Well, my friends, that all changed earlier this week. You know what. I’m just going to quote the conversation so you can enjoy it as well.
Scenario
A report was made to a nurse (not me) that a patient was seen taking pills from home in their room. Clearly this poses a threat to patient safety. I mean there are A LOT of drug interactions, and this particular patient was on some pretty strong meds apparently. It should be noted in this scenario that the patient I am talking about had already faked not 1, but 2, seizures this particular evening. That’s right. Patients do that regularly to try to get the “good drugs” Ativan being one of them. (Makes the cartoon at the beginning of the post funnier, doesn't it?) Just another joy of my life at the hospital—it’s not enough that I have to try and figure out what a real seizure looks like (which I have, thank goodness) I also have to figure out if it’s fake because they want the “good” meds.
Anyway, earlier in the night the nurse who had the patient was annoyed because of the faked seizures and I told the nurse “Just tell her it’s like the ‘hokey pokey’ and the patient should ‘shake it all about.’” We had a good giggle over that one.
Back to the story…
So after we had a report that the patient was taking meds in their room, we called security to have a witness and roll into the patient’s room and ask for permission to search for the pills. We explained to the patient why this was for their safety, etc. The patient is higher then a kite at this point and agrees. We looked through the patient’s things and of course found the pills…many of which were extremely potent and have very dangerous side effects. As we’re finishing this exchange occurs:
Patient: “Do you need to search under my mattress also?”Me: “Do you have pills hidden under your mattress?”
Patient: “No.”
Me: “Nope. We’re good.”
Also, remember security has this whole exchange on tape.
Thirty minutes later…
The sitter in the room with the patient calls out and says that the patient needs to speak with whom ever is charge ASAP. I can hear the sitter panicking a little bit, so I run right into the room because by some stoke of something, I am in charge that night.
Anyway, the patient yells at me and tells me to “get out of my face” even though I’m standing at the door and the patient is sitting on the bed. And the patient isn’t going to talk to me because I “violated their rights, and I am going to lose my job for it.”
So, the people who are really in charge are called and they come up to try and talk down the crazy patient. And here’s where it really gets good.
After several minutes of the patient rambling about how their rights have been violated and how armed police (security) stood in their room and that was a violation of their rights, etc, etc, etc…the best exchange takes place.
Person in charge (POC): “What can we do to fix this and make it better?”
Patient: “Well, I don’t really know. I’m having a little trouble remembering my name night now, and all I know is that my rights were violated.”
POC: “Do you think, there might be a chance, that since you’re currently having a little trouble remembering your name, you might not remember consenting to having your room searched?”
Patient: “Oh NO you didn’t! You did not just go there.”
POC: “I did just go there. Now are you going to answer the question?”
Patient: “My rights have been violated. Get all their names (a friend was sitting in the room) I’m calling the news. You ALL are losing your jobs. Now get out of my room. I’m going to sleep.
People, I am not exaggerating. That is what happened.
Oh, and security was standing outside the room the whole time this was exchange took place, and was just cracking up because they were there the first time, and none of this had happened.
Now I’m off for about a week for a little vacation time. I’ve heard the holiday’s can be CRA-ZY, and I can’t wait to tell you all about it. Stay tuned.
