If you consult any nursing care plan book for a confused patient, you will find the intervention, "Assign a room close to the nurses station." Lucky me! This means as the ward clerk, I often get to listen to patients calling out for 8 hours.
One particularly memorable night a patient would continuously cry, yell for help, and moan. No matter who went in to comfort her... she would yell. Well it had transitioned into night shift and the crying kept getting louder, and louder, and louder. No one was around so I thought I'd try my hand at comforting - or silencing - whatever you want to call it.
I entered the room and asked what was wrong. All she would say was "Help me." She was crying and looked very scared. I tried to comfort her by saying that she didn't have to worry because my desk was just outside her room and I was "Keeping an eye on her."
All of a sudden she stopped crying and just stared at me. If her eyes could talk they would have said, "I'm going to kill you. Run... run very quickly." It was the creepiest transformation I've ever seen. Instantly she went from scared and crying, to literally looking at me so freakily, that I backed out of the room without saying another word and had to shake the heebie jeebies off my scrubs.
I went back to my desk and decided to never try that again! As the charge nurse walked by I told her of my strange interaction with the patient.
"Ya," she said. "She's paranoid schizophrenic and waiting for a mental health bed."
Oh... so telling her "I'm keeping an eye on you," probably wasn't the best choice of words!
One particularly memorable night a patient would continuously cry, yell for help, and moan. No matter who went in to comfort her... she would yell. Well it had transitioned into night shift and the crying kept getting louder, and louder, and louder. No one was around so I thought I'd try my hand at comforting - or silencing - whatever you want to call it.
I entered the room and asked what was wrong. All she would say was "Help me." She was crying and looked very scared. I tried to comfort her by saying that she didn't have to worry because my desk was just outside her room and I was "Keeping an eye on her."
All of a sudden she stopped crying and just stared at me. If her eyes could talk they would have said, "I'm going to kill you. Run... run very quickly." It was the creepiest transformation I've ever seen. Instantly she went from scared and crying, to literally looking at me so freakily, that I backed out of the room without saying another word and had to shake the heebie jeebies off my scrubs.
I went back to my desk and decided to never try that again! As the charge nurse walked by I told her of my strange interaction with the patient.
"Ya," she said. "She's paranoid schizophrenic and waiting for a mental health bed."
Oh... so telling her "I'm keeping an eye on you," probably wasn't the best choice of words!
Well... she stopped crying, right?? ;-)
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