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What Are Your Biggest Hospital Pet Peeves?
When you are at the hospital, whether it be for clinic visits or admission, what are things you sometimes experience that really annoy you? What, if anything do you do about those annoyances?
Examples I can personally think of are nursing stations that get a little too loud, especially at night. Another is people who wear heavy perfumes when either visiting or working in a hospital.
I don’t like confrontation and avoid it as best I can, but there have been a few times that I felt the need to speak up in regard to my two examples. Believe me, I love and appreciate nurses, but they are human too and therefore sometimes forget to keep inside voices at their station. As politely as possible I have on a number of occasions, asked if they could keep the noise down. I do believe it is important to be nice when confronting the source of a pet peeve. I’ve never had a negative response to a request asked respectfully.
The perfume issue can be more challenging. It’s difficult to address that problem without offending someone. Most hospitals do request that people not wear heavy perfumes in order to protect patients with respiratory illnesses. It’s a rule difficult to maintain with the public but I do think the medical staff should be held responsible for respecting it themselves. One time my son had a nurse caring for him in the hospital whose perfume was overwhelming and causing him difficulties. I had to ask for a different nurse and explain why.
What are some hospital pet peeves that you have to share?
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11 Replies
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My pet peeve is having the nurses or CNA come into the room every 3 hours for vital signs check. It just makes it impossible for me to have a straight amount of sleep. Also, after I get home I am almost programmed to wake up and have trouble sleeping because if this for like a week and a half after I get out of the hospital. It’s like my brain just gets institutionalized to expect that in the middle of the night. Usually I speak to the team about my anxiety with this and they save the vital checks for before bed and then early in the morning.
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Brittany, I agree with you, those every 3 hour check on vitals are annoying and honestly, sometimes really not necessary. Another pet peeve of mine similar to this one is stocking the supply drawers in patients rooms in the middle of the night. When my son was in the ICU recovering from transplant a guy would come in every night at 3AM and restock the drawers. That seemed so inconsiderate to me!
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OMG YES!!! At the end of my last hospital stay the cleaning people would come in at literally 11 at night. I was like “is this necessary!?” I got a little more mean than that and felt bad because they were just there to do their jobs but STILL I mean how the heck would they expect anyone to have “healing time” and sleep if the cleaning person is coming into the room spraying windows, emptying the trash that is SUPER loud etc. It’s just not right and not conducive to healing at all.
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This is going to sound absolutely stupid, but one of my pet peeves is that the hospital where I go insists on putting the admission band on the RIGHT wrist. I am right handed, and also I have some skin sensitivity issues (certain textures bother me, etc.) and I feel like I can’t do normal stuff with my right hand with that on there (like pass the time playing on my cell phone, go to the restroom, etc.) Every time I ask them to please put it on the left arm (which I know I won’t use as much since it will have the IV (due to having had lymph nodes removed on the right side) but the registration clerks say they aren’t allowed. I even say, “What would you do if I didn’t even HAVE a right arm? You KNOW you’d put it on the left.” I don’t mind rules with logical reasons behind them, but this is just petty in my eyes. Last week I pulled my arm up into my jacket and joked with the clerk (who we had met before) “Oh, yeah, forgot to tell you. Had my right arm amputated since I was here last week” and she actually took pity on me and just sighed and put it on the left. And what do you know … the whole building didn’t even collapse and nobody said a word about it being in the “wrong” place the entire day. LOL! I’m such a rebel, haha! but we are subjected to so much that I just don’t think we should have to endure ridiculous things that bother us if there’s no actual reasoning behind it that matters.
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Robin,
That sounds AWFUL and just something so small that they could do FOR you that would make a difference but they still aren’t doing it when your request it. I have been to the hospital and have asked the band to go on my ankle. Maybe they can do the right ankle if it has to be specific to one side for any reason? In that case I would bring my own scissors and would just cut it right off and tape it to the hospital wall so they can use it for scanning purposes and just carry it with me to testing LOL. Definitely would be going into rebel mode too.-
Brittany, it really doesn’t make sense. It makes me wondering if anyone is paying attention to the small improvements that could made in a patients care. If we placed these issues into a suggestion box who is going to read them and take them seriously, I wonder?
The worse part is, I hate being short with people. A few times, because I was tired, emotionally spent and cranky, I would ask why things like stocking drawers was happening at 3 AM. Then the next day…I would feel bad for snapping!
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Colleen,
I have had my share of “I’m so sorry for snapping” comments the next day when I see them. They usually are understanding about it. But you’re right, who is the one actually making these calls to clean the trash and rooms at 11 PM?! It’s ridiculous. It truly is bad enough with all the beeping monitors, noise from the nurses station, noise from other patient’s rooms. It’s enough to drive anyone actually insane . No wonder I leave hospitals an anxious mess for weeks!
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@robin-webster that is a crazy rule that I haven’t experienced. My son has been seen at 3 different hospitals and they always give him the option of left or right wrist. Even for myself and my husband I believe they have asked which arm we wanted it on. You go rebel! Stupid rules are meant to be broken!
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The vitals check, every 3 hours and the lab sticks at ungodly hrs before sunrise, followed by the early rounds by medical personnel that you do not know. Can’t wait to get home to get some rest.
The hospital bill that list every test, med, bed pain or whatever happens to be in inventory. I am trying to keep the cost down and they even add medical consults from staff that never came in the room
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I hear you Jimi! Sometimes I don’t even look over the bills the ways I know I should. It gets my blood pressure up and usually there isn’t anything I can do to change the total. Very frustrating.
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Jimi,
it’s good that you take the time to actually view your medical bills and make sure that you received the services that you are being charged for. The cost is absolutely outrageous. My mouth always drops and I remain so grateful for the fact that my dad has great enough health insurance where it is covered for me. Without it, I am not sure if I would even be seeing doctors to be honest because I just wouldn’t be able to afford it and that is such a scary thought.
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