He got his op, and his private room, in which he had sex with his girlfriend, and on occasion smoked dope.
A senior nurse was allocated to him, and he would indicate his desires by pulling the crash bell, then screaming: "I want orange Lucozade, bitch!" Once they'd run to the shops to get it, he would spray it liberally over the walls and ceiling. "Clean that, bitch!"
The only saving grace, for me, was that I almost never came into contact with him, cloistered away, as I was, on the Burns Unit. For the 'offending' sister, it was not so easy, and the threats to her got steadily worse, until one day she by-passed management, and called the Police, and had him arrested.
In the van, on the way to the cells, he tore his dressing off, stripped his graft off, reasoning that if he needed more surgery, he'd be taken back by the Hospital. When that didn't work, he first set fire to his dressing, then tried to hang himself with it. This time, the Psychs felt he might have mental health issues. In the van on the way to the secure unit, he jumped out the back, while stopped at lights and escaped.
For the next few weeks, he, and his friends, would appear at the Hospital from time to time. If they caught sight of me, they would point with one hand, then draw a finger of the other hand across their throats, in a sort of throat-slitting gesture. Pure comic book.
They introduced locked doors on the wards after that, and started escorting Sister out the back door. I can't remember if he stopped coming, or if I left. I was only glad I didn't live locally.
I can laugh now, but for a while, I was genuinely scared.
I think that was when I lost faith in NHS management. Despite all the bullshit about zero tolerance, they never offered me any support; not for an instant. Nor was there any acknowledgement of the day to day misogynistic abuse the Nursing Staff had to endure.
Duty of Care must have some limits, eh?
6 comments:
Yep, totally psych--saw it a mile away. Sorry you nor anyone else fot the support. That's "nuts." Couldn't resist.
PA
Oops. That was supposed to say "got." I'm reading you from a pub but I've only had one pint (really!) Yes...free wifi where I live. A happy PA who brings in her MacBook when she's feeling antisocial.
I'm typing faster than I should and making mistakes--also I'm not "ergonomically correct" at the moment...yeah, yeah, yeah...excuses!
Actually, I sincerely doubt that there is anything very 'psych' about this person. Dissocial, dangerous, nasty.
How horrible for you, Shroom. I remember a fair few people like him (fortunately for me I was never directly targeted) when I was working on the general side. Note this is BEFORE I went into psychiatry. It always astounded me how, time and time again, bad behaviour would be swept under the carpet, rewarded by giving them side rooms. Management constantly showing them that they could get away with doing whatever the hell they liked because all that would happen would be a light scolding before leaving the poor nurses to continue to be abused.
Support for medical staff is shite. Embarassing. Zero tolerance means nothing. People will continue to get away with treating doctros and nurses like scum because management will never enforce this zero tolerance nonsense.
I tend to lean toward him simply being an arse, as opposed to a serious psychiatric illness, but what do I know. I would like to make it clear that, although I asked for a psych consult, I was not assigning him to the 'mental illness' category, just cos he behaved badly...
Sometimes all you can really do with an asshole like that is to make them somebody else's problem.
From the way you describe that patient I discern no treatable psych issues. Sounds like they just have a bad personality, and there's not much available in the way of medical treatment for that kind of thing. Incarceration, in extreme cases.
i don't know if i should be embarrassed to say nthis but the few times i have had to do with such people i truly hoped they would pick up a stat dose of lead to the cranium.
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