The medication is a blood thinner, the patient is a competent adult not in delirium, A&OX4. There are 2 ways to see this:
Manager’s and a group of doctor’s POV: you are a nurse and it’s your job and duty to do that. Plus, we know better than him what’s good for him. These people have built their identity around working in healthcare and to them this means I have to stay in the room and make sure the patient takes the medication.
My POV: nursing is not a calling but a job. What my manager and these doctors think is stupid:
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the patient is a competent adult not in delirium, A&OX4. He’s old enough to know what happens if he doesn’t take the medication because we have told him a number of times already. I’m not his father and I’m not ready to treat a competent adult like a child.
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I have other patients and I’m not going to waste my time watching a patient silently until he decides to take the medication. I’m charting that I left the medication next to him and told him he needs it and why and that I have other patients to take care of.
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It is stupid to watch a person while doing nothing when I should be working with my other patients. It’s also invasive as f*ck.
I see it like this: my manager and this group of doctors are not ready to respect a person’s autonomy whereas I’m not ready to ignore this same autonomy, even if it means a negative outcome. Respecting a consenting adult’s autonomy means respecting his bad choices as well. I feel this group of doctors and my manager are not ready to respect any patient’s autonomy.
At this moment, this is a hill I’m willing to die on. AITA?
ETA: I wrote about a group of doctors, because there are other doctors that don’t give me hard time if a patient refuses his medication, they simply chart it and move on. I like working with doctors like this because I feel they don’t judge and respect the patient’s autonomy as well.
Jesus Christ. What a psychopath. You’re talking about dying on a hill when it will be others who die for your belief.
No shit. Was an entire house md episode dedicated to the patient not taking his meds when nurse left
The patient AND a dog died.
you are misguided. Take a minute to calm down, breathe in deeply, exhale. Stop reading this and do it.
Now that you are hopefully calmed down, if you care to read my post you’ll read the words A&OX4. Do a quick search to find out what those words mean.
it is the patient who is playing with his life, not me.
ETA: do you enjoy being treated like an incompetent child when you enter a hospital or like a competent adult capable of deciding what care he wants? If the former is true, I can understand why you get angry.
Die for their belief? What belief are you talking about
Not taking pills, or taking them improperly, can be fatal. OP doesn’t care because they have a personal belief. They said that they would die on that hill, which is a poor choice of words because other people might literally die for their belief.