An Open Letter to the Family Member who called Nurses "Pill Pushers"

Thanks for coming in at 11 PM while we're trying to make your mother comfortable enough to sleep. Thank you for coming to see your mom for 30 minutes, I've just been here for hours. Making sure she gets pain pills without oversedating her. It's been a problem in the past, and I don't want to create another one for her now.

She can't move that well on her own. So it's not a problem when a nurse or a nursing assistant use a gait belt and a Sara Steady just to get your mom from the bed to the chair and back again. Actually, two people are needed just for this one task to make sure she's safe. And sometimes two people are needed to reposition her every two hours - in reality even more frequently because she's so uncomfortable laying down or sitting. 

She gets anxious. So anxiety meds have been ordered and changed for her. But it's not enough. So she asks me to hold her hand. She gets lonely, so we called the chaplain, volunteer services, and art therapy so that way she can have some visitors throughout the day. Because when she calls you or her granddaughters or friends she doesn't always get an answer - which stresses her out even more.

Yes, I "push" pills. I give her blood pressure medications, diabetic medications, anxiety medications, pain medications... We check and recheck her vitals, her blood sugar, her mentation, her pain. Just to make sure there are no adverse effects of the medication that she needs. 

So thank you for coming in once in a couple days just to tell the staff what they're doing wrong and not taking a second to acknowledge what we're doing right.