Difficult nurses and sweet patients

I had the experience of working with a nurse who has a dreaded reputation of being hard on students. He got one of my classmates sent home in tears because she didn’t know something about one of the medications. I also heard he likes to drill the students on things he thinks they should know and gives them scathing remarks when they don’t know. When I found out he was the nurse for my patient, I groaned to myself and decided that if he asked me something I didn’t know, I’d just tell him that was something I didn’t know yet, but I’d be pleased if he would tell me. Thankfully, I wasn’t giving medications that day.

When I went to get my report from him on my patient, he informed me that this was a personal friend of his and I’d better take good care of him. Great! My patient turned out to be a real sweetheart and I spent the first 2 hours just talking to him. He had 3 wounds on his foot that aren’t healing. The nurse quizzed me about what 2 things hindered them from healing. I knew immediately that his primary problem was his diabetes, but I had to talk my way through the other one after first telling him that I wasn’t so sure about the second but it was related to his CHF. He told me I was on the right track, so I continued rambling until I had it figured out. Score 1 for me!

He actually sat down with my patient and I and talked quite civilly for a bit even though he was behind in his work. At the end of the day, my patient was really sorry to see me go, but best off all, the nurse told me I did a really good job. I was amazed that he had been so nice to me all day and answered all my questions about charting and about my patient’s particular ailments. So I told him I enjoyed working with him. He just stared at me for a little bit then said, “I don’t know why!” I think he knows his reputation. So I left with a smile on the inside knowing that I had confounded him, and just maybe I brightened his day