Plastic Man

It never ceases to amaze me how many people will go out of their way to avoid doing their job and try to foist it off on another. I remembered another conversation I had with the Director of a Nursing Home. I had had a patient who was extremely demented, meaning that sometimes he even knew his own name.

One day one of the (Certified Nursing Assistants) CNA’s entered his room to check on him. He was sitting in his wheelchair with a plastic bag over his head. He had just come from the shower and was trying to settle back into his room. He told the aid he was trying to dry his hair. Later he told another staff member he was trying to kill himself. I don’t know what the real story is/was but the staff of the Nursing Home went into retarded ballistic mode and started calling the NP covering for me every 15 minutes. A sitter was arranged for and the next morning the staff and Nursing Home management started calling me every 15 minutes demanding I do something to get him removed from the facility.

Keep in mind this city is Snowbird hell in the winter, as many old farts head south in their 165 foot motor homes, usually towing three of the families cars, and part of a barn behind them.

What you probably don’t know about these snowbirds is that most of the ones I have seen as patients can’t see, hear, or walk. And the other one of the couple is demented, so while the blind, deaf, crippled driver pilots these barges of death down the highway, between shots of Scotch, the demented partner is playing with the broom handle across the door trying to get out of the moving mountain of mayhem. What I’m trying to say is that these old demented farts overwhelm the health care system here and make it impossible to get appropriate care.

After the staff had frightened the family and made extremely unreasonable demands upon them I was unable to make reasonable suggestions for his care. The nursing home was getting angry that I had not transferred the patient and was mad that they had to provide a one on one sitter until the patient could be moved.  At one point the Director of the Facility called and said, when are you going to start calling agencies and get someone to come in here and take over for my CNA, she wants to go home ASAP.

I don’t work for the Nursing Home. I am hired by the family through their insurance company to take care of their loved one.

Can you imagine the Director calling a physician and demanding he call agencies and get staffing for his patients? Neither can I.

I responded “Why is this my problem?” (Not the response I was actually thinking at the time)

She rambled on for a little bit about how sick he was. I cut her off and told her I had seen the patient, he was safe and stable. I suppose she was trying to intimidate me. I often run into nurses who are in management positions and who are also angry because of what we do as nurse practitioners. Short of strangling the Director the problem was addressed without my intervention.

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