Most people I know behave themselves when at a restaurant. Why? Because they’re afraid of the server, the cook, or the staff spitting (or worse) in their food. Why then are patients so quick to treat hospital staff so poorly?
Why aren’t you afraid of the same thing, just infinitely worse? At the very least, I know for a fact that medical staff can make things very difficult when you are rude.
At the very least, you are being an ass.
What are you people thinking?
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This goes doubly for police officers. In case they didn’t teach you this when you were a rookie: Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever do anything even remotely irritating to someone with a nurse’s sticker on their car, like give them a ticket or anything ruder than, “please try to drive a little more carefully, sir/ma’am.” You see, while they will give you absolutely professional medical care if you ever show up in their ER with a bullet wound, they may make the judgment call to go light on the local anesthesia – for the sake of your well-being, of course – if they happen to recognize you as a cop that pissed them off.
ER staff are generally overworked, have frayed nerves, and are more often than not embittered. Never give someone who may be one reason to want revenge on you.
Just a word to the wise…
As someone who is in the ER at least twice a week, transporting patients, let me say two things:
1) People are rude to nurses for no reason.
2) Nurses are doubly rude to patients (and EMTs) for no reason.
3) EMTs don’t like nurses.
Nurses are treated like private servants. The job of a nurse has become so diversified that nurses don’t know which end is up anymore. Nurses have become nothing more than a whipping post for anyone who needs to release their frustration. Patients hit, slap, spit on, scream at, throw things at, and threaten to sue nurses if they don’t coward down and do as they say. Nurses have become the battered housewives of America, and more and more laws are being passed to batter them into submission. Yes, people have more respect for waitresses than they do nurses. Patients, family members, doctors, the general public, and even other nurses treat nurses so terrible that it is no wonder there is a nursing shortage. See if any of the general public can do their jobs. As far as nurses not liking EMT’S, try establishing mutual respect. You are both doing a “very important job”, and both sides should realize that.
Some nurses are very nice and do a great job @ providing good patient care. But, nurses in the NICU, PICU, ER and some in CICU are absolute bitter a-holes. I work with them, and I even want to slap them around. Their attitudes make our lives miserable. These nurses are monsters, not caregivers. They are miserable, scary, and bitter ugly monsters.