Asking Your Nurse a Question Isn’t the Same as Questioning Your Nurse: You’re Allowed to Ask Me

I’m a nurse.

I know patients are allowed to ask questions. I know you have a right to know what medications you’re taking, what they’re for, what we’re doing, and why we’re doing it. I tell my patients that all the time.

And somehow, when I’m the patient, I still have to remind myself of the exact same thing.

It’s different when you’re the one sitting on the exam table. It’s different when you’re the one in the hospital gown, waiting for someone to come back into the room. You trust the doctors. You trust the nurses. You hope they understand what you’re trying to tell them. You hope they know what they’re doing.

And sometimes you have a question.

But then another thought creeps in.

Should I ask? Am I overthinking this? Are they going to think I don’t trust them? Am I going to insult somebody?

Or, perhaps the thought we don’t like admitting:

If I make this person angry, are they going to treat me differently?

I understand that feeling because I’ve had it.

And I’m a nurse.

Asking me is not the same as questioning me

There’s a difference between asking your nurse a question and questioning your nurse’s competence.

If I walk into your room with medication and you ask me, “What is that?” you haven’t insulted me. If I tell you that I need to do something and you ask, “Why?” you haven’t challenged my authority. If something I’ve explained doesn’t make sense and you ask me to explain it differently, that doesn’t make you difficult.

It means you want to understand what is happening to your body.

You’re allowed to do that.

Actually, I would rather you ask, because sometimes that question tells me something, too.

Maybe you don’t normally take that medication at home. Maybe the pill looks different from the one you usually take. Maybe another person explained something differently. Maybe you misunderstood something earlier. Maybe I misunderstood you.

Questions give us an opportunity to catch those things.

But there’s another part of this that I think healthcare workers sometimes forget: it’s easy to tell someone to ask questions. It’s much harder to make them feel safe enough to actually do it.

Sometimes I tell you before you ask

When I have patients staying overnight, I like to go over their medications ahead of time. I may tell you what you’re getting now, what you have scheduled later, and even what I’m going to be waking you up to give you in the middle of the night.

There’s a reason for that.

Imagine being in an unfamiliar room after surgery. You’ve had anesthesia. You’re exhausted. You finally fall asleep. Then at two o’clock in the morning, somebody wakes you up, scans the bracelet on your wrist, and hands you a cup with pills in it.

You might take them because I’m the nurse. You trust me. But trust shouldn’t have to replace understanding.

If we talked about those medications earlier, when you were more awake, then maybe when I come back at two in the morning there’s a little less uncertainty. Oh. She told me about this. You know why I’m there, you know what I’m giving you, and you know what the plan is. And if something doesn’t sound right, you have another opportunity to tell me.

That matters.

Sometimes patients ask questions without putting a question mark at the end

I was taking care of a patient recently who had a surgical drain. When it was time for me to remove it, his wife mentioned something she’d been told about what was collecting inside it. She described it as the “gunk” left over from surgery.

She didn’t technically ask me a question.

But I heard one.

She had remembered the explanation. She had thought about it. And now she was bringing it up again. Maybe she wanted another explanation. Maybe the first one hadn’t completely made sense. Maybe she wanted to know whether what she was seeing was normal. Maybe she simply wanted to make sure she’d understood correctly.

Whatever the reason, I didn’t need her to formally say, “Can you explain this to me?”

So I explained it in a different way.

I gave her an example. If you bump your arm hard enough, sometimes that area swells. Fluid can collect underneath the skin. After surgery, something similar can happen around the surgical area. A drain gives blood and other fluid somewhere to go instead of simply collecting there.

Suddenly, what she was looking at wasn’t just “gunk.”

It had a purpose.

And that’s important to me. Adults who don’t know medical terminology aren’t children. They aren’t stupid. They simply don’t spend their lives in the medical world.

I do.

There’s a difference.

Healthcare has its own language

Those of us who work in healthcare forget how much information we’ve accumulated simply by being here.

We know the abbreviations. We know the equipment. We know what certain alarms mean. We know that the little cup of pills isn’t necessarily alarming. We know why someone keeps checking your blood pressure. We know why you’re being asked the same question again. We know why that tube is there.

Eventually, so much of it becomes ordinary.

Then a patient enters this world for a few hours or a few days, and we can forget that none of it is ordinary to them. Sometimes, instead of saying “I don’t understand,” people try to fill in the blanks themselves.

Sometimes they nod. Sometimes they say okay. Sometimes they repeat the few words they remember and hope we’ll realize there’s a question hiding underneath them.

And sometimes they say nothing at all.

“Do you have any questions?” isn’t always enough

We ask this constantly in healthcare.

Do you have any questions?

And patients constantly say no.

That doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t any.

Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know yet. Sometimes the question doesn’t occur to you until I’ve already walked out. Sometimes you’re overwhelmed, embarrassed, or worried that I’ll think you’re questioning me.

And sometimes you’re simply scared.

That’s why communication can’t always depend on the patient knowing exactly what to ask. Part of my job is explaining. Part of it is listening. And part of it is paying attention when something tells me you might not completely understand—even when you haven’t directly said so.

I won’t always catch it. Neither will every other healthcare worker. We’re human too.

Which is why I want patients to know something I sometimes have to remind myself of when our positions are reversed:

You are allowed to ask.

It’s your body

You don’t have to understand medicine the way I do. You don’t need the terminology. You don’t have to phrase your question perfectly. You don’t even have to know exactly what you’re confused about.

You can say:

“I don’t understand.”

“Can you explain that another way?”

“What is this medication?”

“Why am I taking it?”

“I thought somebody told me something different.”

“Can we go over that again?”

Those aren’t accusations. They’re questions.

And yes, there may be moments when your nurse is busy. There may be questions that need to go to your physician, pharmacist, therapist, or another member of your healthcare team instead. There may even be questions we don’t know the answer to.

That’s okay, too.

“I don’t know, but I’ll try to find out who does” is an answer.

Pretending that you understand because you’re afraid of bothering us doesn’t help either of us.

The view changes from the other side of the bed

Being both a nurse and a patient has taught me something I don’t want to forget.

Knowing you have a right doesn’t automatically make exercising that right comfortable.

I can know, intellectually, that I have every right to ask my own healthcare team a question and still feel that hesitation when it’s my turn.

Should I say something?

That feeling follows me back to the bedside.

It’s one of the reasons I explain so much. It’s one of the reasons I tell people what I’m giving them. It’s one of the reasons I try to tell patients what the night will look like before they’re awakened in the middle of it. And it’s one of the reasons I listen when someone makes a statement that sounds suspiciously like a question.

Because I know what it feels like to be on the other side.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about something I believe strongly: they don’t know until we tell them.

But there’s another side to that responsibility.

We shouldn’t assume patients know. And we shouldn’t assume they’ll tell us when they don’t.

So if you’re lying in that bed and there’s something you don’t understand, ask me.

You’re not questioning me.

You’re asking a question.

And there is a difference.

A quick note: This post reflects my personal perspective and experiences as a registered nurse and is intended for general education only. It is not medical advice and does not replace guidance from your own healthcare team. Medication instructions, surgical care, and hospital practices vary by patient, procedure, facility, and clinical situation.