Overmedicating 'difficult' patients.

摘要

In the classic article "Taking Care of the Hateful Patient," Grovesidentifies 4 types of patients whose behaviors and attitudes elicit strong feelings of aversion, anger, and depression among health care providers.These reactions are often related to underlying feelings of powerlessness on the part of their caregivers-these patients may be clingy, demanding, manipulative, even self-destructive. Providers who lack reliable, legitimate means to alleviate such behavior may resort to inappropriate and unethical means for controlling said patients, such as excessive medication as a form of restraint. This case illustrates how these feelings of powerless and frustration, triggered by the behaviors of these patients, can lead to faulty decision making on the part of an otherwise excellent long-term care facility. If not for outside intervention, this patient would have been needlessly over medicated.