Nurses talk to Nurses Doctors talk to Doctors

My old hospital is actually in the process of encouraging nurses to report physicians who treat them disrespectfully using the self-reporting error software. This generates a report to the head of physicians and the unit manager. I do feel that this behavior is going to be a thing of the past in ten years if education keeps moving towards interdisciplinary learning and teaching. Having nurses, docs, RT, PT, and pharmacy in classes together is going to train everyone from the start to work together better. I do feel there has been a change in this environment during my career, which is only about 8 years long.

The doctors that I deal with are overall very nice. They value and depend on nurses and we are given a lot of autonomy. I've only had one physician be incredibly rude to me one time. I was pulled to a floor I'd never been on and was dealing with a diagnosis I hadn't had a patient with before. No less, I am grateful that the docs I work with are so fantastic. Now if only they would all put in their own orders I'd be happy. And if some of them had a better accent...

It sounds like your workplace needs a change in culture and policy and that this particular physician needs a major attitude adjustment. The story of the meeting makes me cringe, I just can't picture it ever happening in the hospital where I work. There is no excuse, ever, to treat a coworker in this fashion, and that's all a doc is. A physician is not a nurse's boss, superior, parent or deity, and it sounds like this person needs to be reminded of that.

That is INSANE. INSANE that a physician can speak to a nurse like that and have an ENTIRE ROOM of people just sit back and allow it.If a patient or family member had acted that way, someone would have called security post-haste.Why make exceptions?

Quote from madwife2002I know that some Doctors will actually show their anger and frustration towards you in a public area, increasing your embarrassment and shame.

Sadly, I don't see this attitude changing in the very near future. We continue to live and work in a society that deems doctors as " supreme beings". I have witnessed, on several occasions, MDs make incredible clinical errors, prescription errors, pt confusion...the list could go on. It is we nurses that have " saved the day" on nearly all of these occasions. Having said that, it simply reaffirms my point that MDs are simply human beings...not " supreme beings" and they are subject to the same misfortune of human error as we are. The sad reality is, however, that too often, when an error is made by an MD we get interrogated about why WE didn't catch it. When we make these same human errors, we, again, get chastised for making the mistake. It is often a lose- lose position.When we see patients blindly taking meds that have been prescribed ( because after all, the "doctor gave it to me)....family members that insist they need to "hear it from a doctor" and a management team that accepts this superior/ inferior behavior...we begin to question..." Are we a medical team? Or are we sheep being herded into pasture?"I remember years ago...a hospitalist on-call MD ordering an anti-biotic for a pt with noted allergies to it....it was night shift and paging him went without it's own retribution...but when I brought to his attention that this was not an appropriate solution...I was told " MD out ranks RN every time!!!"

This is my chief complaint about my current manager, there is no support or advocacy for the nursing staff. I work in a large clinic with 12 MDs. The majority of the MDs are professional and respect what we do. However there are two who act like king and queen of the castle. A few weeks ago, King MD was the back-up doctor. They take turns in this role to be the go-to person if the patient's regular MD is not in the office. They are supposed to remain at the office until all patients are seen and we are open until 6:00. Pts can be scheduled as late as 5:30, depending on what is going on. We have an infusion area, injection area, a coag clinic, lab, and phone triage to deal with. This MD insists that we call him at 4:30 (infusion area only BTW) to let him know how late we will be. #1, how are we to know how late we will be when we still have patients to come in? Believe me, we have had train-wrecks come in for their 5:15 Coag appointments who have to be direct admitted to the hospital. #2, only the infusion center is expected to call. I guess it doesn't matter that Coag patients are scheduled until 5:30 and that phones don't go on service until 5:15 at the earliest. Even if the infusion center is done by 4:30 (sometimes, but rarely), these other areas still need an MD on site.#3, our hours haven't changed in 10 years. We are always open until 6:00. If you are back up doc, I don't understand why the expectation isn't that you stay until 6:00. The other day, no one called him at 4:30 because we were busy. He left. We only found out after someone in triage tried to find him about a call. He got paged by QUEEN MD, who also hates being back-up MD and would very likely pull the same stunt. He ends up calling my boss and yelling at her about not being called at 4:30. Does she stick up for us? No, we get a big note on the bulletin board saying to make sure to call at 4:30.I can understand calling when the last patient arrives to give an estimate of how long we will be. I can understand calling at 5:15, when the phones go on service. The other MDs will often call us when they are finishing up to see how long we think we will be.With this particular scenario, if the infusion center happened to have been done at 4:30 and called him, how would we have known that the patient was going to call us at 4:45 when phones don't go on service until 5:15?I am angered that the MD is a jerk, that he is allowed to be a jerk, and that our boss just rolls over and does what he says. It is infuriating!We are professionals, but are not treated as such in many situations.

It's a lack of respect, and partly why I intend to leave the nursing profession. I see too many of my coworkers just put up with being a punching bag.

This is an age old problem. Years ago, about 15 years ago, I worked for a wonderful boss and administration, at a facility (in the Midwest) that did NOT allow this behavior towards their nurses. They were reprimanded, held accountable, and made to behave. A physician that threw a chart at me was suspended from admitting for 90 days.I moved...to New England.....and I have worked at a couple of facilities that promotes the good ole boy club and allows nurses to be treated like second class citizens and the MD's like God's. I was stunned!!!!!!!! However.....It's the culture of the area.Personally, I would not have stood there and been shouted at....I would have made it clear that I would not be spoken to in that manner and I would be happy to discuss this when they could speak in a normal speaking tone and be respectful...or we could finish the conversation in Human resources.....and I would have left the meeting. Walked out and closed the door. Period. My husband doesn't speak like that to me and neither will someone else.No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.......

I have actually witnessed an MD lie to a family, and blame the "nurse" for something he did. I called him on it, and insisted he apologize to me. The doctors don't understand, or care, that when we are blamed for their medical error, then we still have to take care of the patient. The patient and family then no longer trust us. I live in this community, too, and do not want my reputation smeared in this manner. I don't want people to think of me as incompetent, stupid, etc., just because a doctor decided to claim "his" mistake was mine. I just happened to walk up behind him while he was making up this lie, and caught him in it.

At my present hospital, all the doctors are foreign, and most are from a country in which women are not valued. There are several who regularly run to administration to complain about everything under the sun, and administration caters to their every whim. After all, the doctors make money for the hospital; nurses don't. They threaten to stop putting their patients there. (Don't know if that is true or not; that is just what administration chooses to tell us.) I am from the stone-age, so I remember well how we peons had to stand and give up our chairs when a doctor entered the room, so I do see some progress. Esme is right~ it is the "culture" of the facility, and the culture of the one I am at right now is to blame and punish the nurse for everything, and treat the docs like the Gods they think they are. This hospital segregates us into classes; we even have separate holiday parties, etc., instead of all together like a team.

At my previous position I voiced concerns about how our NP and MD's treated nurses during rounds, and was told "Well that is just how J (the NP) and Dr.X are." I said that it was unacceptable and was ignored. I have been chewed out by the NP for following orders that were given by the neuro surgery team to transfer a patient because the ICU team was not consulted before transfer took place. I told her they should communicate and not make me the middle man. I have enough to do. The patient was indeed ready to transfer. She just wanted him kept one more day. I have had MD's yell at me on day shift for orders that they never wrote weren't followed. I told them they never wrote the order only talked about it in rounds. I didn't follow the order because they never wrote it. So frustrating. I got chewed out by the head MD in our ICU because I didn't have I&O, CSF output, VS trends for 24 hours (in front of a A&O x 3 pt as well). I had to remind him I was charge, we had no clerk, I had just finished up with my other pt, we had only one aid, and I had to answer the phone and door to let visitors in and put in orders for those who didn't know how. I said I understood how he felt I should have that knowledge, but he should have understood I was not only doing my job that day but the job of 2 other people.I brought this to management and was told I should have had that info. Really when did you expect me to get it between answering every single phone call that bounced to my spectra link, and the door, and take actual care of my patients? Management lets doctors speak to us that way.My new manager is awesome and wont let that crap happen.