1. If you are a doctor, please sign the orders you write. What's easier--signing the orders while you write them, or signing them all when I present you with a big stack of incomplete charts and an evil smile, when you're already late for dinner with your wife?
2. If you are a patient with six different diagnoses, all of which must be reached by exclusion, all of which are obscure, and four of which require narcotics to control, you might consider that you're a whackjob.
3. If you're a night nurse, please don't bitch that I "left" you a single piece of not-very-challenging paperwork to fill out during your shift. I had five discharges and six admits today, and your head explodes with one of each, so shut the hell up and fill out the paperwork.
4. If you're a patient's family member, please understand that I don't have the power to get you a "bigger room". There are no "bigger rooms" in the hospital. Yours is as big as it gets. The fact that you're inviting twenty people to witness your being wheeled away for minor surgery is not my problem.
5. If you're a floating nurse on my shift, can the twenty-minute report. We write reports for a reason. You really, really, really don't need to go through every normal system in detail. Hit the high points. We all want to go home.
And home is where I am, with a plate of nachos and a beer.
And I get to do it all again tomorrow.
I take it that your friend, Jody, was in London. Hope she is indeed okay.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the fifth one. Haha so true.
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god, do i feel ya. your posts about work are so dead on..........thank you for writing down all the things i cant seem to get organized enough to write about. it makes me feel just a little better to know i am not alone ;)
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