Had a patient who absolutely did not under any circumstances want to be disturbed. This is difficult to accommodate in a hospital but not impossible. However one suggestion the patient offered as to how we could manage this was that before we enter their room, we knock on the closed door and wait for a reply (this is fine). If we did not hear a reply, the patient continued, we should interpret this as the patient not wishing to interact and we should leave them alone. At this point I had to be like, listen, there is nothing I love more than respecting patient autonomy by doing fuck all with them all night, but my dude if i knock on a door and my patient who is attached to no monitoring devices doesn’t reply, I simply have to follow up. because this is a hospital. and you might be dead in there. that’s a really reasonable thing to think in these circumstances. And if you’re dead, they’re gonna fire me AND I’m gonna feel bad. Just tell me to go fuck myself if you don’t want me to come in. I’m so happy to wander off to fuck myself content in the knowledge that you are alive. Anyway I told the patient to just hit the call light periodically to order a drink or whatever and I could use that as my safety rounding. Then I left them almost entirely alone. I like to think they got a good night’s sleep, but I didn’t ask. I can tell you that they didn’t die, so I’m basically nurse of the year.
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