Pennyaline wrote:
>
> On 8/11/2010 11:03, Pete C. wrote:
> >
> > The human psyche is particularly susceptible to "victim mentality" and
> > we are seeing that more and more. It's all part of the Great Global Tidy
> > Bowl Swirl (tm)...
>
> Hey look, I have no sympathy for the Costco cow and the McNuggets nut,
> but I am full to the brim with understanding for the flight attendant.
> I've been a nurse for three decades, an occupation that is treated more
> and more by the public and employers alike as a servant class rather
> than educated professionals with specialized skills.

You need to wake up to the fact that "professional" or not, you work in
a *service* industry and your job is to provide service to your
customers. Doctors are no different.

> We are treated like
> waiters and waitresses every day we work by the people we work for and
> the people we are there to take care of, valued as warm bodies that take
> orders and not for our reasoning brains and adeptness with skills that
> can save your life. Patients and their families yell at us, swear at us,
> threaten to have us fired, hit us, spit at us, make ridiculous demands
> of our ever-decreasing time and resources, insult and demean us every
> time we show up for work. Verbal and physical abuses that used to be the
> privilege of psych patients are now hurled at us by otherwise functional
> and rational patients who are highly unrealistic and intolerant of not
> getting what they want when they want it, and our employers, under the
> new and improved "customer service" approach to health care delivery,
> stoke and stroke and feed and encourage these shitty behaviors in a
> schizophrenic *******ization of the-customer-is-always-right philosophy
> to the detriment of workplace functionality.

Like it or not, your customers are the ones who give the orders, and if
you don't follow them those customers have every right to fire you and
take their business elsewhere.

> I understand what this guy
> has been seeing and hearing for the last twenty years. In the last two
> days, I've heard more people say that they wish they could grab a beer
> and take a slide out of their crappy work environment AND chew the
> stupid ****ing patients and their stupid ****ing families and stupid
> ****ing visitors out before they go too. It would seem that any idiot
> would know better than to behave the way these people do, but the Victim
> Mentality in conjunction with the Entitlement Mentality have hold of
> them and make them insufferable at a time when they need to shut their
> ****ing traps, do what they're told, show more gratitude and at least
> say "thank you" once or twice instead of a constant litany of "gimme,"
> "you have to," "I pay the bill so I can have anything I want," "if you
> don't, I'll _________ (fill in the blank with stupid threat)," "so the
> sign says we can't smoke in the rooms. Who's going to stop me, a sign?",
> etc., etc., etc.

It has nothing to do with victim mentality or entitlement mentality. If
the customer is not getting acceptable service, they have every right to
fire you and take their business elsewhere. It is *your* entitlement
mentality that makes *you* think that somehow your service industry is
different from every other one and *you* somehow have a right to tell
the customer what to do. That's like walking into McDonald's, ordering a
Big Mac and having the droid at the register tell you your getting
McNugets instead, you have every right to tell them off and take your
business elsewhere. Get over your ego, you are a service worker just
like most everyone else.

> There are good patients, to be sure. But the patients
> who fill their and our time with their tantrums, noncompliance

It's not "noncompliance", it's "noncomplacence" and it saves lives that
would otherwise be lost to your screw ups. I have personal experience
with this and *I* would be dead if I was complacent and didn't trust my
instincts and tell an idiot doctor NO. I have at least one relative who
*is* dead due to blindly following a negligent doctor.

> , abuse,
> petty complaints, following us into other patients' rooms to hog our
> attention, calling us out of other patients' rooms to hog our attention,
> calling us at the nurses station from the phones in their rooms or their
> cell phones to hog our attention, having their families make endless
> phone calls to us for information, playing staff against each other,
> playing managers against each other and, yes, even playing patients
> against each other can be a total waste of time and breath.

Your time is not worth as much as your ego thinks it is.