Working triage last week, I was involved in a bit of a confrontation.

credit: lanuiop

A lady had come in to emergency after being bitten by a snake. She had previously had a few drinks, and was proving to be a completely non-compliant patient (ie - I’m here for treatment but really don’t want to do anything you suggest!)

So basically, this lady didn’t want to immobilize her arm, wasn’t interested in staying in bed, and whinged and complained about how she just needed to go visit her husband in the morning (who was in jail!)

So here we have a rather common problem - patient’s refusing to do what is advised. Just as an aside, I remember a patient recently who got smashed up quite a bit from a car crash. he had lung contusions and a small pneumothorax - and what was the most important thing he absolutely needed to do? Go for a smoke….!

But I digress.. The snake lady. Putting up with this lady was an annoyance, but nothing compared to her drunk friends. Two friends she had with her were in and out of the department all the time, and finally wandered back in to triage asking to go through & see snake girl. One of the friends by now was staggering a bit, obviously they’d had some more to drink before coming back to visit.

credit: coneslayer

So I had a chat to the co-ordinator and it was agreed to let these girls back through on the condition they stayed with snake girl, were quiet, and didn’t cause any disruption to the dept. I gave security a heads up, then gave these girls a bit of a talk to & advised them they had one chance to behave.

Ten minutes later, they’re being shown the door due to ‘disruptive behaviour’ which is great - too bad, don’t come to emergency drunk when you’re visiting… Except for the fact that 10 or 15 minutes later, they rock on up to triage asking to be buzzed through again.

The Confrontation

So now I’m telling these two drunks they can’t come through, and I can see them starting to arc up. So I’m saying things like “this is a hospital, you can’t come in when you are staggering”, and “security have made the decision to not allow you through, don’t blame me” etc. So then the screaming - “You’re nothing! Who are you anyway? Some guy behind a desk who’s nothing!, you *&%*#!!” One of them starts to hit the perspex screen, and a psych patient jumps up from the waiting room and starts yelling back at the girls, and then the whole waiting room started yelling and it’s on for young and old!

Anyway - security threw them out in the end, but I was thinking about this event later - it’s quite a common occurance. I can think of many many times where similar things have happened - nurses are expected to cop this kind of behaviour all the time. How many professions are there where you cop abuse constantly but don’t really do anything about it because the people are drunk, drugged up or there’s some other factor like head injuries? Is anyone else not thrilled about this?!