Posting on here to hear from doctors about their experiences which medical students and resident doctors being treated badly by nurses/HCAs:
One of my medical student colleagues and I were told to either wait on the ward for one of the resident doctors to come back from their meeting or to go for independent study until our next timetabled activity. My colleague and I chose to wait on the ward in the staff room, which is closed off from patients, and chose to practice for our OSCE next month.
During this time, while my colleague and I were debriefing the practice station, a HCA entered the staff room to make herself a drink. Despite my colleague and I talking in low voices as to not disturb any other staff in the break room, she came closer and interrupted whilst we were answering each other’s questions to correct us on something she had thought I had missed (as part of the question: “What other support can you give to a patient who has had a DNACPR put in place?” I had previously mentioned psychological support, but she did not seem to hear this). Instead of replying to her to say that I had already mentioned this, I accepted her seemingly constructive criticism and thanked her for her input. This happened again on our next question, and again, we respectfully thanked her for giving us advice. She then complimented us before leaving the staff room.
Much to our disappointment, we were informed later on in the day by another one of our colleagues on the ward that this member of staff, shortly after telling us that we were doing a good job, went to the nurses station and said to the group of nurses at the nursing station that my colleague and I were “idiotic”, “unprofessional” and that we were “stupid.” She then claimed that neither of us “had a clue what we were talking about”, citing the reason as the fact that I allegedly did not say to offer psychological support to the patient, which I did. Further conversations at the nursing station continued with this sentiment.
If this was a doctor going back to the doctor’s office to slag off a student nurse, people would be in uproar, but because it’s the other way around, no one seems to care. Incidents like these have happened so many times and I’m getting so sick of it. I feel like I really have to hold myself back on what I say as to not get myself in trouble because it gets incredibly frustrating being spoken to and about like shit.
Also, I’d like to site in the least arrogant way possible that I did this mock station very well: I’ve been told before by the uni, senior doctors and nurses alike that I have a lovely bedside manner and have been able to have these difficult conversations with patients easily.
Unfortunately for her, not only am I a massive bitch, but I’m a massive bitch who loves to write a letter, so I’ve started to write to the education team but I don’t think they’ll do anything. Does anyone have advice on how to tackle this?