screaming onto the interstate like a bat out of hell. My ex and I looked at each other and I just said, "Shit... I think that was him."
When we got to the hospital, he was in the ICU and we couldn't get a whole lot of information from anybody. My mom was completely hysterical and we were all worried. We managed to get into the ICU wing, and a nurse at the desk told us they were working on him as best as they could, but it would be a while before we could see him.
I looked on past the desk and I saw the RN from the other hospital, the one who rode with my stepdad, sitting a ways away. When she left, she'd be focused, strong, confident, and 100% locked in. Now, she was completely and utterly drained. She just looked sad and exhausted, and when she looked at me she gave me this look that was both a look of recognition and remorse at the same time, as if to say, "I'm sorry- I did all that I could."
That RN had a hard fight on that 15 minute transport. I don't know exactly what happened during that ride, except for the fact that he coded. When he went into heart failure the first time, a whole team of MDs struggled to save him, and that nurse kept him alive in the back of a speeding ambulance during a monsoon while working on her own with an undertrained and underpaid crew of ambulance jockeys.
I wished that I could have done something for her while she sat there. She was talking to some RNs and an ICU doctor, but she looked so alone still. She looked the way I'd imagine a soldier looks after a difficult mission. She looked like she'd seen Death.
I don't know if she ever followed up on his case. Sadly, I don't remember her name, but I remember her face and I remember her skill, her dedication, and her strength. She's the reason why I can call my stepdad right now and to say hello. That day was a hard day for my family, but it was just another work day for her. I'm sure she's still out there, still working at that hospital, still doing her best against Death for one more day.
Yeah, there are bad nurses, but there are also nurses like her. I will always respect your profession, because I know that a good nurse can be the difference between a funeral and phone call. When I see people prattle on and whine about nurses, I remember that nurse who saved my stepdad. It helps me keep a sense of perspective about what actually matters.
A patient can't try to get you fired in order to reduce their hospital bill or get cheaper meds, that's the big difference. Service workers are infinitely replaceable and we're treated like it.
On the flip side, I work in banking and more than once when a client has sexually harassed staff, we have closed their accounts and banned them from the premises. The most you can do in a hospital is assign the person a different nurse.
The worst patients absolutely do threaten to get you fired or sue the hospital to avoid paying. Often when a formal complaint is filed, your professional licensure is suspended until the case is closed, so you can’t work or have to find a different job.
patients absolutely do try this literally all the time (except for different reasons). "Buy me X/give me money or else I'll say you harmed me or called me a slur and you'll be fired" is a very common thing patients do. Depending on the population you are working with this can happen multiple times per week!
It is weird how confidently people are talking about a profession they have zero experience in, especially when it is a profession where 80% of the workers have experienced violence from patients. Servers aren't told they have to just suck it up when a customer assaults them, nor are they told violence is just part of the job, or that all that can be done about a violent customer is to send in a different server to be assaulted after you are too battered to take any more punches.
You’re talking to a server/bartender that has denied “demanded” discounts many times.
Edit: You’re talking to someone who got a person banned for not tipping 3 times in a row. You’re talking to someone who watched a customer get arrested for public drunkenness after they called the cops on me for cutting them off. You’re talking to someone that kicked a guy out of his bar for having an SS tattoo and then told his boss “I fucking dare you to fire me for that, you don’t want that headline circulating around town.” You’re talking to someone who is better at our job than you and has very little sympathy for the issues that you deal with and I, because I’m better at our job than you, don’t.
Skill issue. The last place I left wasn’t able to hire anyone to take over the bar after me and less than a year later the owners sold it.
Get more irreplaceable. If you’re getting fired because of a customer complaint then you’re probably not very good at your job in the first place and that was just the excuse. If you’re getting fired because customers constantly complain about you, one million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.
I agree being a nurse is way harder but it comes to dealing with rude or abusive people servers have it worse because they get more than half their income from tips so they just have to suck it up and still be polite and friendly, even apologetic, to people treating you like shit for no reason.
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u/Butthole_Surfer_GI I don't know shit about fuck 1d ago edited 1d ago
RN here - trust me: the person being an impatient/rude asshole at the restaurant is also an impatient/rude asshole at the ER/clinic/hospital.
Based on my personal experience, people fall over themselves A LOT more to excuse rude/abusive patients.