If you work at enough places, you usually have to deal with someone who won’t listen to reason and who thinks they know EVERYTHING.

It’s pretty aggravating!

So what should people do in situations like that?

Should you try to convince them they’re wrong or let them find out for themselves by letting them experience the consequences of their actions?

Check out how this nurse let a superior dig her own grave, so to speak.

I’m wrong because you have a higher position? Get smacked. I tried to help us!

“Around 15 years ago, I worked as a contract nursing assistant for a hospital.

One of my jobs as agency CNA was I had to manage a room called the “restraint free room”. Mostly because I was a big, tall dude. But also because I was agency and the other CNAs didn’t like it and the full timers had their clique and agency ain’t in it.

The reason it was called the “restraint free room” is because the facility had strict rules on restraints and only used them as absolute last resort. Preferring to put them all in a small room with someone watching them and redirecting them.

But sometimes, you’d just get someone in there that ticked off the nurses.

One patient was a problem…

One night, I got one of these guys.

He did not want to wear his CPAP machine. Helps him with sleep apnea and probably needs it. But he doesn’t like it because it’s bulky as hell, the straps suck, and he could not toss and turn in it without waking up. That plus being stuck in a hospital for two weeks and being stove up drove him nuts.

In my training as a CNA, I was always told a patient can deny treatment and go AMA except in certain cases like they are a danger to themselves or others or they can’t make decisions because of some legal or medical condition.

Being of somewhat right mind after talking with him, he had the right to not wear the thing or have his concerns about it addressed. I did try to convince him to wear it. It is my job. But when he got agitated, I said he had a right to do it and I mentioned I’d have to chart this.

He agreed and we were cool. And this should have been the end of it.

I chart patient is refusing to wear CPAP, nurse informed. Most places I had worked, it was no problem. Someone with a higher pay grade can handle it. Or ignore it. No need for a big deal.

Uh oh…

Then a Nurse Practitioner, the charge nurse, and the floor nurse I was under enter into the room at like 4 AM and flick lights on. Nurse practitioner is goes off.

For those unaware of the culture of medicine, think of it like hierarchies of tribes each with it’s own hierarchy and shared language.

In nursing, a Nurse Practitioner is only rivaled by an anesthesia nurse, even outranking nurse managers. Almost on par with lesser doctors but not in the doctor tribe. And have enormous autonomy and perks.

At the absolute bottom are nursing assistants. While essential, we are expendable and do the dirtiest work and spend the most time with patients.

She thinks she knows better.

She starts berating the floor nurse then looking in my direction. “These people” (meaning nursing assistants. ie: ME) “are supposed to make SURE the patient is wearing the CPAP. It’s their JOB. And YOUR job to make sure they do this. Are you just sitting here being lazy?”

All of this in front of the patient, of course. Along with another poor patient that just kept falling out of bed, waking him up!

“Mam, you are a nurse practitioner with years of experience and education. If you could show me your technique to do this, I’d be much in your debt. After all, CNA school is only a month long school. Mind?”

She grabs the CPAP. Goes over.

“Here, you need this” and tries to put it on.

Ouch!

SMACK! I think that slap could be heard all the way to the nurses station. The Nurse Practitioner’s glasses went flying.

And in a flurry of activity, code called and a squad of other CNAs and a nurse with a large dose of emergency tranquilizer march in. Stab him in the butt, and he is in 5 point restraints and out of my room because, well, no restraints in the “restraint free room”

I turn to the Nurse Practitioner after the chaos.

“If one of your RNs wrote non compliant, you would not say they are lazy. You would respect their assessment. Why should this be different for a CNA? When I chart this, I don’t do this because I want to lay out. I do it to inform the proper people while making sure my patient is safe and I am safe.

She learned her lesson…

She looked up. still probably seeing stars. Nodded and apologized.

I never had trouble from her the rest of my tenure there and even had me help fix a laptop she had with a simple repair.

Not all revenge has to be malicious. Sometimes it can be educational.”

At least the nurse learned her lesson.

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Sometimes, people need to learn a lesson the hard way…

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.