The Investigation

The patient is suffering from morphine delirium and believes that she is being held captive and we are plotting to kill her. I think that I've mentioned her before. She's a complete raving lunatic. She hit one nurse on the head with a phone, scratched another nurse and even called 911. She also decided to go for a walk and forgot that one leg was missing and the remaining leg was broken and badly infected. We found her sprawled on the floor and so tied her up to keep her in bed.

Well, she managed to call one of the administrators and complain about us. 911 didn't take her seriously, but administration did. A manager was appointed to investigate the complaints. If they had just opened her chart or gone in the room and talked to her, they would have seen how silly this whole situation was. Instead, the investigator wanted to talk to us, but had no idea what the complaints were. That alone, I find mind-boggling. We were expected to guess what the charges were.

One by one, I went through the list of possible complaints and asked, with an edge of sarcasm in my voice, if perhaps she was upset that we had been holding her captive or maybe she just didn't like that we were trying to kill her. Perhaps it was 911 she was annoyed with because the cops never came and arrested us.

Other nurses agreed with my assessment of the patient and I thought that would be the end of the investigation. In a normal universe it would have been, but the laws of nature don't apply here. Tonight the investigator was back and she still didn't know what the charges were. The nurses again engaged in a guessing game. There were so many things to choose from. One nurse found the patient with a pair of scissors cutting through her IV lines. She took the scissors away and the patient screamed the rest of the evening over that.

This isn't a court of law, but as a courtesy, it would be nice to know what the charges are against us. It would also be nice if someone took the time to figure out if the claims were coming from a reliable source. I understand how important patient satisfaction is, but this is ridiculous. Ever try to please a lunatic? I guess we should have let her continue to play with her scissors.