 Hi guys and welcome back to my channel. Today I want to talk about how to appropriately deal with rude patients slash rude family members. Recently I had a patient who is very very rude to me and so I want to talk a little about this. If you've been following my Instagram and watching my Instagram stories I kind of came on and talked a little bit about this already but now I'm gonna make a video on it on YouTube. So when I started off as a nurse it's really difficult or it was for me to form those boundaries between your patients whether it's boundaries emotionally like you don't want to get too emotionally attached or they are yelling at you and you just I just took everything like I have a patient spamming member or a patient was mad and they're yelling at me I just took everything and I think that there's a time and a place to do that but I also think that there's a time and a place when you need to stand up for yourself in a respectful professional manner and that's kind of what I want to touch on in this video. I used to just take whatever patient said to me and just like if they're yelling I just let them yell at me and now I have realized more of like that I can stand up for myself in a respectful way and that I don't need to take a patient yelling at me all day long especially when they are able to be in more control of their actions. There's obviously many different situations for this and the situations that I am talking specifically about are those of patients who are alert and oriented or family members who are able to be in control of their actions. I'm not talking about people with dementia or people who are confused or withdrawing or things like that obviously there's a time a correct time in place to professionally respectfully stand up for yourself. Obviously if I have a patient who's like withdrawing from alcohol and they're yelling and crazy and things like that I'm not gonna be like you need to stop like this is inappropriate because it doesn't matter what I say they're still gonna they're still gonna do that. So number one you need to make sure when you stand up for yourself that you're doing in a professional respectful way that you're not yelling that you're not rising to the same level that they are and that it's in an appropriate location. Obviously you're not in the middle the middle of the hallway is not really an appropriate place to sometimes have these conversations. I know for me sometimes if I'm dealing with a patient or family member who's being rude and I'm not sure what to say I will go to another nurse and explain the situation and be like what would you do in the situation or sometimes you need to get your manager to back you up or even your manager to step in if it's getting that bad. Recently I had a patient who thought it was okay to constantly be screaming my name outside or inside their room but like yelling in their room and you could hear it literally like on the other side of the unit and this patient was alert and oriented and able to be in control of their yelling and so what I ended up doing is I went in this patient's room and very respectfully I said their name so and so you need to stop yelling this is very inappropriate and you're being very disruptful to all the other patients in this unit that are very sick and I said if you need me you can press your call button and I will be checking on you every half an hour and so if you need things think about what you need in that time and I will come in and help you but you cannot be yelling my name every minute to come in and help you because I have other patients that I'm also taking care of. Some of you may think that that's a rude thing to say but I think it's important that patients and their family members also realize that you typically do not just have one patient and you're not there to be a waitress or a servant to them. You're there to help them heal and of course you want to meet all of their needs but sometimes people have an unrealistic expectation of what nurses should be doing for them and you kind of need to re-evaluate that for them and help put it in perspective a little bit without being disrespectful. I also know another nurse on my unit who a couple of months ago had a patient's family member who the nurse walked in right at the beginning of the shift and this patient's family member said you need to tell me right now what this monitor is what this wire is doing what this number is what this this this and we're saying all these things in a very disrespectful tone and this nurse politely said sir ma'am I understand that you're wanting to be educated on everything and I'm happy to do that she's like but I can't teach you how to be a nurse in 12 hours and right now my priority is to take care of your loved one and not explain in detail every little number every tube every wire that's going on I'm happy to explain things as we go along but my focus is on your loved one and we deal with that a lot in the ICU dealing with patients who are very very sick and their family members are super high stress and anxiety which we totally understand as nurses that that's part of the process of having a patient that's very very sick in the ICU but sometimes patients family members and patients just need a reminder of the boundaries that we're there to take care of their loved one and that our focus is on them and getting them better and preventing them from dying or getting any worse and if we have someone that's constantly interrupting us or being disrespectful then we're not able to do our jobs to the fullest I feel like I'm kind of just rambling on in this video so I'm sorry but those are kind of some ways that I deal with patients who are being disrespectful and over time you're gonna learn your boundaries a lot more and it's gonna get easier I know for me like I said in the beginning I just took everything and now I have learned a more respectful way to deal with situations and I'm still learning there's still times where I don't know exactly what to say and that's when you can bounce those ideas off of your manager your charge nurse your fellow co-workers and really appropriately respectfully handle these situations thank you guys for tuning into this video and I give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and I'll see you next time bye