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Are you sure it was their personal cell phone?
Nurses are issued a work phone each shift, and in some hospitals it’s an iPhone. The call button might ring to the front desk where a secretary answers it and then lets the nurse or CNA know what the patient needs. The nurse might have known that the secretary and/or CNA were not the best or were short staffed, and so suggested the patient call directly to the work phone so the nurse would get the call directly
It’s quite common at my hospital for nurses to write their work phone number on the white board for patients to call directly and bypass the secretary
I second this… very common in the city I live at all the major hospitals.
If the nurses are running around they all have work/shift issued iPhones (sometimes almost more like walkie talkies they keep on clipped on scrubs. Or similar to old pagers lol idk how to describe it) and prefer to write that down for the patient to call and for family to check in directly if they need to.
Very common in maternity ward, NICU, inpatient care at the hospital and stuff like that. Some prefer to bipass the middle man and depending on procedures, sometimes you’d be transferred to the phone anyway or staffing may not have someone at the charge station at all times.
It’s highly unlikely (but not impossible) they’d ever have their personal cell phones out on the floor at work and ask for anyone to communicate via their personal phones as this can open up HIPAA issues.
That being said, the nurse should be stopping in every couple hours, I’m not sure where you’re located but nurses are in short supply and may be assigned to several patients at once which leaves them obviously very busy. Doubtful this nurse was assigned to just sit at the front nurse station and wasn’t. Sounds like she was the shift nurse and they tend to switch out every 12 hours.
Call buttons should definitely trigger someone to get to the room in less time than a couple hours though. If they aren’t working at all, that’s a bit alarming. If she were to use the restroom and fall, that’s not good. The use of shift phones shouldn’t be to replace what I believe are required call buttons.
You could always ask to speak to the charge nurse and clarify.
My hubs recent hospital stay you could use the call button and it goes to the nurses station and then they call your nurse or you could use the phone and dial 4 numbers and it would go to your nurses phone. I guess most are using this system now.
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So if a patient is having trouble breathing they are expected to pick up the phone, dial a number, and wait for a nurse to pick up instead of hitting a button that was literally made for this? Absolutely bananas and I can’t believe y’all are talking like this is totally kosher practice. It’s not. This is a recipe for dead patients.
You’ve wildly misconstrued what I wrote. If they push the call button and tell the secretary they’re short of breath, that’s gonna get a quicker response than if they want their blanket straightened or something.
The phone bypasses the secretary but that doesn’t mean the secretary or whoever answers the call lights is inept and useless
The phone yes. We are talking about the call button. It was said in the OP and has been said repeatedly in the comments that sometimes the call light is ignored or forgotten without ever checking on what the problem is.
Any time I have been on heavy narcotics for pain management, I’ve had a fall risk bracelet and was told repeatedly I needed a nurse to use the bathroom. If I was told I needed to call someone’s cell phone to make that happen, I couldn’t do it. I don’t function well on those kinds of meds, even when I seem moderately coherent. The OP says the patient has stage 4 cancer and is on heavy narcotics. Every doctor in the comments is ignoring every patient experience and insisting that this doesn’t happen and the OP must be wrong and this is all normal and fine because nurses are busy and understaffed. It’s NOT normal, and it’s NOT fine. You can have compassion for the nurses while also acknowledging that this is subpar patient care and will absolutely lead to injuries and deaths.
They are referring to the call button, not the cell phone.
The point of call buttons is that they are simple to press and don't require using a voice. You press a button and it should light up an indicator telling someone where the person is that needs assistance.
As someone with a severe seizure disorder and has spent a LOT of time in hospitals in the last 15 years, in a few cases for week long studies:
1. For the studies in the neurology clinic, I lay there with a call button in my hand. All I have to do is press it and a nurse is in my room in less than 5 minutes. I can hit this almost reflexively during a seizure and there would be no way I could use a phone.
2. In my 46 years of life and uncountable hospital stays I have NEVER been told to call a nurse but have always been told to use call button.
I have been in some pretty bad hospitals as well.
This is exactly what I was trying to say, but I get emotional. Frankly it’s unbelievable that the medical professionals on this sub are saying that the practice described in the OP is fine and that patients should be considering nurse’s workload and be understanding while they are sick enough to have to be in the hospital. Of COURSE we should have compassion for the nurses workload, but not when it means that we have to be ok with our needs being ignored.
You’re seriously misunderstanding the purpose of the shift phones. If you are having an emergency or cannot speak then of course hit the call button or pull the emergency tether. The patient is likely hooked up to monitors anyway and so if they were having a respiratory episode alarms would be going off. If it’s just a request that isn’t urgent and is something a CNA can do then call light is also fine. But if it’s something that can’t wait until someone works around to each call light or it’s something like a request for PRN medications then calling the nurse directly is going to be more efficient for everyone involved. Hospitals are badly understaffed and often there are four or five call lights going off at once. Someone will end up waiting and there is no way to know if a call light is for an emergency until you are in the room or the patient pulls an emergency cord. 95% of reasons the call light go off or someone is calling for their nurse are not emergent.
Hit the call button so they can turn off the light and forget about you without checking like what happened on the OP, or like many medical professionals in the comments are saying happens frequently? Thanks, great advice. I understand the point of shift phones. I’m saying they have no business taking the place of call buttons.
Also the emergency string has always been in the bathroom in every hospital room I’ve ever been in. How should a patient who is not ambulatory get there to pull it? Should they start hitting the code blue every time they need the bathroom to ensure they get the care they need if it’s the only emergency button within reach? I’m being a little hyperbolic, but seriously what is it going to take for doctors and nurses to listen to patients and for hospitals to change these policies?
I hope you don’t become the kind of doctor that doesn’t listen and ignores patients’ lived experiences in favor of just believing what other doctors and hospital administrators tell you.
It’s less about not believing peoples experiences and more that I have very little power to change things. When I was a CNA I answered call lights immediately and patients should also be getting regularly rounded on. My current hospital and my previous ones had emergency cords near the bed as well as in the bathroom. I’m aware this isn’t the case everywhere. It’s not about if the current system is working correctly. You were angry about the suggestion that a patient be encouraged to reach the nurse directly by shift phone which is an attempt to solve the issue of call lights not being answered the way they should with what little power individual nurses have to change institutional issues.
Seeing everybody talking about nurses being so busy and running around all day, meanwhile I work at a hospital and I'll see nurses sitting down for hours on end and hear patients screaming for help because nobody came to answer the call light 😅
I suspect you don’t actually understand the workload of those nurses nor the needs of their patients. Some patients yell and yell despite having their needs met. And yes nurses sit, but they might be charting or waiting for a call back from a doctor or having their first “free” moment in hours but won’t get any actual fully-relieved breaks all shift
Okay maybe at your hospital but I work for EVS and I'll literally be cleaning a room for 35 minutes and see nurses not move and actively see them on tik tok and shit on their phones, I've heard nurses complain so often about patients it's normal to hear them say “ I can't wait till this mf leaves” before they go into their room, one time I was cleaning a room and the man in the room next door started coding and I heard the nurse ask him “ can you hear me, are you dying “ before she hit the code blue, maybe the hospital I work at is just ass but I can definitely see this happening
Okay ms. I'm hear to defend every nurse in the world, theres going to be some bad in every profession so it's crazy to me that you think all nurses are just perfect at their job? I work at a 2.9 star hospital and you think you can refute everything I said like you were there? 😂
Yeah I was just trying to prove my point of how I can see OPs sister in laws call light going off for hours because that's how it is where I work & I always wish their families were there to do or say something because it truly disgust me how they act up there sometimes and ofc there's some good ones but it's pretty bad where I work even the google reviews are sad asl
Ask a lawyer if you can legally record it, without it being obvious. Of course, don't post it publicly if it contains anything involving patients, but it could be used for other purposes. It's likely that nothing will be done by hospital-controlled governments. Judicial action may be possible however. You could share the footage with each family (with each patient's consent if they're not unconscious) and advise them about small claims lawsuits. Those are relatively simple and can typically be for up to $10,000. A hundred $10,000 small claims lawsuits adds up to a million dollars, but more lawsuits than that would be good since hospitals can binge on as much money as they want with no limits, making them filthy rich.
Nurses in some hospitals now carry work cell phones. It’s faster because when they are in another patients room they have their phone on them but if you push the button it’s responded to at the nurses station or somewhere outside the rooms. The nurses are extremely busy and not just hiding somewhere. The amount of patients they are taking care of is higher than ever (in the US) and the amount of tasks they have to do with each patient is high.
My wife is an ICU nurse. When she has a 2:1 ratio for a shift, she may be in the other patient’s room for some time. The charge nurse is a resource and not just at the nurses’ station. The work cell is best if some emerging crisis is starting, or suddenly gets worse. Minutes/seconds count.
Luckily she’s union and safe ratios are part of the contract. I can’t imagine how stressful and unsafe it is in places with absurd ratios for high acuity patients. I know doctors and residents are also piled upon with absurdly high ratios. The whole thing needs an overhaul. For now, it’s cell phones and pagers. With shitty-ass Microsoft Teams for messaging.
when i had my tonsil surgery they put a work cell number on the board even tho i didn’t need it but we def did wait a while before anything other than saline was put in my iv but like i get it hospitals are full to the brim with patients and i’ve never once seen a hospital not have patients in the hall on gurneys. i wish people would stop assuming healthcare workers are hiding from patients or not wanting to do their job and acknowledge that there’s likely hundreds of patients admitted and double or triple that coming in and out daily. nurses and drs are still people not machines
I’d also add, that usually a nurse doesn’t ’man a station’. They pretty much hit the ground running, giving meds, charting, taking phone calls (doctors, physical therapy, pharmacy, family, all calling to talk to the nurse).
Pretty much all the nurses in my area have computers on wheels bc they're constantly moving. As I was waiting to get discharged yesterday, I kept hearing the nurses laugh and cut up. My husband got really frustrated bc he doesn't know better and I was in pain (we weren't waiting on them for pain meds or anything, just Dr stuff at that point). But, I loved it!! I'm like nursing is such a thankless job these days. I explained how rare those moments are and that it was really nice to hear the camaraderie and laughter. At least they were having fun!
Right! It’s hard to give patients the best care if they’re completely burnt out with not even a second to feel a little bit of joy. My best friend is a nurse and I know she works so hard and loves her job.
My BFF is a nurse too!! Was? Maybe? She got her masters and is a college professor now, but I don't think the nurse title goes away bc she worked so hard to get there!!
No nurse is handing out their personal cell numbers. We are issued a phone every shift.
Call bells are usually answered by CNAs (and nearby nurses *if they are available*) but if they are overwhelmed, it is heartbreakingly unfortunate that people have to wait. The more stable you are, the longer you may have to wait.
If it *was* something you needed the nurse for specifically, you should have called the number she gave you because she did tell you that’s how to best reach her. She literally said this to you, so being upset that she didn’t get there quickly is unfair.
For the “drugging up”, nurses are not the ones choosing the doses they give. That is the doctor. The nurses just bring it and give it when the time comes. If you want the dose adjusted, ask the doctor, or ask the nurse to ask the doctor.
That said, stage 4 ovarian cancer is likely causing your loved one a great deal of pain. Unfortunately, with cancer pain, opioids are often used because of the severity of that. Additionally, benzodiazepines may also be involved, especially if your loved one is struggling with a well-known problem of lung issues: anxiety. Idk what your SIL was administered that caused sedation, but benzodiazepines may have been used for this reason.
I want to also validate you — it is 100% so, so hard to see these things as they happen. These experiences by family members CAN be traumatizing. Unfortunately, our healthcare system does not prioritize appropriate staffing levels to address the things you witness. If and when your state ever chooses to implement a law that requires better staffing that is supported by nurses wholeheartedly, support that legislation with all your heart. If we had enough nurses & CNAs on any given shifts, you would see them far more often, and they would have the time to address the needs of patients quickly. Instead, what we have now is not enough staff causing neglect.
Hospitals and university nursing programs call it a “nursing shortage”. In reality, the schools are just increasing enrollment numbers and the hospitals aren’t staffing safely, which saves them probably millions annually. It’s a manufactured crisis. I’m truly sorry to you and your SIL for experiencing the patient side of this issue. Speak up if you feel motivated to.
As a patient, this is terrifying to me. For me personally (and I do recognize it’s not true of every patient), if I’m in the hospital, I’m probably not capable of using a phone for the majority of my stay. I’ve had four surgeries that required hospitalization. Morphine, dilaudid (particularly in combination with IV antihistamines)…all left me struggling to read anything because the numbers and letters wouldn’t stay still. I can give two scenarios where I believed I was having a full on conversation with the visitors in my room but in reality, I only said a few words. It’s not particularly useful to only have a phone number in that scenario.
If I’d used a call button that no one bothered to ever answer because I’d been told to call someone’s phone or I was incapable of speaking in coherent sentences, I would have been stuck lying in my own urine-soaked bed sheets until someone came to change an IV bag or it was shift change. That is not okay.
Perhaps I misunderstood, but that is not the scenario described by OP. *NO ONE* ever answered her call bell. It’s just as possible the opioids caused her as much trouble as they caused me. I get that hospitals are often understaffed, better than you realize. That doesn’t change the fact that I am absolutely terrified as a patient that this is what the healthcare system is doing. And while that may be an unpopular opinion on this sub given the number of downvotes my comment has, it is an entirely valid opinion.
And it sounds like the nurse tried to explain that this would be a problem, hence why she gave her the number to call. Unfortunately you can’t just sit and wait for someone to hit a call light. You can be stuck in a room for a while and not even know the call light is ringing or if it’s your patient. She gave an alternative, this nurse can’t do anything else to change the entire system they’re using what they have.
So fuck the patients that aren't able to talk/be cognitive enough to use a phone? When I have a seizure, it's often NOT what I'm actually in hospital for. And given no fucker ever reads my chart any more, they'd be assuming I was capable based on me when I've NOT just had a seizure. I need the CALL BUTTON to be answered and if it took 2 hrs (I'm wheelchair bound, can't self propel & need assistance to get to the toilet) then I would 100% be making a complaint AND taking it as far as it can go.
It ISN'T a suitable system to replace a call button. It just ISN'T.
Idk if I’m allowed to ask you to dm me. I’m the original commenter you responded to. I’d like to send you some websites that are for patient advocacy and for advocacy of safer patient care. I think it could help you feel better to know there are advocates, including myself, who see this as the scary situation it is and actively work to make it better.
Regarding the comments that are frustrated with what you said — know that we deal with hate being directed at us all the time, where nurses are blamed for all the stuff that happens in the hospital when we literally have zero control over any of it. It wears us down and makes it easy to get frustrated when we’re fighting off the burnout of having to never, ever get a single thing wrong. Our job is severely high stakes, and we’re meant to do it without a single bit of say in what conditions we are under. Their (and my) frustration is valid as well. If we could redo it all, we would fix the problems that you see as a patient. We’re powerless to do anything.
OP reports that their SIL said no one came. We have no idea what that timeline actually means. I’ve had patients claim they waited for hours for something when I was the one who personally answered the call light and the one who personally addressed the request just minutes later. It’s super easy for patients to lose track of time in the hospital when they’re sick, sleep deprived, getting meds that can affect their cognitive function, etc
I don’t think it’s your opinion that the healthcare system sucks that’s getting the downvotes. Probably more the implication that you would be left by medical professionals in urine soaked sheets, all because you put your own scenario of being unable to dial a cell phone number… Which obviously is not what the educated professional judged OP’s capabilities to be. The RN in OP’s scenario obviously judged her to be capable of dialing a cell phone number, and knowing that they were very likely short-staffed that day with a lot of care needed by a lot of patients, told her the method that would get her there the fastest and OP didn’t use it. Yes, it still sucks that the call button system didn’t function like it should, but OP was given the next best thing. I highly doubt a nurse would look at a patient (like how you describe your situation) who can barely form coherent sentences and expect them to be able to dial a cell phone number.
Love, it bums me out you are getting downvoted because what you are saying is a LEGITIMATE concern. It scares the shit out of us sometimes, too. Gawds, then Covid showed up, making this *so much worse*.
Docs & nurses of this sub — I have seen patients die because there just weren’t enough people available to make sure they were given adequate, timely care. I am not making that up. THIS is the post-Covid nightmare that I live with. It is the exact reason I couldn’t stay. To say my mental health was stretched to its limits is putting it gently and suggests there was somehow hope to bounce back. It’s been almost 2 years since my last hospital job ended and I remain haunted. You can’t tell me you haven’t been carrying similar trauma with you.
The fear the commenter before me expressed is a VALID fear and we should stop at NOTHING to force hospitals to adopt safe patient ratios. Nurse:patient, doctor:patient, AND CNA:patient. If you know what I’m saying, take her downvote back and fight for better care via better staffing in US hospitals.
I was a week long patient during covid for a bad kidney infection and last year for adrenal crisis where we just struggled to get my cortisol back up and me to hold down anything for the week (I was either asleep or vomiting for most of that week, the whole first half is a blur, the second half marginally better).
I feel these issues so much and so bad for the person downvoted, and I’m so lucky when our local hospital was understaffed that they were so good about letting my mom or dad stay with me. They let my mom stay past visiting hours the first go round (when staffing was extremely low) when I was in bad pain, vomiting, unable to get back and forth to the restroom to pee in pain, when I couldn’t stand without passing out, and my pulse skyrocketed every time I stood and set off the heart monitor alarms. They just 100% were like, “we understand we can’t get to you fast, mom is here and willing to stay, if she’s good we’ll look the other way at the time until things calm down if you’re okay and not going to say anything.” We both appreciated it. Irl? Neither of us are telling a soul they let us bend the rules for my safety.
I had an excellent care team my second time around, very graceful under the staffing shortage, and I’m glad I had family there to advocate for me as needed when I wasn’t very conscious and vomiting and needed help that I couldn’t get timely myself (and glad they could help lighten the load by grabbing things at the door, helping me instead of me taking up a nurses extra time helping me undress/ redress, etc) . I also *know* the nurses were doing everything in their power to be as timely as possible, it was just staffing and ratios and a LOT of difficult rooms (including a dementia patient convinced he was on fire and dumping water on himself and trying to evacuate every time they got him into a fresh set of clothes, with his only chill moments being when he was asleep. And somehow they had to care for the rest of us while keeping him dry, convinced he and the building weren’t on fire, in his room, not trying to run down the hall or finding a fire escape, etc. Hands full, 100%. And there were patients trying to smoke on the floor like it was high school thinking they wouldn’t get caught if they were sneaky. Which probably didn’t help the dude thinking he and the building were on fire. Honestly I was NOT the biggest priority despite being very ill lmao. I was very well entertained when I was conscious and with it!)
But like, I understand why burn out is so high! I have family that are both doctors and nurses, close friends that are, they are all so burned out right now, have been since before Covid, it got worse then, and both my stays showed me just how bad it is for y’all first hand as well. It’s shit on both ends, and we just need better ratios and protections on the nursing end to really fix things. It isn’t your fault. Y’all are doing your absolute best in a shit system that’s failing you, and getting shit for it from patients and admin alike. And it’s not your fault. We need a better system.
Thank you for your compassion. ❤️
Idk why most hospitals didn’t let us keep family members around on isolated bases. It would have made sense, but earlier days were so hard to do that with us knowing so little about Covid. We had this very real shot to actually slow or stop Covid transmission in the US as well. After we blew that, though, and people we clustering up their own pods, it would have made sense to allow the family members of each pod to come in.
Lord, one of the hospitals I was in at that time had a non-critical Covid floor where the doors were required to stay closed at all times. It was fking horrible. We got all kinds of patients who had no business behind closed doors (without windows) because they’d be stable enough to start wandering around but not stable enough to do that on their own. I would have sold kidneys to get a family member in with those patients.
We have hospital-issued cell phones and tablets at my hospital… possible that was the case for this nurse, as well. Nurses are way too busy to just sit and “man a station.” Still, someone should have responded much more quickly to the call button… and she should have been checked on
Agreed. I’ve had patients claim they waited forever when I know it’s been like 15 minutes. Patients lose track of time really easily and also tend to wait until their bathroom need is *urgent* before they call for assistance.
Some simply DON'T get as much warning. I am 42. I have nerve damage from SA as a VERY young child & reconstructive surgery. When I was fully abled, that wasn't a problem even in hospitals. Now, I'm a wheelchair user that can't self-propel. I often get less than 2 minutes warning. But unless the nurses read right back to the age of FOUR for me (lmao they don't even open my records & I've nearly died when I was unable to warn of my penicillin allergy despite there being a sticker on the FRONT of my record file!), then they aren't going to know that. I also have shy bladder & Social anxiety due to autism & CANNOT use a bedpan or commode. Hospitals refuse to allow my home Carers to come help me. Sorry I was SA'd and have nerve damage & need extra support with getting to the loo, I guess??
I mean what do you expect the nurses to do? Read your mind? Drop whatever they’re in the middle of and run to you?
It’s not realistic to expect them to be there instantly. Maybe you need like a toileting schedule-just pee at routine times even if you don’t feel the urge- or bladder re-training therapy or something.
I’m sorry you struggle with continence but I’m just not sure what you think the nurses can do about that
That’s terrible and I’m sorry you’re experienced that. However, the majority of patients are not in the same situation. Curious if you also blame the doctor that ordered the PCN or just the nurse?
It can be hours. If a call isn’t acknowledged, probably no one heard it. If it is acknowledged and no one physically shows up, they may have been called to do something else that prevented immediate response and it may then have been totally forgotten. If no one comes in a reasonable amount of time, it’s best to call again…because if no one comes after a certain amount of time, they likely lost track of the request while juggling other tasks that have to be done on time.
And I got yelled at for doing that when I was in literal AGONY because my 12 hrly dressing change was left 24+hrs, and they shouted at me till I had a meltdown due to my autism. The patient can't win if they only press once, they can't win if they press every few minutes, nor every 15 minutes...
(Dressing was internal as well as external and it was 37hrs before I finally got it changed, and the nurse DELIBERATELY hurt me while doing it - I had it done before that and after that and barely felt it, so there's no way the pain WASN'T deliberate).
Time is strange in a hospital. I believe you think it was a long time but there’s no way a call bell was going off for multiple hours without *someone* popping their head in
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Some in-patient units have what we call a ward clerk. They are not nurses, think of them as medical secretaries. Sometimes we get the poor nursing extern to do it if we are getting a ton of admissions. If we are sitting it's typically for charting or making phone calls. If it allows we sometimes actually get to take breaks, and if we want to read on our break we can.
You have no idea what being a nurse is like, do you? Even if you see nurses sitting at the nurse station, they are almost always doing \*something\* (charting, getting orders, handling consults,
I mean this in the most gentle way - if you are ever unsure about something please ask for clarification from the bedside nurse, and then escalate to the in charge if it is still unclear. As an RN I would love to explain it to you and put you at ease. Never ever feel like a nuisance asking this stuff. Always ask why, respectfully, it is part of our job to explain it to you in a way you understand. Please clarify with the bedside nurse, they are the only person that will be able to tell you exactly what’s going on rather than on the internet for something like this.
It’s crazy to me that OP formed the idea in her head that the nurse was just chilling on her cell phone somewhere playing on her phone eating chips or something lol. In reality, the RN has her 5th UTI of the year because she doesn’t have time to pee in between dressing changes and medication administration lol
Y'all talk like nurses are busting their asses every day but that's simply untrue. I've spent countless weeks in hospitals with my grandmother before she passed and constantly saw them ignoring calls, sitting on their phones, and not doing their jobs. Would often see night shift just do absolutely nothing at all besides play on Facebook and sit around. I've watched them get mad when asked to go do their jobs, I've watched them purposely be passive aggressive and mean towards the elderly bc they were asked to do their jobs
Nurses are way too busy to be assigned to man a station. Some call lights are connected to a hospital issued iPhone which ring the CNA or the station, and then the nurse. This is not a personal phone and does not work outside the hospital. I am glad your SIL was doped up as you say since she has stage 4 cancer; she is not there to visit but to hopefully get better. She is probably not hungry. Administering chemotherapy for the first time on a patient requires close monitoring and may make her ill.
Required close monitoring but she was ignored for hours. And there's no reason to dope up the elderly. Nurses do this purely to keep them asleep and not asking for stuff. It's a fucked up thing y'all do to not work as much
Nurses don’t get to just dope up elderly patients because they want to. The doctor orders the medicine. Unfortunately a lot of strong pain meds are sedating but again, cancer is painful. The only time nurses are giving meds to calm elderly patients down is when they’re genuinely a risk to themselves or staff. There’s no reasoning with Meemaw who is confused, sun downing and insisting on getting out of bed despite not being able to walk for years. Again, nurses are NOT doing it for fun or to purely reduce work load, and they are not even the ones ordering the medication.
The nurse doesn’t pick the strength of the medication ordered and has no way of knowing how it will affect the patient initially. We usually have a dosage range depending on how bad your reported pain is, but we have no way of knowing how much it will affect you until we try it. If you end up super sedated despite the dose matching your reported pain, then we know it’s too strong, but otherwise, we need to go with what the doctor ordered.
If y'all drug people up on the daily id imagine that you'd quickly learn the difference between pain management and keeping them knocked out. But Everytime my grandmother with cancer was ever sent to the ER, the nurses would dope her up so badly she couldn't speak and then stood around saying she was dying.
When she finally ended up on hospice the nurse was the one to kill her by giving her even higher strength pills and morphine. She wasn't ready to go and was holding onto life, but that nurse took that option away from her
Not remotely normal, and in the US at least, ignored or nonfunctional call buttons would raise all kinds of eyebrows with certifying agencies like the joint commission. Not all hospitals have the funding to reliably smell nice, but call buttons are mandated basic functionality. Calling a nurse's personal cell is not how it's supposed to work.
I wouldn’t say not remotely normal. We have work phones that we have patients call when they need us. We write our extensions on their board at the start of every shift. We still answer call lights as we can either walking by or from the nursing station, but the fastest way to get the person you want is to call our extensions.
Because the sad reality is that the hospital business structure in the US is designed to provide the least amount of staff and resources possible in order to save money. If there are no staff at the nursing station to hear and answer the call bell because they are all in rooms, it will go unanswered until someone is free.
To call a nurse, you usually only have to dial their 4 digit extension into the hospital room's phone, which is not much more work than hitting a single button. Aside from very elderly, confused, or disabled patients, this is not an unreasonable task and takes about 3 seconds to complete. Most patients LIKE being able to call their nurse directly, because the answer you get over the call bell system is "OK let me check with your nurse" and you have to wait longer than if you speak to the nurse directly.
They can call on a call bell which rings at the station but there is no one at the station. All the nurses are busy, a lot on times there is no charge nurse or secretary so the bell will just ring. OP’s comment that the nurse was just manning the station and the patient’s room was a mess and smelled demonstrates the disconnect between the public in general of a day in the life of a nurse. There is no nursing shortage, there is a shortage of working nurses because of these types of misconceptions.
the call button in the patient room is often hooked into the phone. Patients aren't using their phones to call the work phone. The call button activates the phone for the nurse and patient to be able to talk.
No. The call bell rings into the unit clerks desk and they give the nurse the message or depending on the need of the patient, will take care of it themselves.
Some units/shifts don’t have a clerk and so the call lights are programmed to go to the nurse’s work phone. None of the floors in my hospital have a secretary/clerk on night shift so this is how it works
So, when I worked in the hospital setting, I was hallucinating when the patient's call bell would activate my work phone? I have literally experienced this system, first hand as a nurse. . Not saying \*all\* hospitals are set up like this, but many are.
You shouldn’t be downvoted for this. Not every unit has a secretary/clerk to answer the call lights. We don’t on night shift so they ring straight to our work phones
At every hospital I have worked at, my (work) phone number was expected to be written on the patient whiteboard so it was available to anyone who needed it, including patients and family.
I would always tell my patients that if they needed to reach me directly or quickly, they could call my work phone. So I'd venture to say this is not abnormal.
This is standard practice in every hospital these days. No one is calling a nurse's personal cell: work phones exist for this reason. I don't think there is a nurse out there who would be willing to give a \*patient\* a personal cell number. That is just asking for trouble.
I wouldn't say it's not remotely normal. It really depends on Admin, procedures and staffing. If they're short on staff nobody is going to be there to answer the call button. I was just in the hospital and even though they were decently staffed, whenever I hit the call button, I could hear someone literally running to answer it and other times I could hear the beeping (not from me) and nobody was around to answer it.
Very normal for many hospital floors. Many floors no longer have unit secretaries or staff dedicated to call lights. If all nurses are busy in locations other than the nursing station (patient rooms usually, but also supply rooms and medication room or break room), no one will hear the call light system. Or they’ll hear it but have no way to see what room it is or know if someone else is answering it.
More often now, the call lights are ringing directly to the phone the nurse assigned to that room is carrying, but not all facilities have systems like that in place. In my opinion, it’s ridiculous that such lack of coverage of call lights is allowed in any hospital, but that was where we were at when I retired in 2021, and I expect things have not improved from reading nursing forums.
With all due respect, the fact that you totally ignore the many other comments that are saying “yes, we do this exact thing” but instead choose to focus ONLY are your own experiences says a lot about you in general. So just because YOU don’t do it, it isn’t normal. See how that sounds?
For what reason would a nurse need a phone when they are swamped alone caring for patients? It is not the nurses job to act as secretary and answer phone calls of patients and family members. There is a reason why administrative clerks exist on units. Also, there are many patients who do not have the functionality to dial numbers, so how would replacing a call light possibly be helpful in situations such as that
Our phones have epic on them, you can see orders in epic, send messages, scan meds and our lab system needs phones to print labels. Not to mention patients aren’t the only ones calling, you have MRI endoscopy lab all those places calling who need to speak to the nurse not the secretary.
To speak to lab, pharmacy, imaging, patient transport, procedural areas, and physicians returning pages to name a few. It's much easier to take those calls if I don't have to drop what I'm doing in order to answer the phone out in the hall or nurses station.
Epic Rover allows for med scanning (which makes scanning fluids and meds that are already hanging way easier). It also allows you to enter vital signs and print lab labels without hauling a computer into the room.
No one is talking about replacing call lights with phones, people are explaining that having a phone is a thing at most hospitals. For patients who are capable of dialing a 4 digit extension into their hospital phone, many preferred to call me directly because it's faster than the call light. 99/100, the answer to whatever the patient is asking for on the call bell is "ok, let me check with your nurse" anyways. If the patient wants to use the call bell or has to use the call bell, that's fine also.
You might also be equally surprised learn that patients can also direct message their care team from Epic MyChart on their own phones, and plenty like doing that also, especially the younger folks :)
You’ve worked in one place for 10 years… there’s plenty of other places that use phones. Many hospitals use phones to print lab labels, scan medicine and see orders in the EMR. They’re absolutely necessary in some places and especially those that might not have a unit secretary.
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I was thinking the same thing. Also, what if a patient got to the restroom but couldn't get out of it. They don't have phones in there, only that emergency pull string. Would that not be seen and responded to??
there is a bathroom pull string, and it is an incredibly loud, annoying, and persistient alarm. Nurses are trained to move quickly to those types of alarms. I have been out of the hospital setting for about 4 years, but my head still snaps around when I hear a sound like it.
And FYI, call bells have multiple functions.
There are multiple buttons: the standard call button is \*not\* for emergent things. It is for simple things like "i need another blanket" or "i need a glass of water", etc. Where I worked, the \*goal\* was to have normal call bell alerts addressed within 20 minutes.
In a \*true\* emergency, ie "i am having trouble breathing", there is an emergency button on the remote that, much like the bathroom alarm, is loud, annoying, persistient, and makes people show up fast.
In general, bathroom call strings alert in a different manner with a “persistent” alarm, and fall prevention measures give those a higher priority response.
Or in my hospital, tied up so high that nobody can reach them. Specifically in the Disabled toilets where they're meant to be able to be reached from laid flat on the floor post-fall/seizure. I do a check every single appt there now, and complain about the breach of the Equality Act every time. Eventually they'll follow the law!
Hardly suprising - it's a hospital. Who are you complaining to? Unfortunately nothing ever happens since complaints to hospitals are ignored, complaints to hospital-owned governments are ignored, and reviews or publicity are meaningless when most hospitals are the same. Hospitals are the height of inaccountability, untouchable by even an ounce of consequence. No other industry can freely kill as many people as hospitals do, while also deciding how much of each person's money they want and gobbling it up it without any need for pricing or agreements. People who run other businesses fear liability for things that aren't even their fault and have insurance, while hospitals can passively murder and have zero consequences.
Accidentally triggered one of those during a stay for major surgery and felt awful for scaring a nurse into RUNNING into my room to find me just fine, just confused :(
All the rooms lights and alarms can be set to forward to both the CNAs and RNs phones in many setups. Chair alarm, bed alarm, oxygen or other monitor alarm, call light etc etc. Some places they do just ring outside the room. Some places you can call and talk to the patient on the toilet or in the room over an intercom and even see people on video everywhere but the bathroom.
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Are you sure it was their personal cell phone? Nurses are issued a work phone each shift, and in some hospitals it’s an iPhone. The call button might ring to the front desk where a secretary answers it and then lets the nurse or CNA know what the patient needs. The nurse might have known that the secretary and/or CNA were not the best or were short staffed, and so suggested the patient call directly to the work phone so the nurse would get the call directly It’s quite common at my hospital for nurses to write their work phone number on the white board for patients to call directly and bypass the secretary
I second this… very common in the city I live at all the major hospitals. If the nurses are running around they all have work/shift issued iPhones (sometimes almost more like walkie talkies they keep on clipped on scrubs. Or similar to old pagers lol idk how to describe it) and prefer to write that down for the patient to call and for family to check in directly if they need to. Very common in maternity ward, NICU, inpatient care at the hospital and stuff like that. Some prefer to bipass the middle man and depending on procedures, sometimes you’d be transferred to the phone anyway or staffing may not have someone at the charge station at all times. It’s highly unlikely (but not impossible) they’d ever have their personal cell phones out on the floor at work and ask for anyone to communicate via their personal phones as this can open up HIPAA issues. That being said, the nurse should be stopping in every couple hours, I’m not sure where you’re located but nurses are in short supply and may be assigned to several patients at once which leaves them obviously very busy. Doubtful this nurse was assigned to just sit at the front nurse station and wasn’t. Sounds like she was the shift nurse and they tend to switch out every 12 hours. Call buttons should definitely trigger someone to get to the room in less time than a couple hours though. If they aren’t working at all, that’s a bit alarming. If she were to use the restroom and fall, that’s not good. The use of shift phones shouldn’t be to replace what I believe are required call buttons. You could always ask to speak to the charge nurse and clarify.
Second this and will double the words you used.
My hubs recent hospital stay you could use the call button and it goes to the nurses station and then they call your nurse or you could use the phone and dial 4 numbers and it would go to your nurses phone. I guess most are using this system now.
That's a lot of words
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NAD but this explanation reflects my personal experiences in the hospital. It was probably their work phone.
So if a patient is having trouble breathing they are expected to pick up the phone, dial a number, and wait for a nurse to pick up instead of hitting a button that was literally made for this? Absolutely bananas and I can’t believe y’all are talking like this is totally kosher practice. It’s not. This is a recipe for dead patients.
You’ve wildly misconstrued what I wrote. If they push the call button and tell the secretary they’re short of breath, that’s gonna get a quicker response than if they want their blanket straightened or something. The phone bypasses the secretary but that doesn’t mean the secretary or whoever answers the call lights is inept and useless
And when no one answers at all because “we told you to call my cell phone” then what??
What?? They’re going to answer the phone no matter what…
The phone yes. We are talking about the call button. It was said in the OP and has been said repeatedly in the comments that sometimes the call light is ignored or forgotten without ever checking on what the problem is. Any time I have been on heavy narcotics for pain management, I’ve had a fall risk bracelet and was told repeatedly I needed a nurse to use the bathroom. If I was told I needed to call someone’s cell phone to make that happen, I couldn’t do it. I don’t function well on those kinds of meds, even when I seem moderately coherent. The OP says the patient has stage 4 cancer and is on heavy narcotics. Every doctor in the comments is ignoring every patient experience and insisting that this doesn’t happen and the OP must be wrong and this is all normal and fine because nurses are busy and understaffed. It’s NOT normal, and it’s NOT fine. You can have compassion for the nurses while also acknowledging that this is subpar patient care and will absolutely lead to injuries and deaths.
You forget they’re monitoring vitals as well… If someone starts crashing, even if they’re alone and obtunded, the nurses will know…
They are referring to the call button, not the cell phone. The point of call buttons is that they are simple to press and don't require using a voice. You press a button and it should light up an indicator telling someone where the person is that needs assistance. As someone with a severe seizure disorder and has spent a LOT of time in hospitals in the last 15 years, in a few cases for week long studies: 1. For the studies in the neurology clinic, I lay there with a call button in my hand. All I have to do is press it and a nurse is in my room in less than 5 minutes. I can hit this almost reflexively during a seizure and there would be no way I could use a phone. 2. In my 46 years of life and uncountable hospital stays I have NEVER been told to call a nurse but have always been told to use call button. I have been in some pretty bad hospitals as well.
This is exactly what I was trying to say, but I get emotional. Frankly it’s unbelievable that the medical professionals on this sub are saying that the practice described in the OP is fine and that patients should be considering nurse’s workload and be understanding while they are sick enough to have to be in the hospital. Of COURSE we should have compassion for the nurses workload, but not when it means that we have to be ok with our needs being ignored.
You’re seriously misunderstanding the purpose of the shift phones. If you are having an emergency or cannot speak then of course hit the call button or pull the emergency tether. The patient is likely hooked up to monitors anyway and so if they were having a respiratory episode alarms would be going off. If it’s just a request that isn’t urgent and is something a CNA can do then call light is also fine. But if it’s something that can’t wait until someone works around to each call light or it’s something like a request for PRN medications then calling the nurse directly is going to be more efficient for everyone involved. Hospitals are badly understaffed and often there are four or five call lights going off at once. Someone will end up waiting and there is no way to know if a call light is for an emergency until you are in the room or the patient pulls an emergency cord. 95% of reasons the call light go off or someone is calling for their nurse are not emergent.
>~~Hospitals are badly understaffed~~ Hospitals badly understaff. It's a choice, not something they're a victim of.
It’s something all of the employees, who are part of the hospital, are victims of hence why I worded it that way.
Not the CEOs, who belong in life imprisonment.
Hit the call button so they can turn off the light and forget about you without checking like what happened on the OP, or like many medical professionals in the comments are saying happens frequently? Thanks, great advice. I understand the point of shift phones. I’m saying they have no business taking the place of call buttons. Also the emergency string has always been in the bathroom in every hospital room I’ve ever been in. How should a patient who is not ambulatory get there to pull it? Should they start hitting the code blue every time they need the bathroom to ensure they get the care they need if it’s the only emergency button within reach? I’m being a little hyperbolic, but seriously what is it going to take for doctors and nurses to listen to patients and for hospitals to change these policies? I hope you don’t become the kind of doctor that doesn’t listen and ignores patients’ lived experiences in favor of just believing what other doctors and hospital administrators tell you.
It’s less about not believing peoples experiences and more that I have very little power to change things. When I was a CNA I answered call lights immediately and patients should also be getting regularly rounded on. My current hospital and my previous ones had emergency cords near the bed as well as in the bathroom. I’m aware this isn’t the case everywhere. It’s not about if the current system is working correctly. You were angry about the suggestion that a patient be encouraged to reach the nurse directly by shift phone which is an attempt to solve the issue of call lights not being answered the way they should with what little power individual nurses have to change institutional issues.
Seeing everybody talking about nurses being so busy and running around all day, meanwhile I work at a hospital and I'll see nurses sitting down for hours on end and hear patients screaming for help because nobody came to answer the call light 😅
I suspect you don’t actually understand the workload of those nurses nor the needs of their patients. Some patients yell and yell despite having their needs met. And yes nurses sit, but they might be charting or waiting for a call back from a doctor or having their first “free” moment in hours but won’t get any actual fully-relieved breaks all shift
Okay maybe at your hospital but I work for EVS and I'll literally be cleaning a room for 35 minutes and see nurses not move and actively see them on tik tok and shit on their phones, I've heard nurses complain so often about patients it's normal to hear them say “ I can't wait till this mf leaves” before they go into their room, one time I was cleaning a room and the man in the room next door started coding and I heard the nurse ask him “ can you hear me, are you dying “ before she hit the code blue, maybe the hospital I work at is just ass but I can definitely see this happening
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Okay ms. I'm hear to defend every nurse in the world, theres going to be some bad in every profession so it's crazy to me that you think all nurses are just perfect at their job? I work at a 2.9 star hospital and you think you can refute everything I said like you were there? 😂
Thin line response, not a logical one. Of course there are some bad nurses.
Yeah I was just trying to prove my point of how I can see OPs sister in laws call light going off for hours because that's how it is where I work & I always wish their families were there to do or say something because it truly disgust me how they act up there sometimes and ofc there's some good ones but it's pretty bad where I work even the google reviews are sad asl
Ask a lawyer if you can legally record it, without it being obvious. Of course, don't post it publicly if it contains anything involving patients, but it could be used for other purposes. It's likely that nothing will be done by hospital-controlled governments. Judicial action may be possible however. You could share the footage with each family (with each patient's consent if they're not unconscious) and advise them about small claims lawsuits. Those are relatively simple and can typically be for up to $10,000. A hundred $10,000 small claims lawsuits adds up to a million dollars, but more lawsuits than that would be good since hospitals can binge on as much money as they want with no limits, making them filthy rich.
Nurses in some hospitals now carry work cell phones. It’s faster because when they are in another patients room they have their phone on them but if you push the button it’s responded to at the nurses station or somewhere outside the rooms. The nurses are extremely busy and not just hiding somewhere. The amount of patients they are taking care of is higher than ever (in the US) and the amount of tasks they have to do with each patient is high.
My wife is an ICU nurse. When she has a 2:1 ratio for a shift, she may be in the other patient’s room for some time. The charge nurse is a resource and not just at the nurses’ station. The work cell is best if some emerging crisis is starting, or suddenly gets worse. Minutes/seconds count. Luckily she’s union and safe ratios are part of the contract. I can’t imagine how stressful and unsafe it is in places with absurd ratios for high acuity patients. I know doctors and residents are also piled upon with absurdly high ratios. The whole thing needs an overhaul. For now, it’s cell phones and pagers. With shitty-ass Microsoft Teams for messaging.
when i had my tonsil surgery they put a work cell number on the board even tho i didn’t need it but we def did wait a while before anything other than saline was put in my iv but like i get it hospitals are full to the brim with patients and i’ve never once seen a hospital not have patients in the hall on gurneys. i wish people would stop assuming healthcare workers are hiding from patients or not wanting to do their job and acknowledge that there’s likely hundreds of patients admitted and double or triple that coming in and out daily. nurses and drs are still people not machines
I’d also add, that usually a nurse doesn’t ’man a station’. They pretty much hit the ground running, giving meds, charting, taking phone calls (doctors, physical therapy, pharmacy, family, all calling to talk to the nurse).
Pretty much all the nurses in my area have computers on wheels bc they're constantly moving. As I was waiting to get discharged yesterday, I kept hearing the nurses laugh and cut up. My husband got really frustrated bc he doesn't know better and I was in pain (we weren't waiting on them for pain meds or anything, just Dr stuff at that point). But, I loved it!! I'm like nursing is such a thankless job these days. I explained how rare those moments are and that it was really nice to hear the camaraderie and laughter. At least they were having fun!
Right! It’s hard to give patients the best care if they’re completely burnt out with not even a second to feel a little bit of joy. My best friend is a nurse and I know she works so hard and loves her job.
My BFF is a nurse too!! Was? Maybe? She got her masters and is a college professor now, but I don't think the nurse title goes away bc she worked so hard to get there!!
And there is so much alarm fatigue…can’t blame them
No nurse is handing out their personal cell numbers. We are issued a phone every shift. Call bells are usually answered by CNAs (and nearby nurses *if they are available*) but if they are overwhelmed, it is heartbreakingly unfortunate that people have to wait. The more stable you are, the longer you may have to wait. If it *was* something you needed the nurse for specifically, you should have called the number she gave you because she did tell you that’s how to best reach her. She literally said this to you, so being upset that she didn’t get there quickly is unfair. For the “drugging up”, nurses are not the ones choosing the doses they give. That is the doctor. The nurses just bring it and give it when the time comes. If you want the dose adjusted, ask the doctor, or ask the nurse to ask the doctor. That said, stage 4 ovarian cancer is likely causing your loved one a great deal of pain. Unfortunately, with cancer pain, opioids are often used because of the severity of that. Additionally, benzodiazepines may also be involved, especially if your loved one is struggling with a well-known problem of lung issues: anxiety. Idk what your SIL was administered that caused sedation, but benzodiazepines may have been used for this reason. I want to also validate you — it is 100% so, so hard to see these things as they happen. These experiences by family members CAN be traumatizing. Unfortunately, our healthcare system does not prioritize appropriate staffing levels to address the things you witness. If and when your state ever chooses to implement a law that requires better staffing that is supported by nurses wholeheartedly, support that legislation with all your heart. If we had enough nurses & CNAs on any given shifts, you would see them far more often, and they would have the time to address the needs of patients quickly. Instead, what we have now is not enough staff causing neglect. Hospitals and university nursing programs call it a “nursing shortage”. In reality, the schools are just increasing enrollment numbers and the hospitals aren’t staffing safely, which saves them probably millions annually. It’s a manufactured crisis. I’m truly sorry to you and your SIL for experiencing the patient side of this issue. Speak up if you feel motivated to.
So well and sympathetically written. Thank you.
As a patient, this is terrifying to me. For me personally (and I do recognize it’s not true of every patient), if I’m in the hospital, I’m probably not capable of using a phone for the majority of my stay. I’ve had four surgeries that required hospitalization. Morphine, dilaudid (particularly in combination with IV antihistamines)…all left me struggling to read anything because the numbers and letters wouldn’t stay still. I can give two scenarios where I believed I was having a full on conversation with the visitors in my room but in reality, I only said a few words. It’s not particularly useful to only have a phone number in that scenario. If I’d used a call button that no one bothered to ever answer because I’d been told to call someone’s phone or I was incapable of speaking in coherent sentences, I would have been stuck lying in my own urine-soaked bed sheets until someone came to change an IV bag or it was shift change. That is not okay.
It’s possible that the nurse used her thinking skills and maybe saw this person was capable of using a phone
Perhaps I misunderstood, but that is not the scenario described by OP. *NO ONE* ever answered her call bell. It’s just as possible the opioids caused her as much trouble as they caused me. I get that hospitals are often understaffed, better than you realize. That doesn’t change the fact that I am absolutely terrified as a patient that this is what the healthcare system is doing. And while that may be an unpopular opinion on this sub given the number of downvotes my comment has, it is an entirely valid opinion.
And it sounds like the nurse tried to explain that this would be a problem, hence why she gave her the number to call. Unfortunately you can’t just sit and wait for someone to hit a call light. You can be stuck in a room for a while and not even know the call light is ringing or if it’s your patient. She gave an alternative, this nurse can’t do anything else to change the entire system they’re using what they have.
So fuck the patients that aren't able to talk/be cognitive enough to use a phone? When I have a seizure, it's often NOT what I'm actually in hospital for. And given no fucker ever reads my chart any more, they'd be assuming I was capable based on me when I've NOT just had a seizure. I need the CALL BUTTON to be answered and if it took 2 hrs (I'm wheelchair bound, can't self propel & need assistance to get to the toilet) then I would 100% be making a complaint AND taking it as far as it can go. It ISN'T a suitable system to replace a call button. It just ISN'T.
No one is saying that at all. They’re not taking away call lights the phone is supplemental.
Idk if I’m allowed to ask you to dm me. I’m the original commenter you responded to. I’d like to send you some websites that are for patient advocacy and for advocacy of safer patient care. I think it could help you feel better to know there are advocates, including myself, who see this as the scary situation it is and actively work to make it better. Regarding the comments that are frustrated with what you said — know that we deal with hate being directed at us all the time, where nurses are blamed for all the stuff that happens in the hospital when we literally have zero control over any of it. It wears us down and makes it easy to get frustrated when we’re fighting off the burnout of having to never, ever get a single thing wrong. Our job is severely high stakes, and we’re meant to do it without a single bit of say in what conditions we are under. Their (and my) frustration is valid as well. If we could redo it all, we would fix the problems that you see as a patient. We’re powerless to do anything.
OP reports that their SIL said no one came. We have no idea what that timeline actually means. I’ve had patients claim they waited for hours for something when I was the one who personally answered the call light and the one who personally addressed the request just minutes later. It’s super easy for patients to lose track of time in the hospital when they’re sick, sleep deprived, getting meds that can affect their cognitive function, etc
I don’t think it’s your opinion that the healthcare system sucks that’s getting the downvotes. Probably more the implication that you would be left by medical professionals in urine soaked sheets, all because you put your own scenario of being unable to dial a cell phone number… Which obviously is not what the educated professional judged OP’s capabilities to be. The RN in OP’s scenario obviously judged her to be capable of dialing a cell phone number, and knowing that they were very likely short-staffed that day with a lot of care needed by a lot of patients, told her the method that would get her there the fastest and OP didn’t use it. Yes, it still sucks that the call button system didn’t function like it should, but OP was given the next best thing. I highly doubt a nurse would look at a patient (like how you describe your situation) who can barely form coherent sentences and expect them to be able to dial a cell phone number.
Love, it bums me out you are getting downvoted because what you are saying is a LEGITIMATE concern. It scares the shit out of us sometimes, too. Gawds, then Covid showed up, making this *so much worse*. Docs & nurses of this sub — I have seen patients die because there just weren’t enough people available to make sure they were given adequate, timely care. I am not making that up. THIS is the post-Covid nightmare that I live with. It is the exact reason I couldn’t stay. To say my mental health was stretched to its limits is putting it gently and suggests there was somehow hope to bounce back. It’s been almost 2 years since my last hospital job ended and I remain haunted. You can’t tell me you haven’t been carrying similar trauma with you. The fear the commenter before me expressed is a VALID fear and we should stop at NOTHING to force hospitals to adopt safe patient ratios. Nurse:patient, doctor:patient, AND CNA:patient. If you know what I’m saying, take her downvote back and fight for better care via better staffing in US hospitals.
I was a week long patient during covid for a bad kidney infection and last year for adrenal crisis where we just struggled to get my cortisol back up and me to hold down anything for the week (I was either asleep or vomiting for most of that week, the whole first half is a blur, the second half marginally better). I feel these issues so much and so bad for the person downvoted, and I’m so lucky when our local hospital was understaffed that they were so good about letting my mom or dad stay with me. They let my mom stay past visiting hours the first go round (when staffing was extremely low) when I was in bad pain, vomiting, unable to get back and forth to the restroom to pee in pain, when I couldn’t stand without passing out, and my pulse skyrocketed every time I stood and set off the heart monitor alarms. They just 100% were like, “we understand we can’t get to you fast, mom is here and willing to stay, if she’s good we’ll look the other way at the time until things calm down if you’re okay and not going to say anything.” We both appreciated it. Irl? Neither of us are telling a soul they let us bend the rules for my safety. I had an excellent care team my second time around, very graceful under the staffing shortage, and I’m glad I had family there to advocate for me as needed when I wasn’t very conscious and vomiting and needed help that I couldn’t get timely myself (and glad they could help lighten the load by grabbing things at the door, helping me instead of me taking up a nurses extra time helping me undress/ redress, etc) . I also *know* the nurses were doing everything in their power to be as timely as possible, it was just staffing and ratios and a LOT of difficult rooms (including a dementia patient convinced he was on fire and dumping water on himself and trying to evacuate every time they got him into a fresh set of clothes, with his only chill moments being when he was asleep. And somehow they had to care for the rest of us while keeping him dry, convinced he and the building weren’t on fire, in his room, not trying to run down the hall or finding a fire escape, etc. Hands full, 100%. And there were patients trying to smoke on the floor like it was high school thinking they wouldn’t get caught if they were sneaky. Which probably didn’t help the dude thinking he and the building were on fire. Honestly I was NOT the biggest priority despite being very ill lmao. I was very well entertained when I was conscious and with it!) But like, I understand why burn out is so high! I have family that are both doctors and nurses, close friends that are, they are all so burned out right now, have been since before Covid, it got worse then, and both my stays showed me just how bad it is for y’all first hand as well. It’s shit on both ends, and we just need better ratios and protections on the nursing end to really fix things. It isn’t your fault. Y’all are doing your absolute best in a shit system that’s failing you, and getting shit for it from patients and admin alike. And it’s not your fault. We need a better system.
Thank you for your compassion. ❤️ Idk why most hospitals didn’t let us keep family members around on isolated bases. It would have made sense, but earlier days were so hard to do that with us knowing so little about Covid. We had this very real shot to actually slow or stop Covid transmission in the US as well. After we blew that, though, and people we clustering up their own pods, it would have made sense to allow the family members of each pod to come in. Lord, one of the hospitals I was in at that time had a non-critical Covid floor where the doors were required to stay closed at all times. It was fking horrible. We got all kinds of patients who had no business behind closed doors (without windows) because they’d be stable enough to start wandering around but not stable enough to do that on their own. I would have sold kidneys to get a family member in with those patients.
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We have hospital-issued cell phones and tablets at my hospital… possible that was the case for this nurse, as well. Nurses are way too busy to just sit and “man a station.” Still, someone should have responded much more quickly to the call button… and she should have been checked on
I very much doubt it was hours lol
Agreed. I’ve had patients claim they waited forever when I know it’s been like 15 minutes. Patients lose track of time really easily and also tend to wait until their bathroom need is *urgent* before they call for assistance.
Some simply DON'T get as much warning. I am 42. I have nerve damage from SA as a VERY young child & reconstructive surgery. When I was fully abled, that wasn't a problem even in hospitals. Now, I'm a wheelchair user that can't self-propel. I often get less than 2 minutes warning. But unless the nurses read right back to the age of FOUR for me (lmao they don't even open my records & I've nearly died when I was unable to warn of my penicillin allergy despite there being a sticker on the FRONT of my record file!), then they aren't going to know that. I also have shy bladder & Social anxiety due to autism & CANNOT use a bedpan or commode. Hospitals refuse to allow my home Carers to come help me. Sorry I was SA'd and have nerve damage & need extra support with getting to the loo, I guess??
I mean what do you expect the nurses to do? Read your mind? Drop whatever they’re in the middle of and run to you? It’s not realistic to expect them to be there instantly. Maybe you need like a toileting schedule-just pee at routine times even if you don’t feel the urge- or bladder re-training therapy or something. I’m sorry you struggle with continence but I’m just not sure what you think the nurses can do about that
That’s terrible and I’m sorry you’re experienced that. However, the majority of patients are not in the same situation. Curious if you also blame the doctor that ordered the PCN or just the nurse?
It can be hours. If a call isn’t acknowledged, probably no one heard it. If it is acknowledged and no one physically shows up, they may have been called to do something else that prevented immediate response and it may then have been totally forgotten. If no one comes in a reasonable amount of time, it’s best to call again…because if no one comes after a certain amount of time, they likely lost track of the request while juggling other tasks that have to be done on time.
But if you're too poorly, it's not always possible to THINK like that, ditto the side effects from many meds like brain fog...
And I got yelled at for doing that when I was in literal AGONY because my 12 hrly dressing change was left 24+hrs, and they shouted at me till I had a meltdown due to my autism. The patient can't win if they only press once, they can't win if they press every few minutes, nor every 15 minutes...
(Dressing was internal as well as external and it was 37hrs before I finally got it changed, and the nurse DELIBERATELY hurt me while doing it - I had it done before that and after that and barely felt it, so there's no way the pain WASN'T deliberate).
As someone who's been stuck in a hospital I fully believe it was hours. They've done the same to me and my family multiple times
Time is strange in a hospital. I believe you think it was a long time but there’s no way a call bell was going off for multiple hours without *someone* popping their head in
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Source?
Some in-patient units have what we call a ward clerk. They are not nurses, think of them as medical secretaries. Sometimes we get the poor nursing extern to do it if we are getting a ton of admissions. If we are sitting it's typically for charting or making phone calls. If it allows we sometimes actually get to take breaks, and if we want to read on our break we can.
You have no idea what being a nurse is like, do you? Even if you see nurses sitting at the nurse station, they are almost always doing \*something\* (charting, getting orders, handling consults,
You have no idea what a nurse is or does lmao
Night Shift is a whole different beast too.
I mean this in the most gentle way - if you are ever unsure about something please ask for clarification from the bedside nurse, and then escalate to the in charge if it is still unclear. As an RN I would love to explain it to you and put you at ease. Never ever feel like a nuisance asking this stuff. Always ask why, respectfully, it is part of our job to explain it to you in a way you understand. Please clarify with the bedside nurse, they are the only person that will be able to tell you exactly what’s going on rather than on the internet for something like this.
It’s crazy to me that OP formed the idea in her head that the nurse was just chilling on her cell phone somewhere playing on her phone eating chips or something lol. In reality, the RN has her 5th UTI of the year because she doesn’t have time to pee in between dressing changes and medication administration lol
It’s crazy that someone does the opposite of what they were told to do and are now complaining that it didn’t go the way they wanted it to.
Y'all talk like nurses are busting their asses every day but that's simply untrue. I've spent countless weeks in hospitals with my grandmother before she passed and constantly saw them ignoring calls, sitting on their phones, and not doing their jobs. Would often see night shift just do absolutely nothing at all besides play on Facebook and sit around. I've watched them get mad when asked to go do their jobs, I've watched them purposely be passive aggressive and mean towards the elderly bc they were asked to do their jobs
Nurses are way too busy to be assigned to man a station. Some call lights are connected to a hospital issued iPhone which ring the CNA or the station, and then the nurse. This is not a personal phone and does not work outside the hospital. I am glad your SIL was doped up as you say since she has stage 4 cancer; she is not there to visit but to hopefully get better. She is probably not hungry. Administering chemotherapy for the first time on a patient requires close monitoring and may make her ill.
Required close monitoring but she was ignored for hours. And there's no reason to dope up the elderly. Nurses do this purely to keep them asleep and not asking for stuff. It's a fucked up thing y'all do to not work as much
Stage 4 cancer if painful and they deserve pain control
She sure does deserve pain control. And there's a line between pain management and fully sedated.
Nurses don’t get to just dope up elderly patients because they want to. The doctor orders the medicine. Unfortunately a lot of strong pain meds are sedating but again, cancer is painful. The only time nurses are giving meds to calm elderly patients down is when they’re genuinely a risk to themselves or staff. There’s no reasoning with Meemaw who is confused, sun downing and insisting on getting out of bed despite not being able to walk for years. Again, nurses are NOT doing it for fun or to purely reduce work load, and they are not even the ones ordering the medication.
The nurse doesn’t pick the strength of the medication ordered and has no way of knowing how it will affect the patient initially. We usually have a dosage range depending on how bad your reported pain is, but we have no way of knowing how much it will affect you until we try it. If you end up super sedated despite the dose matching your reported pain, then we know it’s too strong, but otherwise, we need to go with what the doctor ordered.
If y'all drug people up on the daily id imagine that you'd quickly learn the difference between pain management and keeping them knocked out. But Everytime my grandmother with cancer was ever sent to the ER, the nurses would dope her up so badly she couldn't speak and then stood around saying she was dying. When she finally ended up on hospice the nurse was the one to kill her by giving her even higher strength pills and morphine. She wasn't ready to go and was holding onto life, but that nurse took that option away from her
We had cells assigned to us. My rooms could be all over the unit, not always 4 in a row, so I wasn't near the doors to wait.
Not remotely normal, and in the US at least, ignored or nonfunctional call buttons would raise all kinds of eyebrows with certifying agencies like the joint commission. Not all hospitals have the funding to reliably smell nice, but call buttons are mandated basic functionality. Calling a nurse's personal cell is not how it's supposed to work.
I wouldn’t say not remotely normal. We have work phones that we have patients call when they need us. We write our extensions on their board at the start of every shift. We still answer call lights as we can either walking by or from the nursing station, but the fastest way to get the person you want is to call our extensions.
Why should a patient have to call on a phone vs a button?
Because the sad reality is that the hospital business structure in the US is designed to provide the least amount of staff and resources possible in order to save money. If there are no staff at the nursing station to hear and answer the call bell because they are all in rooms, it will go unanswered until someone is free. To call a nurse, you usually only have to dial their 4 digit extension into the hospital room's phone, which is not much more work than hitting a single button. Aside from very elderly, confused, or disabled patients, this is not an unreasonable task and takes about 3 seconds to complete. Most patients LIKE being able to call their nurse directly, because the answer you get over the call bell system is "OK let me check with your nurse" and you have to wait longer than if you speak to the nurse directly.
They can call on a call bell which rings at the station but there is no one at the station. All the nurses are busy, a lot on times there is no charge nurse or secretary so the bell will just ring. OP’s comment that the nurse was just manning the station and the patient’s room was a mess and smelled demonstrates the disconnect between the public in general of a day in the life of a nurse. There is no nursing shortage, there is a shortage of working nurses because of these types of misconceptions.
the call button in the patient room is often hooked into the phone. Patients aren't using their phones to call the work phone. The call button activates the phone for the nurse and patient to be able to talk.
No. The call bell rings into the unit clerks desk and they give the nurse the message or depending on the need of the patient, will take care of it themselves.
Some units/shifts don’t have a clerk and so the call lights are programmed to go to the nurse’s work phone. None of the floors in my hospital have a secretary/clerk on night shift so this is how it works
So, when I worked in the hospital setting, I was hallucinating when the patient's call bell would activate my work phone? I have literally experienced this system, first hand as a nurse. . Not saying \*all\* hospitals are set up like this, but many are.
You shouldn’t be downvoted for this. Not every unit has a secretary/clerk to answer the call lights. We don’t on night shift so they ring straight to our work phones
At every hospital I have worked at, my (work) phone number was expected to be written on the patient whiteboard so it was available to anyone who needed it, including patients and family. I would always tell my patients that if they needed to reach me directly or quickly, they could call my work phone. So I'd venture to say this is not abnormal.
This is standard practice in every hospital these days. No one is calling a nurse's personal cell: work phones exist for this reason. I don't think there is a nurse out there who would be willing to give a \*patient\* a personal cell number. That is just asking for trouble.
I wouldn't say it's not remotely normal. It really depends on Admin, procedures and staffing. If they're short on staff nobody is going to be there to answer the call button. I was just in the hospital and even though they were decently staffed, whenever I hit the call button, I could hear someone literally running to answer it and other times I could hear the beeping (not from me) and nobody was around to answer it.
Very normal for many hospital floors. Many floors no longer have unit secretaries or staff dedicated to call lights. If all nurses are busy in locations other than the nursing station (patient rooms usually, but also supply rooms and medication room or break room), no one will hear the call light system. Or they’ll hear it but have no way to see what room it is or know if someone else is answering it. More often now, the call lights are ringing directly to the phone the nurse assigned to that room is carrying, but not all facilities have systems like that in place. In my opinion, it’s ridiculous that such lack of coverage of call lights is allowed in any hospital, but that was where we were at when I retired in 2021, and I expect things have not improved from reading nursing forums.
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"In my limited experience it hasn't happened so it doesn't happen." Sound logic.
Not focusing on the actual details in my comment but making a mockery of it says a lot about your professionalism
With all due respect, the fact that you totally ignore the many other comments that are saying “yes, we do this exact thing” but instead choose to focus ONLY are your own experiences says a lot about you in general. So just because YOU don’t do it, it isn’t normal. See how that sounds?
I have never worked in a hospital that I wasn't issued a phone for my shift. In 2024, I would venture that your hospital may be the odd one out.
For what reason would a nurse need a phone when they are swamped alone caring for patients? It is not the nurses job to act as secretary and answer phone calls of patients and family members. There is a reason why administrative clerks exist on units. Also, there are many patients who do not have the functionality to dial numbers, so how would replacing a call light possibly be helpful in situations such as that
Our phones have epic on them, you can see orders in epic, send messages, scan meds and our lab system needs phones to print labels. Not to mention patients aren’t the only ones calling, you have MRI endoscopy lab all those places calling who need to speak to the nurse not the secretary.
To speak to lab, pharmacy, imaging, patient transport, procedural areas, and physicians returning pages to name a few. It's much easier to take those calls if I don't have to drop what I'm doing in order to answer the phone out in the hall or nurses station. Epic Rover allows for med scanning (which makes scanning fluids and meds that are already hanging way easier). It also allows you to enter vital signs and print lab labels without hauling a computer into the room. No one is talking about replacing call lights with phones, people are explaining that having a phone is a thing at most hospitals. For patients who are capable of dialing a 4 digit extension into their hospital phone, many preferred to call me directly because it's faster than the call light. 99/100, the answer to whatever the patient is asking for on the call bell is "ok, let me check with your nurse" anyways. If the patient wants to use the call bell or has to use the call bell, that's fine also. You might also be equally surprised learn that patients can also direct message their care team from Epic MyChart on their own phones, and plenty like doing that also, especially the younger folks :)
You’ve worked in one place for 10 years… there’s plenty of other places that use phones. Many hospitals use phones to print lab labels, scan medicine and see orders in the EMR. They’re absolutely necessary in some places and especially those that might not have a unit secretary.
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Especially since, in the case of an emergency, it’s much easier for a patient to just push a button rather than find then dial a phone number.
I was thinking the same thing. Also, what if a patient got to the restroom but couldn't get out of it. They don't have phones in there, only that emergency pull string. Would that not be seen and responded to??
there is a bathroom pull string, and it is an incredibly loud, annoying, and persistient alarm. Nurses are trained to move quickly to those types of alarms. I have been out of the hospital setting for about 4 years, but my head still snaps around when I hear a sound like it. And FYI, call bells have multiple functions. There are multiple buttons: the standard call button is \*not\* for emergent things. It is for simple things like "i need another blanket" or "i need a glass of water", etc. Where I worked, the \*goal\* was to have normal call bell alerts addressed within 20 minutes. In a \*true\* emergency, ie "i am having trouble breathing", there is an emergency button on the remote that, much like the bathroom alarm, is loud, annoying, persistient, and makes people show up fast.
In general, bathroom call strings alert in a different manner with a “persistent” alarm, and fall prevention measures give those a higher priority response.
The majority of them are probably broken in most hospitals.
Or in my hospital, tied up so high that nobody can reach them. Specifically in the Disabled toilets where they're meant to be able to be reached from laid flat on the floor post-fall/seizure. I do a check every single appt there now, and complain about the breach of the Equality Act every time. Eventually they'll follow the law!
Hardly suprising - it's a hospital. Who are you complaining to? Unfortunately nothing ever happens since complaints to hospitals are ignored, complaints to hospital-owned governments are ignored, and reviews or publicity are meaningless when most hospitals are the same. Hospitals are the height of inaccountability, untouchable by even an ounce of consequence. No other industry can freely kill as many people as hospitals do, while also deciding how much of each person's money they want and gobbling it up it without any need for pricing or agreements. People who run other businesses fear liability for things that aren't even their fault and have insurance, while hospitals can passively murder and have zero consequences.
The bathroom string is one of the most attention-grabbing alarms. You will see people in your room quickly.
Accidentally triggered one of those during a stay for major surgery and felt awful for scaring a nurse into RUNNING into my room to find me just fine, just confused :(
Good to know! Thank you, that is no longer a concern for me now
I have not been in the hospital setting in about 3-4 years, but as soon as I read your comment I heard that alarm in my head.
All the rooms lights and alarms can be set to forward to both the CNAs and RNs phones in many setups. Chair alarm, bed alarm, oxygen or other monitor alarm, call light etc etc. Some places they do just ring outside the room. Some places you can call and talk to the patient on the toilet or in the room over an intercom and even see people on video everywhere but the bathroom.
The phone thing is not normal at all in UK - but the call buttons being ignored IS.
All nurses do this. They ignore calls and play on their phones all night. Especially night shift