I’m tired of hearing nurses come out of a patients’ rooms saying “he’s batshit crazy” or “she needs to calm the fuck down.” I even heard an NP once say “he just needs to die already.” I think it’s fine to talk about patients sometimes and of course report them when they’re rude, but I feel like people I’ve worked with forget that patients are humans, often having the worst days of their lives. I admit I used to fall prey to this when I worked in oncology — but now, as a float RN, I have outsider’s perspective, and I think it’s kind of sick to make fun of patients the way many do.

EDIT TO ADD: Dang - looking through my profile, making fun of my height, y’all really went all out! A couple of things to clarify: if a patient is awful, tell your coworkers they are awful. If they are mean, call them mean. If they call you a bitch, tell your coworkers they called you a bitch. What I’m tired of is hearing is that EVERY patient is crazy or terrible, regardless of whether they are or not. This rant came to mind the other day after I went into a patient room with another nurse - the patient was clearly cognitively disabled, told us he’d give us “certificates” for being nurses, and when we were out, she called the patient batshit crazy. I recently worked with another nurse who called the patient “a big baby” because of his pain complaints. I worked with a group of nurses who were looking up patients’ homes on Zillow to make fun of them. These are the kinds of things I’m talking about. I think it’s good to vent, it just frustrates me when people criticize EVERY patient, grossly exaggerate patients’ behavior, or have no empathy whatsoever for difficult patients. I also want to make clear that I don’t police people. I’ve never talked about this before - that’s why I brought it up on Reddit.