Are Nurses The Worst Patients? When to Use Your “Nurse Card” (podcast)

A recent episode of the Ask Nurse Alice podcast tackled an interesting topic: how to handle it when your patient is a healthcare professional and how to navigate being a patient yourself when you happen to be a healthcare worker. 

As Nurse Alice described, being the patient as a healthcare provider can be challenging because it’s a complete role reversal. And we’ve all been in situations as a nurse when our patient dropped the “I’m a nurse” card, so we know that revealing our RN status can be tricky as well because it can elicit some interesting reactions. 

But as Nurse Alice pointed out, although we are healthcare providers, we are still consumers of healthcare. “We are not immune from getting sick or needing services around health care,” she said. And as such, here’s how to navigate those situations when you’re both a professional and a patient. 

^{This content used under license from "Ask Nurse Alice."}

When to Use Your “Nurse Card”

Nurse Alice shared a personal story of when she had to use her “nurse card”---something she did with no shame when she felt it was necessary to get the treatment that she needed. After being prescribed Bactrim for an abscessed spider bite (ouch!), she had an allergic reaction. 

“I could feel my throat getting tight. I felt like my tongue was getting fat. I was itchy. I was swollen,” she described. She headed to the ER, but the nurse at the triage station didn’t even look up when she tried telling her what was wrong. Frustrated and feeling her throat close up even more, she decided it was time to drop the nurse card. 

“I literally slammed my hands on the table and said, ‘I'm having an anaphylactic reaction,’ and then the person looked up to me and kind of just stared at me. I said, ‘I am a nurse. And I know I'm having an anaphylactic reaction to sulfa. I need to be seen,’” Nurse Alice described. She recalled how it wasn’t until she said that she was a nurse that she got rushed back and had treatment started. 

“It was like this different type of treatment I got because I said that I was a nurse,” Nurse Alice noted. 

She also added that it was unfortunate that it took pulling the nurse card to get the treatment she needed, because everyone deserves adequate treatment, no matter who they are, but in this situation, feeling her throat close, she didn’t hesitate to use any resources she could to save her life. 

How to Treat a Patient Who’s a Healthcare Provider

In sharing her own story, Nurse Alice revealed something very important to remember if you happen to treat someone who is also a healthcare professional: it’s important that you still treat them as a patient. She found that some of the staff assumed that, because she was a nurse, she knew what was going on, and that wasn’t the case with her. 

Despite the fact that she was a clinical nurse specialist at the time, with 15 years of experience, she was still a patient and noted that she deserved to be treated as such. 

“Just because you have a patient who is a doctor or a nurse doesn't exclude you from including them in the process and talking to them about what's going on,” she said. And just because someone mentions they are a doctor or a nurse, the truth is: you have no idea what kind of nurse or doctor they are. There are a lot of specialities in medicine, from oncology to pediatrics to even telehealth, so you just can’t tell from the blanket title of “nurse.” 

Plus, being a patient is stressful and scary and there’s a lot going on, so patient education should be a priority—someone who is in pain or having an emergency won’t necessarily be thinking like a nurse, so they deserve to be treated like a patient in that sense. 

Nurse Alice also mentioned how she got a very impressive report when a family member was ill when the staff found out that she was a nurse, but she pointed out that it’s important for nurses to carry that same level of professionalism to updating all of their patients’ families and loved ones whenever possible. 

“I think that family members—even when you're not a healthcare provider—should be entitled to receive that level of updates as well,” she said. 

How to Act as a Patient Who is a Healthcare Provider

One of the advantages of being a healthcare provider when you’re a patient is that you can communicate to your own providers in a more efficient way. 

Nurse Alice pointed out that it’s helpful to know how to summarize symptoms and give “report” in a succinct way with bullet points and the “trigger words” that garner attention and immediate attention. So definitely use your knowledge and experience to express yourself in a way that is knowledgeable and will get your point across. 

What you may want to avoid doing, says Nurse Alice, is telling your own provider that you are a nurse unless it truly makes sense or is a necessary part of the conversation. Otherwise, it can come across as inflammatory in some situations. “We shouldn't take it personal but some of us take it personal because we feel like it's an attack or like shots fired—warning signals, smoke signals, hey, you better act, right? Because I have somebody who's gonna double-check, triple check everything that you're doing to make sure your i's are dotted and your t's are crossed,” she described. 

She also discussed situations when it’s a family member who is the healthcare professional and how sometimes, she will directly address the individual to see what they prefer as far as conversation goes. If the elephant in the room is that they’re a healthcare professional, just ask them how they prefer to receive updates: just generally or would they like to be treated like a doctor. She pointed out the important fact that when a loved one is in the hospital or receiving medical care, that healthcare professional deserves to not work in that moment. 

“It lets them know that, ‘hey, I'm acknowledging that there's an expert, health professional in the family, but I'm also respecting you enough to realize that you're not on duty, although you are licensed as a doctor or nurse,” she explained. “You're not working as a doctor or nurse right now because that's your father. You're actually being a son or a daughter right now. And I want you to operate in that capacity and feel comforted knowing that we the healthcare team will actually, in fact, take great care of your loved one. You can chill. You go and be a good child to your parents and just love on them and support them. That's your job. It's not your job right now to be worried about these labs and these diagnostic tests and treatments and medications. I'm going to keep you updated, informed as we're doing them, so you know what we're doing every step of the way.”

The same goes for a patient who’s the healthcare professional—” They really should be focused on just recuperating and recovering and not having to think about the plan of care,” she added. “We really want them to trust that the providers are doing the best they can and just focus on recovery.”

The bottom line? Advocate as necessary with your knowledge, but also try to trust your healthcare team. 

She also makes a habit of treating suggestions about treatment or plan of care from family members who are also healthcare professionals with kindness and brevity as well. If a patient’s loved one who is a nurse suggests something, Nurse Alice recommends taking the time to kindly explain why that lab may not have been ordered or address why that plan of care is not advised at this time, even if it feels frustrating or you’re having a very busy shift. 

“I think how we communicate with our peers, whether they're on duty or off duty, whether they're the patient or the family support of a patient that we're taking care of, is important,” she said. “I think it's important and I think that it also helps to facilitate camaraderie and trust in our profession. It gets away from the nurses eating our young type of thing, and it fosters learning and communication.”

In the end, Nurse Alice’s two big takeaways for nurses are that 1) whatever level of care or information that you'd want to provide a knowledgeable healthcare provider about their care, provide that as well for the laypeople and 2 ) just because someone happens to be a healthcare professional, don't assume that they know everything that's happening or understand the specialty level of care they may be receiving. 

And no matter what, keep the patient—whomever they happen to be—first and foremost as a priority. “The goal here is to get the patient hopefully to recovery or to transition in the best way possible in the most respectable and dignified way,” Nurse Alice pointed out. “We are all here for the patient. And we do better as a team.”