Yeah, it happens

I've read a thousand medical oriented blogs and I know a lot of people, so I generally know this happens.  It doesn't make it any less bizarre when it happens to me.

I had a patient that told the next shift's nurse, the next shift's charge, and my unit manager that I was "cold" and "Uncaring" and "didn't show empathy".  The kicker - this was my "easy" patient that night, and I did not have an ounce of trouble with her.  My other patient was insanely needy and constantly testing my nerves (is that OK to say? ).

I seriously have no idea what I said or what I did, because I feel like I had a great rapport with this lady.  We talked about how hard it is to be stuck in the ICU especially for someone who's young and active (this lady was a runner, and it sucked that she was going to be stuck there for almost another week for intense monitoring, but was not going to "feel" sick or deserving of an ICU bed, and I always feel horrible when that happens).  I talked her into accepting pain meds numerous times because it was helping her rest to do so, and she was otherwise lying awake whimpering in pain. 

I am not taking it personally or anything, but I feel like I can't figure out what I did or didn't do.  I keep replaying my interactions with this person and I can't make anything out.  I know this is common, but it kind of sucks when it happens anyway.

The night after, though (but before I was told about this patient's complaint) I cared for a young guy who had had an excruciatingly painful surgery.  Several times that night we kept needing to change his pain medications around to give him some semblance of control.  I felt awful because apparently pain service hadn't been able to come see him after his surgery and at the hospital, pain service is 9 to 5, so the pain control was left up to us bumbling nurses and neurosurgery residents (not that we're not good at it, but this was a complex case and this guy had been seen at the pain clinic on an outpatient basis before his surgery).  I apologized to him lots of times about the pain service issue and the fact that he wasn't getting decent pain control.  He told me at the end of the night I was the best nurse he had had ever in all his hospital experiences.  Which was awesome to hear, considering I was about to get ambushed for being a bitchy nurse to my other patient before.  So. weird.