Been a nurse for 21 years. Human nature is a funny thing. I have met patients who were the nicest, most gracious, most wonderful people you'd ever want to meet. I couldn't do enough for that type of person, because I knew that they sincerely appreciated the job I did.
I have also met patients who, the moment they enter the hospital, feel that the nurses job is to be their personal slave. I give those patients good care because it is my job. However, what many people do not understand is that a nurses duty is to always be working toward making the patient maximally independent. Putting their peri pad in place, wiping their nose, holding their tissue etc. for them, when they are capable of doing it themselves, does not meet this goal. That is sometimes difficult for patients and families to understand, no matter how many times it is explained. And of course, when Mom doesn't get better becaiuse Mom is laying in the bed like a slug expecting to be waited on hand and foot, the hospital gets sued for not "curing" her.
BTW, not everyone who is in the hospital these days is "very sick". Many patients know very well how to work the system, as do their family members. There is the famous "My elderly mother is complaining of abdominal pain(thus requiring a 3 day, million $ work up) and oh it happens to be New Year's Eve". Translation: "I want to go out and have no one to stay with Mom, so I'll let the hospital babysit her". Then there's always the prison inmates who mysteriously get "chest pain" when they go to jail, because it's much nicer to stay at the hospital in a private room than it is to be in jail.
As far as those of you who have had negative experiences, well...there are good and bad in every profession. I will apologize for all my colleagues who did not meet your expectations of what a nurse "should" do.
Disney Deluxe Princess, your posts do not indicate where you live. I can only hope it's not in Connecticut, as I doubt our encounter in the hospital would be a pleasant one.
Funny story #1:
Many years ago, when I was first a nurse, I was working a Sunday day shift. One of the patients under my care was a young transsexual male, who was midway through his change, so he had female anatomy on his upper body and male anatomy below the belt. He was also a transvestite. He had been admitted to the hospital for observation after having a fluted champagne glass removed from his rectum. They had to break it to get it out, and were worried that the glass may have sliced his colorectal area.I was probably about 23 years old at the time, and I entered this patient's room at 7AM on that Sunday morning to find him totally distraught at the fact that here it was, Sunday morning, and he still had his Saturday night make up on, which included purple glitter eyeshadow. The silver lining to the cloud...there was nothing else that could have happened that day that could have topped that, so I got the hard part over early!
Funny Story #2:
I was a student nurse, probably about 19 years old, doing an Ob-Gyn rotation, and was spending a day in the doctor's office. It had been relatively uneventful until the afternoon, when a woman came in, complaining of ******l pain. The doctor did a very thorough history, and got no information that could point to what could be causing the pain. Upon doing the ******l exam, he reached and pulled out A SET OF KEYS. He showed them to the woman, whose response was "Oh, that's where I left those".
Not-So-Funny-Story #3:
I was notified that I was getting a transfer of a patient who had been on another unit, and had a reputation of being less-than-willing to participate in her own recovery, with a family that supported her in this endeavor. Immediately upon her arrival into the room, her very vocal daughter looked at me and said "Oh, good, another nurse I can terrorize and make cry. I do so enjoy doing that". My reply, "Ma'am, I've been a nurse for 20 years. There's not much you can throw at me that I haven't already seen, and it's going to take a lot more than you have to offer to make me cry." That is a good example of the "poor terrified family members so worried about their sick relative".
I won't go into the stories of the drug-abusing boyfriend of the terminally ill HIV patient who came into the hospital with a gun to kill us all because we "let" his girlfriend die. BTW, she caught the virus from him.
Despite the Deluxe Disney Princesses of the world, who I daresay make my job harder than it needs to be, I have had an interesting and varied career, with experiences not offered by the average job. I have had the good fortune of helping people live,and the privelege of helping people die with dignity. I wouldn't trade it for the world.