During my twenty odd years as a nurse, I have frequently witnessed examples of human behaviour lacking in many of the alleged saving graces. I have seen people (patients and relatives), verbally abuse staff over issues that the staff present and on the receiving end of such abuse, have no control whatsoever. Frequently there is a delay in perhaps an investigation, a doctor coming to the ward to finalise paperwork or the delivery of medications. It is the staff on the wards or in clinics that face this abuse and it is unacceptable. Well it should be.
It is important and worth noting that the departments carrying out investigations, the doctor or pharmacy are not delaying treatment deliberately. We are all busy, it takes time to arrange an investigation, doctors will have dozens of patients under their care and pharmacies by their very nature, are permanently overstretched.
What frequently surprises me is that people on the inside of the system, the people who work within healthcare, suddenly forget how that system works and apparently expect special treatment. I once cared for a manager from another hospital, whose wife expressed frustration at the wait for discharge. Well sorry love, your husband may be a manager but the red carpet treatment doesn’t apply here and behaving like an arsehole isn’t going to get you anywhere. Welcome to the real world, no ivory towers here.
In early November of this year (2022), I witnessed quite possibly the most disgraceful and extreme example of selfish ignorance in my entire twenty five years of service. I was in on a Saturday helping with a departmental move and I just happened to be standing at the entrance of a neighbouring ward. The crash alarm went. That awful sound that haunts our nightmares. I charged down the ward corridor. I can for a man of my age, overweight and unfit, turn on quite an impressive burst of speed in an emergency, I passed other staff members on my run. My reaction time on this occasion being just a fraction of a second quicker.
Entering a four bed bay, I joined staff surrounding an elderly Asian woman who had collapsed in the chair. She did not look well, not at all. We manhandled her onto the bed, breaking every manual handing protocol in the book. Someone grabbed the oxygen, someone shouted for assistance. Someone put out the crash call, others fetched the CPR trolley and the portable ECG machine. The curtains were not fully closed, there were perhaps ten or twelve people around the bed by now, far too many. There were doctors and nurses from the ward, doctors and nurses from the crash team. I was if anything, superfluous and rather in the way, so I stepped out.
While standing outside the bay observing this awful life and death struggle, the daughter of a patient diagonally across from our unconscious one came out of the bay. In doing so she had weaved her way past doctors, the CPR trolley and the ECG machine. This woman stormed up to the central desk and began to berate a member of staff there. Her complaint being that her mother’s medications were late.
I stood there is absolute disbelief. I could not comprehend the selfish ignorant, uncaring ingratitude of this woman. She should be grateful it wasn’t her mother who had almost died. You will I hope dear reader, be relieved to learn that our patient made it and regained consciousness with no permanent ill effects.
On her way back to her mother she had to once again, weave past the staff and equipment. It did occur to me that the woman was perhaps rather stupid, such a complete idiot that she did not realise there was an emergency. On reflection, I believe this not to be the case. My final conclusion is that she is simply a selfish arsehole, who clearly doesn’t care whether another patient lives or dies. Our patient who near died was Asian and therefore, had a brown skin. The woman I describe and her mother are not brown. Perhaps in her world, the colour of the skin makes some difference in how we value human life but it doesn’t in mine.
Daniel Bran Griffith - The Chattering Magpie 
Shocking but sadly unsurprising. Deference to doctors ( who often condescended to patients or did not include them in decisions) in the ” bad old days” used to make me ( as a nurse) furious – but now the pendulum seems to have swung the other way….
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A work colleague has on reading this post, used the word entitled to describe the behaviour. It is in my opinion, a very appropriate descriptor. What I personally consider to be acceptable behaviour is today, frequently at odds with what I experience. Such behaviour is not acceptable, it is disgraceful but it is also, all too common.
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