What are a nurses pet peeves?

Nurses put up with a lot of sh*t. Both literally and figuratively. Here’s a list of sh*t I hated dealing with in my nursing career:

1. Doctors with huge egos. 

A doctor I know once had a nurse fired simply for answering the ward telephone in his presence. In a hospital there are all kinds of emergencies and answering the telephone may well save a life! Of course nothing could be more important than Doctor Bruised Ego over there!

2. Managers with their nose high up in the air.

Some managers develop a similar sort of bloated ego as doctors do. This can cause a lot of issues for everyone. Of course I wouldn’t class all matrons (or doctors for that matter) the same way…just a few.

3. Patients that think they own you.

Technically they do sort of own you. They can get away with murder and there’s almost nothing you can do to those obnoxious patients…almost.

Nurses I worked with at least found ways to warn each other about these patients by using code words in the patients diagnosis. “This is Mrs Smeegle and she has HPT, DVT, Chronic PIA (pain in the ass)”. Or for a particularly dimwitted patient we’d say “we have a case of low apgar”A scoring system used on newborn babies to assess their physical condition. A low apgar score, would usually indicate a lack of oxygen to the brain and the possibility of retardation.. It was little ways of not only warning other nurses that this patient may be a danger to herself and others, but also a tiny bit of vengeance for her terrible attitude (having a little inside joke/laugh at her expense). Yeah, some might find this horrendously offensive but I think it’s harmless compared to the immense amount of stress these types of patients inflict on nurses daily.

4. People that think of you as a walking pharmacy because you work at a hospital.

How many times have people come up to you and asked if you could get them meds? Like you have the ability to just walk into the hospital take whatever you please and hand it out to everyone. Well, yeah you can get away with that sometimes in tiny quantities and there are people who you really don’t mind helping out, but then there are those that keep coming back for more, or worse, they tell their aunts, uncles, cousins and cousins cousins cousin that you can supply them with free meds for a lifetime. 

5. People who think all you do is clean poop and sleep all day! 

This should have been higher up on the list. This makes me go CRAZY INSANE! I just can’t stand it when ignorant people undermine the job as though they’d survive even one hour doing what nurses do! It’s an insult above all insults. Say that to a nurse and you’re not gonna have a good time next time you need to get your shots buddy!

Let me know in the comments below what you find unbearably maddening from your experiences as a nurse. How do you deal with the issues that you experience? Also, if you’ve got a story to tell from a patients/doctors/managers perspective, I’d love to hear it.