The medication is a blood thinner, the patient is a competent adult not in delirium, A&OX4. There are 2 ways to see this:
Manager’s and a group of doctor’s POV: you are a nurse and it’s your job and duty to do that. Plus, we know better than him what’s good for him. These people have built their identity around working in healthcare and to them this means I have to stay in the room and make sure the patient takes the medication.
My POV: nursing is not a calling but a job. What my manager and these doctors think is stupid:
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the patient is a competent adult not in delirium, A&OX4. He’s old enough to know what happens if he doesn’t take the medication because we have told him a number of times already. I’m not his father and I’m not ready to treat a competent adult like a child.
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I have other patients and I’m not going to waste my time watching a patient silently until he decides to take the medication. I’m charting that I left the medication next to him and told him he needs it and why and that I have other patients to take care of.
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It is stupid to watch a person while doing nothing when I should be working with my other patients. It’s also invasive as f*ck.
I see it like this: my manager and this group of doctors are not ready to respect a person’s autonomy whereas I’m not ready to ignore this same autonomy, even if it means a negative outcome. Respecting a consenting adult’s autonomy means respecting his bad choices as well. I feel this group of doctors and my manager are not ready to respect any patient’s autonomy.
At this moment, this is a hill I’m willing to die on. AITA?
ETA: I wrote about a group of doctors, because there are other doctors that don’t give me hard time if a patient refuses his medication, they simply chart it and move on. I like working with doctors like this because I feel they don’t judge and respect the patient’s autonomy as well.
I think you may be making a mountain out of a mole hill. If they’re asking you to make him take it, we all know that’s a violation of informed consent to medical treatment laws/practices/standards. It doesn’t sound like that though. It seems as if they just want you to document whether the patient takes it or not. If they’re alert and oriented, it should be obvious when you give it to them whether or not that happens within, say 10 seconds. 10 seconds isn’t really invasive. If the patient gets upset that you’re watching him take it for that long, pass it off as you’re just documenting whether or not he took it.
If they are wanting you to make the patient take it, well… bring up concerns to a supervisor you trust, and chart that you spent time trying to convince the patient to take the medication (better known as, the 5 seconds you talked to the patient about this being a doctor’s orders for medication).