A Study in Opposites

Look, I know the phrase "squeaky wheel gets the grease" and all that other bullshit, but when the squeaky wheel is a douche mcgouche, it really shouldn't.  This happens in the ER, like, all the time though.  If you're demanding and rude, I'm going to work on getting you everything faster simply because I don't want to deal with your shenanigans when you have to wait.  Meanwhile, if you're nice and patient and generally a stand up member of the human race, you're going to wait a little longer for everything because we can get by doing it that way.  I hate it.   

I had a side by side example today, though, and it really kind of broke my heart.  Two ladies came in for the same problem, and I was taking care of them both.  One was super nice, grateful, and polite, while the other was demanding as hell and all up in everyone's business all night.  I asked for pain medicine for the nice lady, except the douchiest PA on the planet was taking care of her, so I was ignored obvs.  The other lady thrashed about and acted a complete fool, so she got a dose of pain meds.  And then another. And then another, AND ANOTHER.  Yup. One of those waking up from your slumber to tell me your pain is a ten type of situations.  Meanwhile, nice lady is not upset by the lack of orders, but thinks I must be the second coming of Florence Nightingale since I got her a pillow.  

Both of them ended up with test results and discharge papers at approximately the same time- can you guess which one of them actually had a real reason to be in pain? Not the one who had actually received anything for it.  Can you guess who got sent home with a prescription for something you can't buy over the counter? Yeah.   

Yet when I went in and explained all the home remedies and the schedules and doses she could take on every OTC pain killer in the book, she was still all smiles and thanked me tons of times for taking such great care of her.  Right as lady #2 was totally wigging out on one of my teammates about her the NUMBER of narcs she was getting sent home with, sweet lady was heading out while she walked up with a comment card about how great her care was, thanked me again and waved goodbye.   I could have cried.   I hate that people like this get the shaft.  I felt super guilty about the whole thing, even though I wasn't in a position to do anything.  I hope I remember this crap if I ever get through enough school to have prescribing rights.