Friday, August 26, 2005

And the Stepford Award goes to....

Me.

Damn.

I won the monthly Just Doin' My Job, Ma'am award at work this month.

Every month the hospital management picks three Mini-Stepfords and a Maxi-Stepford to honor with gift certificates (Minis) and big honking taxfree checks (Maxi).

I'm one of the Minis this month. Strangely. My pal Carolita, the only other nurse who's worked at an abortion clinic and knows what it's like to have people pull guns on you, said (when somebody told her I'd won the award), "No, really. Where'd she get the balloons?"

My response to being told that I needed to be in the conference room at 1500 to receive the Mini-Step award was short, profane, and angry. Angry because I didn't want to have to farm my patients off on other overloaded nurses on an already-busy day for half an hour, profane because that's how I am ("You're shittin' me, right?"), and short because I had a patient asking for Dilaudid every hour on the hour without fail and it was five to the hour.

I told the manager that nominated me that I would tell the world that the reason I was nominated was because I had dirty pictures of her squirrelled away. You should've seen her face when the director of nursing asked me if I knew why I'd won. Heh.

But really, all I'm doin' is my job. If a patient doesn't get a tray at dinner and his nurse is busy, *anybody* would go and get that person a tray. If another nurse is busy and their patient needs morphine, *anybody* on my floor would help out. We do what needs to be done without regard for whose patients are whose.

Pretty damned sad, ain't it, when you get an award for doing your job.

3 comments:

Barbados Butterfly said...

Sad, yes, but I'd work with you or be your patient any day. What are you going to do when they give you the Maxi Stepford?

Jo said...

If and when the powers that be are foolish enough to give me the Maxi Stepford, I plan to consolidate power, then lead a coup. Nurses' Week will be celebrated with free lunches that do not contain fast food and massages in the nurses' station. Margarita machines will be installed in every pantry. Management will be required to work on the floor one day a week and given difficult assignments to boot. I will rule with an iron fist and total disdain for enemies of the state.

Or maybe I'll pay off a credit card or two.

Anonymous said...

You got the award because you were donig your job at a time when many of us are not :-)

I'll never get such an award. They will never give me a minute to stand in front of a microphone to say whatever i want to say. Because I'd say something like, "I got this woman her food, and the next day, the wrong leg was amputated in the OR..." --eric