Refusing unreasonable requests

1. Discuss the importance of the right to refuse unreasonable requests from clients and colleagues

2. Distinguish between assertive, nonassertive, and aggressive refusals

3. Participate in exercises to build skills to refuse unreasonable requests

The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.

Defining unreasonable requests

As nurses, we receive requests from others for information, emotional support, and assistance. Daily, we are asked to carry out activities that help our clients and colleagues. Each request seems reasonable to the person making the request. In most instances, requests from our clients and colleagues seem legitimate when we think about the request in an objective way. When a request is made of you, however, you must consider how it affects you personally, as the person being asked to fulfill the request. You need to determine whether a request is reasonable. R. Creel, a professional organizer, created a list of “20 Ways to Say No,” teaching that overcommitment can contribute to our inability to satisfactorily organize our personal and professional lives for success (Creel, 2011). With assertive communication skills, you learn how to refuse requests, but you choose whether to refuse the request depending on the situation.

A request may be unreasonable if it affects your right to provide nursing care in a way that is consistent with your ethics, values, or beliefs. Unreasonable requests are ones that escalate your negative feelings and encroach on your right to feel good about the work you are doing. You may be asked to perform tasks that are disrespectful of your safety or physical capabilities. It is unreasonable to respond to requests that put you in the position of hurting yourself, such as physically and emotionally stretching yourself to a point at which you feel stressed, overloaded, or irritable. However, it is important to note that sometimes you choose to fulfill a request even though you would prefer to decline. You may be asked to work an extra hour because of an emergency situation. A friend may ask a favor that is inconvenient. In these cases, you make your own decision as to whether to comply. In other cases, a request may seem unreasonable to you, and yet complying with it seems prudent. You may ask yourself not whether the request is reasonable, but whether it may be reasonable to fulfill the request.

As nurses, we have the right to work in a way that allows us to give our best nursing care to our clients, promotes positive relationships with our colleagues, and gives us feelings of satisfaction, safety, and comfort in doing our jobs. In Chapter 1, basic assertive rights were introduced. Chenevert (1997) puts our rights as nurses in perspective: “Nurses are responsible people. We have dwelled so long and so hard on our responsibilities we are often surprised at the prospect of having rights ourselves.” Review your basic assertive rights listed in Box 1-2.

When you consider these rights, you need to use common sense. Of course, if you are a new graduate and your manager instructs you to give a pain medication at once, it would be inappropriate to say you prefer to bathe another client first. If you refuse a request, you may need to provide a rationale for the refusal.

Requests for our information or ideas, attention or affection, or physical power or skills all take time, energy, and commitment to fulfill. We need to check our resources before agreeing to any request. When we take on a request that overtaxes us, we lose out because we become overloaded, and others lose out because we are ineffective when we are feeling burdened. Before saying yes to a request, we need to check to see if it is reasonable for us to accept it. If we decide it is unreasonable, then we must refuse. It is far better to refuse than to capitulate and risk a serious error. Failure to refuse can end up making you a sorry excuse for a nurse (Chenevert, 1997).

Mackay (1996) reveals that successful business people tap into their own states of mind before saying yes to important requests for their time, money, or expertise. “In the final analysis, what your inner voice tells you is the best advice you can get.”

Saying no assertively

The skill in saying no is to refuse the request in an assertive manner, rather than in an aggressive or a nonassertive way. Paskin (2005) advises you to begin by staying calm, realizing that your first reaction to an unreasonable request may be outrage. By being assertive, we protect ourselves by declining a task we cannot comfortably handle and we respect the other person’s rights by refusing in a polite, matter-of-fact manner. Our desire to help our clients and colleagues and our wish to be seen as helpful nurses often interfere with our ability to say no clearly and simply.

Ellis and Powers (1998) discuss irrational beliefs that keep us from acting in our own best interests. Review the irrational beliefs listed in Box 1-3. Consider two such beliefs: “I must be approved of at all times” and “If I don’t do everything people ask of me, they will reject me.” Such beliefs escalate to “awfulizing.” “It would be awful and I couldn’t stand it if someone thought I considered my own needs.” “They would think I am selfish” (Ellis and Powers, 1998). Get the idea? It sounds like an exaggeration, but sometimes we base our decisions on such faulty thinking. Assertive communication is based on a consideration of both parties’ needs and recognizes that we have the right to set our own priorities for our actions and time allocation. This is difficult for some people. Jokingly, workshop participants are told that they can be taught how to say no but that they will have to get counseling like everybody else to deal with the guilt (Balzer Riley, 2002). You may at some time consider counseling if you have difficulty acting in your own best interests and find that this difficulty interferes with your ability to feel good about your work and yourself.

We sometimes fumble with weak excuses in attempts to avoid accepting a request. This nonassertive behavior makes us feel guilty and helpless, and we offend the asker with our irrelevant attempts to justify our refusal. A simple no would suffice and save both people embarrassment.

Sometimes our unnecessary or irrational guilt feelings about saying no make us refuse a request in a hostile, defensive manner. This aggression makes us feel ashamed that we have behaved unprofessionally, and the other person feels put down or hurt by our explosive response. Clearly, refusing a request in a nonassertive or aggressive way does not protect our interests or those of our clients or colleagues. The assertive refusal to an unreasonable request is the only way to show respect for ourselves and others.

Saying no to unreasonable requests is a way of saying yes to yourself. Just as clients are unique individuals and you struggle to consider their individuality when providing nursing care, when you protect your rights by refusing unreasonable requests, you are respecting your own uniqueness. You are saying yes to your values, yes to your style of doing things, yes to your ways of perceiving situations, and yes to your ways of judging and deciding. It is freeing to refocus your energy, shifting it from unreasonable requests to an investment in your visions and goals.