The medication is a blood thinner, the patient is a competent adult not in delirium, A&OX4. There are 2 ways to see this:
Manager’s and a group of doctor’s POV: you are a nurse and it’s your job and duty to do that. Plus, we know better than him what’s good for him. These people have built their identity around working in healthcare and to them this means I have to stay in the room and make sure the patient takes the medication.
My POV: nursing is not a calling but a job. What my manager and these doctors think is stupid:
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the patient is a competent adult not in delirium, A&OX4. He’s old enough to know what happens if he doesn’t take the medication because we have told him a number of times already. I’m not his father and I’m not ready to treat a competent adult like a child.
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I have other patients and I’m not going to waste my time watching a patient silently until he decides to take the medication. I’m charting that I left the medication next to him and told him he needs it and why and that I have other patients to take care of.
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It is stupid to watch a person while doing nothing when I should be working with my other patients. It’s also invasive as f*ck.
I see it like this: my manager and this group of doctors are not ready to respect a person’s autonomy whereas I’m not ready to ignore this same autonomy, even if it means a negative outcome. Respecting a consenting adult’s autonomy means respecting his bad choices as well. I feel this group of doctors and my manager are not ready to respect any patient’s autonomy.
At this moment, this is a hill I’m willing to die on. AITA?
ETA: I wrote about a group of doctors, because there are other doctors that don’t give me hard time if a patient refuses his medication, they simply chart it and move on. I like working with doctors like this because I feel they don’t judge and respect the patient’s autonomy as well.
This is definitely not a manager or HR reply this reads like a reply from a fellow nurse or doctor.
This is not the field to fuck around and provide inadequate care in, to make moral judgement against medical ones. This is a field with lives literally at stake and there is no room for people who don’t take that seriously. Full stop.
A doctor! You compliment me, sir. My family would be so proud!
Nah, I’ve just been a patient a few times, and think that people should do the job that they’ve agreed to do, especially when lives are at stake. I agree with you completely.
what is a nurse supposed to do in case a patient does not want to take the medication though? waste their time with an adult baby or actually do their job by helping other people? of course that information needs to be written down and forwarded to the doctor but seriously, what do you suggest a nurse does in that situation?