Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Nurses = Children


As I get older I start to learn certain absolute truths. One of these truths is that everyone likes to feel in control, or that they have some sort of choice in life. Lately, I've been employing a favorite trick that I use with my 2 year old. It's working beautifully.... At work.

There are alot of times my boy freaks out about things, like every 2 year old does. Usually it's over not getting exactly what he wants. Often, it involves food. if he doesn't want to eat carrots, then I offer him a choice of eating his broccoli before his carrots, and for some reason it works, it's all a control thing, he thinks he's regained some semblance of control over his life.

I know, you're thinking "what the hell does this have to do with anything?" Lately, nurses have been giving me extra shit about having things recollected, so I've decided to distract/appease them by letting them think they have choices and that they're involved in their patients care. I've started running absolutely EVERYTHING I get regardless of the issue. Clotted,hemolyzed,unlabeled... anything at all. I will then call the patients nurse with the inevitable crappy results and say " I got such and such result, this was the problem with the specimen, I'll be happy to turn out the result, I just need to record your name here in the computer." It's pretty amazing, I haven't have anyone give me shit about doing this. I give them a pseudo-choice, and I guess it makes them feel like they're the one making the decision so it's all good in the hood. It's either that, or they sure as hell don't want their name on that shit... ha.

It delays patient care a bit, and it's borderline unethical, but oh well. At least I don't have nurses bitching at me... all because they now have the option to accept shitty results, so long as I can put their name on it.

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