How to Deal with Angry Patients
March 13th, 2009 | Uncategorized
You walk into the room, you introduce yourself, and everything you do from that point on is wrong. Every nurse has taken care of an angry patient. It isn’t pleasant, and many nurses are leaving the profession because they just can’t take it anymore. Here’s some advice. Use these tips the next time you run into a patient that makes you want to quit your nursing job.
Tip #1: Put Yourself in Your Patient’s Shoes (or in their patient gown).
The first thing that I do when I’m confronted with a beastly patient is try to remember that fear and loss of control are the two biggest factors that turn nice people into jerks. I ask myself how I might act if I were in my patient’s place. Patients come to the hospital out of necessity, not by choice, and many people respond to this kind of stress by lashing out at everyone around them.
Tip #2: Don’t Tune Out Your Patient When They Are Angry
I know that this is easier said than done. It’s not easy listening to a patient’s verbal abuse. Patients and their families want to feel empowered, not patronized when they are talking to you about a problem. Give your patient your undivided attention. Turn off your cell phone. Sit down at his or her bedside and really listen. Acknowledge the problem, ask about it, and listen to what the patient has to say. It’s not easy listening to angry words, but it’s an important skill to learn. Also, try to understand what the patient is really dealing with. Is the patient angry about something concrete, or are they dealing with grief? We can’t fix sadness. Sometimes the only thing that we can do is be empathic and validate the patient’s feelings.
Tip #3: Turn Down the Volume When Patients Start Yelling
I learned this tip from one of my early mentors. I was fresh out of nursing school when one of my patients went ballistic when I started giving her a bed bath. My mentor heard the metal bedpan hit the wall as it shot past my head and hit the hall. My mentor came running into the room and started talking to my patient. My patient screamed obscenities. My mentor responded in a very quiet voice. The patient’s voice grew louder. My mentor became quieter when responding to the patient. Within a few moments, the patient started lowering the tone of her voice so she could hear what my mentor was saying. The patient was then able to calm herself and she became less irrational. I’ve never forgotten this technique. It really works.
Tip #4: Don’t Make Promises You Can’t Keep
Your patient is demanding everything under the sun. They are yelling, and they are threatening to call their lawyer. What do you do? It’s really tempting to tell a patient that they can have whatever they want just to make them happy, but prepare for the fallout if you can’t deliver on your word. Keeping patients happy involves trust, and nothing will blow trust out of the water faster than a big fat lie. It’s all right to tell a patient that you don’t know the answer to a question, but it’s not OK to make things up as you go. If all else fails, tell your patient that you will ask your nursing supervisor to come talk to them.
Do you have a story that you would like to share about appeasing an angry patient? Drop by Nursing Voices and tell us about it. We’re waiting to hear from you.
Terri Polick has been a nurse for thirty years, and is a published author living in Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C. She is currently working as a freelance writer, and is a frequent contributor to Nursing Spectrum Magazine. Terri works at a local community hospital as a psychiatric nurse.
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I never really thought about how stressful it could be as a nurse to face angry families or scared people. Your advice is well written.
keep up the good work- Dave
Thanks for all these good advices, we face alot of angry people in our clinic, I live in afghanistan.
I have been a paramedic for 24 years and became an RN 3 years ago. As a paramedic I rarely encountered the rude nasty treatment that nurses are exposed to almost daily.
I work in a busy ER and many patients do not care about critically ill and dying patients–they only care about thier needs. Many have a sense of entitlement beyond rational thinking. ” I’m here to have my cut sewn up and it better take less than an hour or I’m leaving.” They won’t go to urgent care because the wait is to long. The expectation is ER is fast. Sorry, we just can’t satisfy demanding rude people.
The most demanding patients are Medicaid recipients. They are entitiled and they squeeze every bit of resources out the system and staff they can get.
As experienced staff we are immune to the panic and emotion often demonstrated by patients and families. Our control is calm/dominant behavior in order to obtain quick cooperation and get to the next patient. Our staff understands stress, fear, and the unknown are all factors in patient/family anger, but rude hateful, threatening and violent behavior against nurses is seemingly acceptable to many in society.
If a nurse shows anger or rudeness we are threatened with job loss, we are supposed to have abilities beyond what is human. Yes, empathy is a part of our practice but it is difficult when you are treated like dirt. Often, there is not time to sit down and negotiate. If a patient or family members behavior escilates we call security and either have them standby or remove the subject. The response is obviously circumstantial depending on the behavior but consistency is the key to decrease the number of incidents. RN’s need more respect or this maltreatment will force more of us out of the profession.
I agree with Mark. All of this friendly advise is wonderful, but I dont know of any other profession that people think they can come to your job and fuss and curse at you. And I believe that managers should see this and some how empower nurses and not make us feel like we will get fired if we in some way protected ourselves or at least be allowed to educate the public what exactly an emergency is and that its physically impossible to see 100 people at the same time for a toothache or fever and stuffy nose. What happened to trying to take something over the counter and try to help the kids at home first. Kids come to the ER with 104 fevers and nothing has been done at home. Or they throw up once and in they come to the ER. Basic education needs to be given to the public instead of complaints and articles through the media surveying wait times in the ER. Especially when ER workers can truly say the clog is 80% of patient population that truly is not an emergency.