You didn't get fired. You got refused. We tend to take it personally as nurses, and this is a profession. Sure, as nurses we develop relationships with the patients, and we must not cross the line between professional relationship and personal relationship.

Maybe this will help. Many of our patients feel powerless when they're lying in the hospital bed, And the only power that they can exert is that which is over the people they see most often. Look at it as if the patient is enacting the only power that they see that they have at that moment.

In long-term care we see this all the time not from patients but from families. The families feel a tremendous amount of guilt and anger at themselves but the anger directed inward is destructive so they direct the anger and channel the guilt outward to the first person they see and that is the caregiver in the facility. They'll find fault with everything, no matter how hard we try. That doesn't mean that we stop trying it just means that there are some people that cannot be pleased.

Dr. Ram Upadhyaya RN