Of your patient load..

..how would you divide your patients between the kind of patients you went to school for, the unreasonable and rude, the poor self care and not going to change, and the hopeless but family are in denial types? (Am I missing a major category?)

I think I see 50-70% that have reasonable health for their age/circumstance, are teachable and have something that can be worked on (the more knees I see the higher this percentage).

This number has gone down with the increase in chronic illness. I used to have more blue haired ladies as I affectionately thought of them, the 80 somethings who were aging as expected.

And what department do you work?
I work at a specialty post-acute rehabilitation hospital. The majority of our patients are there to obtain intensive rehab after having had major CVAs, orthopedic surgeries, COPD exacerbation, pneumonia, etc.Many of our patients are frequent flyers who are constantly being readmitted. And other than the patients whose disease processes are hereditary or due to accidents, a large percentage of our patients end up in our beds due to lifestyle issues.

There used to be a 50-60 yr gap between me and a majority of my patients. That gap has pretty much closed, and I'm not 80.

I work peds and it's a whole different ballgame.

..how would you divide your patients between the kind of patients you went to school for, the unreasonable and rude, the poor self care and not going to change, and the hopeless but family are in denial types? (Am I missing a major category?)

There's a neat biography called The Horse and Buggy Doctor that I stumbled across a few years ago by a country physician who worked from the late 1800s into the 1930s.Everything that we whine about today - malingerers, non-compliant patients, sicker patients surviving longer, bedside time decreasing - all get a healthy mentioning. He talks quite a bit about the new generation of patients being more whiny and needy than the last. And this was over 100 years ago. Some things really don't change.(I also like to bring up this book when physicians get all misty eyed thinking about ye Libertian utopia of ole where everyone paid in cash for services rendered.)

Quote from GooseladyI think I understand what you mean but in the final analysis, we went to school to deal with ALL of them When we opine about what we were 'meant' to do from nursing school is another one of those 'Welcome to Real Life in Nursing' wake-up calls every nurse just has to get used to. If a doctor calls them a patient, then we went to school to be their nurse. I'm not defending the scoundrels, malingerers and non-compliants at all. Just noting they are there and ain't goin' away any time soon.Nursing school inadequately prepares us to deal with the social, emotional and interpersonal complexities. It can't really be expected to. "Nursing school" never really ends, if you ask me

I guess I wasn't under any illusions in nursing school about the types of people I'd be providing care for. There is a huge diversity in the human population, and each person and their circumstances and life experience are unique. People end up in front of me for a variety of reasons, from what we call "non-compliance", to lifestyle choices, to just plain ol bad luck.I work in an ER, so I see a little bit of everything.

Quote from Anna FlaxisI guess I wasn't under any illusions in nursing school about the types of people I'd be providing care for. There is a huge diversity in the human population, and each person and their circumstances and life experience are unique. People end up in front of me for a variety of reasons, from what we call "non-compliance", to lifestyle choices, to just plain ol bad luck.I work in an ER, so I see a little bit of everything.

Quote from Libby1987My question wasn't intended to make it about who nurses went to school for but to provide a simple broad definition of a patient group.

Quote from Anna FlaxisThat's the thing. We see sick and injured people from all walks of life, and each has a unique individual set of circumstances. I couldn't give you a simple broad definition for something so varied and complex.I could tell you that most of our patients are ESI Level 3 and 4, that most of them are members of the small community where our hospital is located, and that many use our ER for convenience because of the limited hours of operation of the one Urgent Care center in town, or that they can't get in to see a PCP in a timely fashion, or that they just don't know the difference between sick and not sick.As far as judging whether the person is sick because of their own choices, well, much of the chronic illness in the US is related to lifestyle, and yes, we see that reflected in the ED.

The ones that really puzzle me are the patients who come to chat about politics. I am not kidding. There's a knot of old gents who sit in the waiting room of my ER on Friday evenings to watch the TV and chat about politics. If we ask them to leave, one of them will show a foot ulcer or a "suspicious" mole he's come to get checked out and of course the rest are just there to support him as family. (Everyone repeat after me: "The client's family is whoever they say their family is.") Last week they brought dominoes.

Quote from JoseQuinonesThe ones that really puzzle me are the patients who come to chat about politics. I am not kidding. There's a knot of old gents who sit in the waiting room of my ER on Friday evenings to watch the TV and chat about politics. If we ask them to leave, one of them will show a foot ulcer or a "suspicious" mole he's come to get checked out and of course the rest are just there to support him as family. (Everyone repeat after me: "The client's family is whoever they say their family is.") Last week they brought dominoes.