1. Know there is a difference between a nurse, a healthcare tech, and a doctor. If you put on your call light and ask/demand to see your nurse every time you need something, they're going to hate you within 3 hours. Techs can help you get into bed, walk with you, take you to the bathroom. If a nurse has to stop passing meds to see the patient that demands to see them and that patient just needs to walk to the bathroom, they are going to be pretty frustrated.
2. Know that your nurse has anywhere from 4-7 other patients than you, depending upon what kind of floor you're on. You are not the center of their world, and if you put on your call light every 30 minutes and don't truly need them, you're taking time away from their other patients. Try to cluster what you want while they are in the room with you. Nothing makes a nurse or tech more frustrated when you go to their room and get them water, and when they get back to the room you ask for a blanket, and then you ask for some crackers, and then you think you might want a pain pill. And then I might just scream.
3. When you walk by the nurses station and everyone is on the computer, know they are not screwing around on the computer, playing on Facebook. We have to chart literally everything we do, and because of that, we have an absurd amount of computer work to do in one shift.
4. Let your nurse know ahead of time if you want a sleeping pill. If they come in with your bedtime meds and you say you want a sleeping pill, but not for another 20-30 minutes, good luck getting it within that time frame. 20-30 minutes is enough time to do NOTHING, because someone else will need something and they'll be with that other patient and before you know it, your sleeping pill doesn't get there for two hours when you could have had it with all your evening meds.
5. Pain meds are almost always as needed medications. That means that the pain pills don't show up on the nurse's scheduled meds for their shift. If you want a pain pill as often as you can have it (usually every 4-6 hours), tell them to bring them in as soon as they're due. I've had patients get really mad at me for not bringing their pain pills as they were due, but they never said they wanted them. We don't know to bring them if you don't tell us. I ask if patients are in pain every time that I go in the room, but some are not vocal about it until it's unbearable and then it's too late.
6. Stay on top of your pain. If you think you'll just take pain pills when it gets pretty bad, think again. Those pills take about 45 minutes to kick in, so you'll be in agonizing pain until then and the pain might be so bad by that point that the relief won't be as adequate. It's better to take the pain pills consistently and keep the pain at a tolerable level than wait until it's unbearable and then very difficult to control.
7. Don't try to "tough it out." I've come across patients (typically older men) that refuse all pain meds, yet they are obviously in pain. Pain raises your blood pressure and puts overall stress on your body. So in acute situations it's better to take pain pills while your body is healing than to suffer through the pain. You might be doing more damage to your body by being in pain than by taking the pills.
8. Do as much for yourself as you can. Some people come into the hospital thinking that it's a vacation and since they're sick it means that they don't have to take care of themselves. This will make your stay longer. If you're motivated and do all you can for yourself, you'll get home faster. And the staff will love you. If you are perfectly capable of straightening out your own sheets or repositioning yourself in bed, don't put on your call light and ask for the tech to do it. You can do it, don't be lazy.
9. Don't have 900 visitors every day. It is important to have family/friend support, but if there's 15 people in there every day all day, it makes it difficult for staff to take care of you. Also, patients feel pressure to stay awake and talk with/entertain their visitors when most of the time they need to either sleep or work with PT/OT. Have some people visit you, but don't go nuts.
10. If you have a roommate, be respectful. If you like to have the room at 76 degrees, sleep with extra blankets. That's too hot for most people. Or if you like to sleep with the room cooler, use just a sheet. Don't have your TV or lights on late into the night. Don't talk loudly on the phone during day or night. They are healing too, so please be conscious of that. While we as the staff want everyone to have private rooms, we know that's just not a reality. Know that we hate it too.
11. Bring stuff to do. We have specific things to do during a shift, so the staff is always really busy. We wish we had more time to be around/chat with you. If we get into a long conversation with a patient, know that we are thinking about the 800 other tasks we need to do and the quickest way to do them. It breaks my heart when I have a patient that just sits there all day. No TV, no books, no crosswords, and is bored out of their mind. Bring things to keep you going and be self motivated. The hospital is not pity-party central. We are not here to feel bad you. Whatever happened to you sucks, but chances are, we've seen worse. We want patients to have the motivation to keep themselves entertained and sane. Bring some Sudoku or something man.
12. If it looks like we're just sitting around at the nurse's station, we're not. If things are slow at the time, that just means that things are about to get really busy. We never know how many admissions we will get, or when a patient's condition will start to deteriorate. If there's nothing to do and we look like we're just hanging out at the nurse's station, trust me, we're just waiting.
13. Notice or ask when shift change is and try not to ask for things during that time. While they're twice as many people there at the same time, it's really hectic and really easy to forget about things people ask for.
14. If you put on your call light and ask for something and someone doesn't come into the room in 20-25 minutes with it, ask for it again. We're human, we forget things. Don't get mad at us or act like we don't like you or specifically are ignoring you. Just put on your call light again. We are not mad if you remind us, we are happy if you do because we do not intentionally forget someone or ignore them. Don't take it personally.
15. Realize that while you have one nurse, they have 5 patients. They are constantly prioritizing things, and what might seem like the most important thing in the world to you, is at the bottom of their priority list. Don't get offended. For instance, here are my 5 patients and their needs right now:
- A. Patient who just had an alert lab value come back from the lab
- B. Patient who has to pee
- C. Patient whose IV pump is going off
- D. Patient with new-onset chest pain
16. Just because nurses are in the medical field does not mean they know everything. I work in cardiac, I know very little about babies. So that rash on your kids butt, I don't know what is is. Get some diaper cream or something. Or that lump on your shoulder? No clue. Maybe it's a fatty nodule, maybe it's cancer, maybe it's a big zit, I don't know.. I'm not a doctor. People in the medical field know a lot, but not every little thing about every disease known to man, or what your sister in law's cousin's friend had when she went to Aruba last Christmas.
17. Don't assume your nurse or tech knows your entire health history. I read the important parts of your chart and of this hospital stay. That's what I know, that's what I write down when I get to the floor. I don't know that you had an uncomplicated knee surgery 30 years ago. Don't get offended if your nurses doesn't know that stuff off the top of my head.
18. We tend to get a lot of patients that are similar. So if out of 5 patients, 3 of them had the same surgery, and 2 of them had uncomplicated recoveries and one had some blood pressure issues in ICU, don't get mad if we mix you up with someone else for a second. Especially if you have a really common name. Common surgeries on people with common names get mixed up sometimes in peoples head when fixing your IV pump, making your bed, giving you meds, and charting while talking to you all at the same time.
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