Charge nurse yelled and belittled me and patients heard
I’m a female CNA. Today, we were very short staffed so everybody had 17 patients on pm shift. Normally we have 8-9 so it’s a very big difference and most of the patients here are total care and have behavioral issues that warrant lots of individual attention. I was going room to room changing people last round answering call lights as fast as I could like a chicken with its head cut off. The male charge nurse aggressively walked up to me demanding that I check on a patient that’s screaming “help I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” Side note- this is a behavioral issue that commonly occurs on the evening shift as this patient has dementia. I explained to the nurse that I had literally 5 minutes prior changed the patient, gave snacks and water and lowered the bed to the ground so that he wouldn’t be at risk to fall. I explained all that and he still said “well I’ve been a nurse for ten years and you are just standing around doing nothing.” That’s bs because I was literally sweating my butt off changing people. And he also said “I missed my lunch to cover the floor because you didn’t tell me that you were back.” I told him well I was relieving my partner CNA and that I don’t relieve nurses because there’s another nurse on duty with him that is also on the floor as well as other CNA’s. It was just incredibly rude and demeaning. The nurse proceeded with saying “I don’t like that you walked away from me and sighed earlier.” First of all, I could’ve sighed from anything and I did walk away because I was defusing the situation like we’ve always learned. The worst part about this is that the patients heard because it was in the hallway and another patient told me she heard and she said he was nasty and rude.