7. Well….some nurses just aren’t nice people to begin with. This may seem surprising, but really it isn’t. You probably have the image of Florence Nightingale at the bedside wiping the forehead of a sick patient with a caring smile on her face….Yeah we just aren’t all like that. They don’t have any requirements for “nice” to get into nursing school, so there is no promising you will get a nice nurse.
6. Your family pissed us off. I hate to admit it, but this is really the reason we sometimes turn into the not so nice version of ourselves. To avoid this, I would recommend you encourage your family to stay at home and if they do have to come to the hospital….tell them to try to avoid annoying the nurses…I’m just sayin…
5. We are just in a bad mood. Yes, this happens too. Doctors say mean things, or we just had a fight with someone else. We try not to take it out on the patients, but well it is hard to be cheery when you don’t want to be.
4. We stayed out too late the night before. This is really a bad idea…but it happens, especially with nurses that work weekend shifts….Anyway, staying out late makes us tired, and the rules about call ins make it impossible to not come in and work anyway (this applies to when we are sick too, we have to show up no matter what most of the time or we are penalized for calling in). So if there are bags under our eyes and we look like the walking dead….it’s better to just not remark on that.
3. Management sucks. Hmmm….this may not be true everywhere, but when nurses are forced to work under management that is hateful and does not back up their nurses then nurses become unhappy in the workplace and this does carry over to patient care sometimes.
2. We have cleaned crap for the tenth time already and it is 0900. This may or may not be your fault…but no matter it still will put us into a bit of a bad mood.
1. Maybe we just don’t like you. This sounds kind of mean…and maybe it is, but it is true. Some people just are hard to get along with, and you know who you are. We are not paid to like you, we are paid to make sure you don’t die while you are in our care….or at least try our very best. We will take care of you, give you your meds, clean you up, but we don’t have to sit in your room and discuss your ten year old Chihuahuas named Buddy and Lucy….
