LOVE

Stories from the Staff

I

An elderly gentleman was a retired chiropractor and thought the nursing station was his office and that the nurses were his employees. When upset I would take him to my office for coffee while I worked on reports. One day Aileen came into the office and said, "It's time to go - I'm turning out the light now." He said, "You girls go ahead and leave, I'm going to stay a little longer." Only when we said we would stay with him, (and he did not like to have to pay us overtime), he would say "OK, let's all leave together. "

Once when he had been out for an appointment, he refused to get off the bus. We had the driver take him to the back of the building, and went out to get him. I told him that he had a patient that had been waiting for over an hour for her appt and he still refused , "I've been working all day - I don't care how long she waits - I'm tired!" Another nurse then spoke up and said, "Oh - she had to leave and I rescheduled her for tomorrow. Your wife called and said she's not waiting supper for you and wants you to come right home." Only then did he get off the bus to come into the building.

When we were on the second floor and had a gate, he would sometimes slip out of the gate with a visitor or an employee from somewhere else in the building. We had gotten an old briefcase and had papers and things in it, and had printed his name on the handle. To get him back on the unit we would say, "Your briefcase is still in your office" - he would stop in his tracks to come back to the nursing station to get it. If he was then still insistent on leaving we would say, "That bill isn't printed yet - check to see if any others are missing while I print it for you." He would eventually be distracted and would forget about leavin - at least for awhile.