Over lunch the other day, a friend of mine and I had a discussion about the ethics of nurses accepting gifts from patients.
Roxanne, a former NICU nurse, told me about the time she accepted a gift from a Mexican woman who had been visiting family in Los Angeles and ended up in a local hospital. The woman went into early labor and delivered a baby that had problems. Roxanne cared for her child in the NICU. The woman didn’t speak English, so Roxanne, with her limited Spanish language skills, did what she could to explain to the new mother what was happening with her baby. Roxanne also found an interpreter to help.
When the woman was ready to leave the hospital, she gave Roxanne a blouse to show her gratitude for what Roxanne had done during the hospitalization.
“I had to accept the gift,” Roxanne said. “I think she would have been insulted or hurt if I didn’t.”
I had a similar experience.
I cared for a Mexican physician while he was hospitalized for weeks with histoplasmosis. We became friends and I helped him with some non-medical problems that were created by his unexpected and extensive hospital stay. When he was finally discharged, he gave me a huge handmade blanket which hung on our wall at home for years. He had made a special effort to get the blanket and seemed so pleased to give it to me.
I believe he would’ve been very hurt had I refused to take it.
If I were ever offered bags of money (!) or other lavish gifts, I’d feel pretty uncomfortable about accepting these and would probably refuse. Or maybe I’d donate all that money to a charity. But I think accepting small gifts from patients who feel that need to say thank you should be permissible. I think they want us to remember them and will feel hurt if we refuse to take gifts to which they’ve given a lot of thought.
Do you think it is unethical to accept gifts from patients?
Have you ever done so?
What would you do if a former patient willed you a lot of money many months after their hospitalization?
Let me know what you think.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Patients Bearing Gifts: Should You Accept?
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4 comments:
I think I agree with you. It is gracious to accept a small personal gift. Gifts of money should be donated to charity. Gifts of food or flowers should be shared with all staff.
My hospital has a policy that we are to refuse monetary gifts, although we my suggest the money be given to the hospital foundation instead, If they insist, we are required to give it to the foundation ourselves. Accepting money or a tip is grounds for termination of employment. This all started when a wealthy patient started handing out $100 bills as he pregresssed through registration, pre-op, surgery, etc......some accepted, some did not. It was almost like a bribe for good care. Administration got wind of it, and created the new policy. We do accept gifts of candy or food, and share with all in the department. I've never heard of someone giving a blouse or a blanket, though!
I do think that refusing simple gifts could be insulting to the patient because I was a patient once and gave out small tokens and food for doing a good job. So I presume that it will be the same case with theirs. I have recvd money, food, cards and flowers from my patients and I always made sure that it is shared. We would add the money to the total of food delivered so that everybody can enjoy it. I couldnt refuse some gifts because the pts made or bought them for my kids! My superiors told me that it is because of my hard work and care for my pts that sometimes it is an honor to be remembered.
Several yrs ago I worked in a VA hospital (part of a university teaching system)in a large city. The majority of the patients lived in small towns in rural areas and would travel into the city for their appointments in the ophthalmology clinic where I worked. I received many gifts during my time there and thoughts of them still make me smile. I've been given fish frozen in blocks of ice in half-gallon milk cartons, half-gallon cartons (who knew there would be so many uses for milk cartons?)filled with fresh-off-the-tree pecan halves and bags of a variety of garden vegetables. There was a Post Exchange in the hospital that sold boxes of better brand chocolates at greatly reduced prices, so I was given chocolates with some regularity, which I shared with co-workers. When it became known that I was leaving my job to move out of state, I was given several going away gifts,including a table lamp the patient had made from drift wood from a lake near his home. When anyone goes to the effort to handcraft a gift or to offer the best of what they grow or catch, I feel it would be an insult not to accept. I was offered money just once--a silver dollar from an elderly gentleman as he was being wheeled to the car that was taking him home after a hospitalization. I thanked him profusely and explained that policy prevented my accepting it.
I have a RN friend who had a long history with a patient over the course of his treatment for cancer. Both loved and owned horses and, at his death, the patient willed his horse to my friend. She felt she couldn't accept the horse as a gift, so she purchased the horse from his family.
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