Who was in the wrong? Care assistant or relative?

[GingerNinjer]

Relative visiting a patient in hospital (before Covid obviously). Care assistant asks patient if they want a cup of tea. Patient asks if relative can have one too. Care assistant knows she’s not meant to offer refreshments to relatives but thinks “what’s the harm it could do?” And agrees.
Care assistant takes two mugs of tea into patient and relative. Relative says the mug is a little too full. Care assistant says “you don’t have to drink it all”. Relative says “but I might spill it”. Care assistant gets narky, takes the mug to the sink and pours some tea out of the mug. Relative says there is tea dripping off the mug and it might stain her clothes. Care assistant rolls her eyes and cleans mug with a paper towel. Patient asks if they can have some biscuits. Care assistant goes off and returns with 2 packets of biscuits (each containing 3 biscuits). Relative says “there’s too many biscuits”. Care assistant says “leave what you don’t want”. Relative says “but it’s wasteful”. Care assistant says “then share one packet”. Patient says “there isn’t enough in one packet to share”. Care assistant says “the biscuits come in packs of 3, do you want them or not?” Relative says “can you take one biscuit away?” Care assistant says “no I’m busy now, just leave what you don’t want on the table”. Relative says “but it’s messy, crumbs will get everywhere”. Care assistant snaps and says “oh well!” And walks out.

Patient and relative complain about care assistant. Care assistant gets a talking to for a) giving refreshments to relatives and b) being rude to patient and relatives

YABU - care assistant was in the wrong
YANBU - care assistant did nothing wrong

Oh my god the relative is a piece of work. Seriously: "there's too many biscuits.. now there's not enough". Care assistant has the patience of a saint if you ask me.

The reason drinks etc are not provided to relatives is to save resources and because people " accidently" spill hot drinks and sue. Sometimes they do it several times.

Op thinking who was wrong/ right isnt helpful.
People behave like this in care setting because they feel out of control.
I feel sorry for them ( yes really)as they must feel very out of control of their own lives to be so petty and controlling.
Try to regain control by having a professional persona -smile, polite, walk away if needed.
Never resort to eye rolling and huffing.
These types are desperate to push you into a reaction so that they can complain.
They do it everywhere shops, dentist etc
Its not personal to you.
You cant control what other people do just how you react.
Can you use a reflective cycle to get you out of this unhelpful rumination.
?
What could you do differently?
Stick to policy
"Sorry drinks are for patients only" smile and walk away to next patient.
A sign is usually on the trolley saying this.

Never go against hospital policy-it always bites you and you will never be backed.

Put on a professional persona with your uniform.
Dont huff or eyeroll.
Smile and walk away if they are rude or demanding " I will have to ask the nurse in charge"
If they are abusive/ angry walk away and
Incident report
Swearing/ aggressive
Call security.

If they complain just say that you felt unsafe and removed yourself if you are spoken to.

Dont mud wrestle with pigs, the pigs like it

@SchadenfreudePersonified

pisstakers complaining they couldn't even get a cup of tea and 2.68 Jammy Dodgers

Now I want 2.68 Jammy Dodgers . . . BUT DON'T MAKE CRUMBS!!!

😂

Some people are utter arses. They go out of their way to belittle and bully where they think they can get away with it.

@GingerNinjer

I admit I was narky with them. I should have just stopped the situation right from the start but it snowballed and I didn’t know what to do.

She's lucky it was you, not me!

Rude stupid fucking woman.

I have loads of patients with animals, children, adults with LD/dementia etc.

But I have zero patience with people like this. I can conjure up a minimal amount if it benefits me (like keeping my job) but I'd have been out at 'the cup is too full'. I'd have 'apologised' for not realising she had additional needs that meant she was unable to manage a normal cup of tea.

But seriously, several years later, you need to find a way to get past this. Maybe make a cup of tea and go into the garden & tip it out slowly imagining her stupid face & her reaction to you pouring it over her 🤷🏻‍♀️

Start applying for other jobs - you'll find something!!

As a nurse who worked 7 years on a ward, this is sadly very normal. Relatives can be an absolute nightmare at times, with very little consideration that you’ve got 8 other acutely unwell patients to look after. We used to dread visiting time for this exact reason, so we had no option but to be firm with them or nothing else would get done! Honestly some of the requests would make you laugh if they didn’t make you cry!

I’m sorry the HCA went through this.

So sad really,no good deed ever left unpunished really

People can be hard to please at times. I agree with previous posters best to stick to protocol and not fetch the drink for the relative. Sometimes when you have done all you can you just have to explain that you really need to get on as busy with patients. The conflict resolution tip from previous poster was good to keep agreeing with the person who is being unreasonable.

Also think directing relatives to the nearest coffee shop is a good approach. I'm a nurse of 20 years experience and always made an exception for relatives visiting long hours such as end of life patients would make pots of tea with some biscuits x

You wonder why some people go into nursing when they seem to lack a caring gene

Since nursing has started to demand a degree, it seems it that it has now become a career path into hospital administration as well as higher nursing roles. This means it attracts people who want "careers" as opposed t people who want to care for and interact with patients. This became compounded when nursing students started to find themselves spending more and more time in lecture rooms, and less and less on the wards. At one time nursing staff were put straight onto wards in "dogsbody" necessary roles (eg bedpans etc), where they couldn't kill anyone but began to learn the job from the (literal ) bottom up. They also had academic training, but a huge amount of their day was spent with patients and more senior staff. They learned by "sitting with Nellie" as the expression here is (I'm a Northern lass ). They didn't just learn to deal with illness - they learned to deal with people.

This is sadly being lost because it is no longer valued. Only a year or two ago the Royal College of Nursing expressed their concerns that the candidates coming in to nursing had no interest in caring for people - they just wanted a foot on what could turn into a lucrative career in hospital management. They said that too much emphasis was being placed on exam results, and not enough on interpersonal skills and humanity. The report said that they were in danger of losing all compassion in nursing.

I was in hospital myself just last week - taken in as an emergency, in agony (gall bladder). Everyone from domestics and porters, up through the ranks of nurses, doctors and the consultant, were lovely. I consider myself very lucky.

@ShesMadeATwatOfMePam

If the care assistant hadn't been giving refreshments when they're not supposed to, nothing would have happened. Relative is an arse.

I agree. This is often how care can be people are rude and ungrateful and will take advantage of a good will gesture.

I bet the care assistant will say no in future

have 'apologised' for not realising she had additional needs that meant she was unable to manage a normal cup of tea
Seriously?
You would use disability to shame someone?
You are in the wrong job

@Shreddiesandmilk120 it's shocking isn't it. The sad flip side is that for those who appreciate the 'extra mile' are less likely to ever feed that back. But I am sure some of those actions are so so so appreciated and make such a difference to people. When DS was in hospital we unexpectedly had to stay in overnight (we went to the GP who said to go straight to the hospital and no time to collect overnight stuff in case), and I will never forget the extra blanket the HCA got me, or the plate of food (sarnies, chocolate bar and yoghurt) they got me even though I wasn't the patient and it was past dinner time. I did email in to the compliments/complaints address (emitting the food in case they were technically not allowed...) and had a reply saying they would feed it back to the ward, I hope they did. I know it won't make a difference at all, but hopefully it might have made a shift just a tiny bit brighter!

I have spent considerable amounts of time in hospital and the way some relatives and indeed some patients speak to staff is atrocious.

The first time I was in a woman was moved into the room with me on the day before I left. She was rude, confrontational, complained about everything. She rang the nurse during dinner to move her fork, even though she was clearly capable of doing it herself (she’d been off wandering around not long before that.

She rang the bell to ask for cups of tea at 3 in the morning. She was talking to one of the nurses about something and then broke off to say “look at me when I speak to you nurse!”

She rang the bell to demand the nurse close the window on my side of the room because it was cold and she shouldn’t have to put up with that. I had been moved to that room specifically because it had an opening window.

She then turned on me and said “you’re going to just have to realise that you’re going to have to compromise.”

She can think herself lucky I was leaving that day because we were going to fall out otherwise.

I’ve seen plenty of occasions when patients have seemed rude to staff but these have been patients who have e.g. been suffering from dementia or had infections etc. But this woman had no excuse.

I’ve also been in a position where my family could have been forceful to staff because of things which happened which shouldn’t have and vice versa, but that achieves nothing.

@vodkaredbullgirl

Work nights, then you don't have to deal with relatives.

This

In the nicest possible way you just need to forget about this. People are arses for all sorts of reasons including being under huge stress. It's not acceptable but the relative may have been fobbed off my medical and nursing staff that day and may have taken it out on you. Not right but hospitals are very stressful places for loved ones. They were really rude so just try and move on.

Please Google PSTEC and download the free soundtrack. Use this to help minimise how much this incident bothers you.... It really does work

@fallfallfall

How very sad, the care assistant, tone and body language was probably off BUT the demands were insane.

The care assistance 'tone' was probably exceptionally controlled considering the provocation to which s/he had been exposed! It does people like the relative no harm to see that everyone has a limit. I once gave a stroppy pupil a 24 hour detention warning, the next day, the day of the detention, the mother came in at the end of the day to eff and jeff at me, when I didn't react she told me she was reporting me t'th'office and she wanted to take her daughter home, NOW. I looked out at the blizzard she'd walked through to harangue me and quietly told her that in view of the weather I'd sent her daughter home at the usual time which made her even more angry!

This is not an isolated incident.

Humans are fucking horrible, entitled twats. And seem to be getting worse.

Can you try to reframe it in your memory so you can move on?

It's possible that the relative was really really anxious / worried / uncomfortable being with the patient in hospital. They may have had a bad experience / history in hospital or perhaps they didn't actually like the patient but were there out of obligated duty etc etc

Perhaps they then decided to obsess / focus on the tea / biscuits as a way to detract / distract themselves from the reality of the situation. So massive displacement activity.

I know this doesn't give people the right to be an arse - but this is clearly doing you really damage so it's important for you to try to forgive them - and I find this sort of exercise really helpful to try to move on from things when people have behaved badly to me.

If you can unlock the tiniest weeniest smallest bit of pity for them, you might be able to turn down some of your resentment.

@Shreddiesandmilk120 post is awful but I really don’t get why it’s not allowed to tell non patients to get out of the bed, stop eating the food and not to use the patients’ bathroom. Why is it expected that this has to be tolerated?

I’d have been furious when I was in giving birth if a non patient had used the bathroom. Another woman’s visitor did try to but the MW told her not to. Tbf I think that visitor just didn’t know rather than being a CF.

@1FootInTheRave... you’re right. I went for a walk this morning. We have a path with a cycle path alongside it. Group walking toward me filling the entire width of both pavement and cycle path and continued to do so so that I had to walk on the road to get past. I said “can you choose one side or the other so people can get past safely?” and got a mouthful from one of the young women and filthy looks from the other, in front of the three kids and two babies in trollies. Most people move over to allow social distancing... entitled much?

I have been known to remind our patients that the 'H' on the sign outside means hospital, not hotel.
Not had a complaint about that one yet.

I'm also a nurse OP, and can 100% believe that this happened. I had similar experiences when I worked in a care home during my training.

Where do you work now? Sometimes a change is as good as a rest, and rather than leave nursing completely, could you try something different? Maybe theatre nursing for example? No relatives in sight and the patients are asleep!

Try to let things like the example in your OP wash over you (easier said than done, I know!). But try not to take them personally. Some people are miserable and looking to complain, no matter what you do. Others are under stress of having a loved one be unwell and will react differently than they usually would. And a few people are just arseholes, not worth wasting your brain power worrying about them.

Have you ever tried mindfulness?

@RedcurrantPuff thank you 🙏💐

The issue is you never know which staff members will or won’t back you up I’ll give a few examples of when it’s all gone wrong so that people can see how awful it can be for lower level staff, I’m on a band 2 and I get no support...

I explain to a husband that I can’t give him breakfast too unfortunately.
Midwife comes and asks me why I can’t just give him some and says how ridiculous I’m being and it’s not that big of a deal.

Next: I find 6 family members sitting behind the curtain with pots of home cooked food out on the floor having a little dinner party. I ask the midwife to speak to them as it’s not visiting time, midwife says that she doesn’t want to get into an argument with them. They then come to the kitchen demanding 6 plates, 6 cutlery and asking me where the tea and coffee and microwave is.

Next morning I come and open the fridge and find it full of their leftovers and enough food to last the patient one week, therefore I can’t fit any of my stock or supplies into the fridge that I needed to collect and stock up for the weekend. Technically because it is home cooked I should have disposed of it but the midwife disagreed with me and I am only a band 2 where as she is band 6 so I can’t argue my point. I did show her the food hygiene policy and she shouts at me telling me off, not to tell her what to do etc. I said to her I’m scared that I will get in trouble for letting them store this food. That same midwife was “in charge” and still hasn’t spoken to me since because I dared to point out that she was in the wrong. No actual ward managers were on shift at the time. That same morning the inspector came and checked the fridge contents and failed my area for having not followed the policy and allowing the unhygienic food to be kept in the fridge. Manager then comes on shift and has ago at me for getting a failure on the report.

Our head of department is known for letting aggressive patients and husbands have a private room for free, to stop them from complaining higher up. I’ve left work before while having a panic attack because a husband chased me around the ward trying to cause an argument with me, I tried to remove myself from the situation and he just wouldn’t leave me alone or stop shouting, the wife then joined in (the patient) screaming at me. Not one staff member comforted me or asked if I was okay or told them to stop. No managers were around and I genuinely felt unsafe so I went home, on the train I wrote my manager an email to explain. I got in so much trouble and they forced me to come back in and work with these two psychos. They didn’t even tell him to leave the ward.

This whole fiasco was because he was not listening to me and my colleague and was trying to take cups of tea from our breakfast layout and I asked him to wait 5 minutes until we were ready and on another note he shouldn’t have been touching all of the patients breakfast stuff as it’s not self service. He literally couldn’t get his own way so he stormed in to the breakfast area and made him and his wife a cup of tea. My colleague tried speaking to him and then she walked off leaving me to deal with him shouting inches from my face banging on the ward kitchen door.

I feel totally unsupported and like I said this is happening to us all the time on a postnatal ward. My manager asked me how could I have handled that situation better next time... I said next time I will just let him have the cup of tea, riffle through our breakfast set up, help himself. It’s just upsetting how nasty these (mainly) men can be. He literally walked right up into my face and told me to shut up and that “He can do what he wants”. It’s not even worth it sometimes to try and tell them no. She’s the same manager who is moaning about the budget being too high, of course it’s high because you are allowing everyone to have tea and biscuits and copious amounts of toast. I genuinely don’t mind to make visitors a cup of tea but I’m technically not allowed. Also once you make them one they will then demand tea all day and night. On our ward one person is allowed with the woman 24 hours. So they feel like they deserve a bed and food as well. I’ve caught them sleeping in empty beds as well and the midwives just aren’t interesting when you tell them.