Realizations

My wife is a brand new nursing graduate and she opened my eyes to something. That I never thought about. There's a good reason Med techs think nurses are stupid. We only talk to the dumb one's that don't know there shit. They're the only one's that call down with stupid ass issues that make me want to shake my head in disgust, and hope I never become a patient.

She also said there's a reason Nurses think Med tech's are stupid. In most large labs like mine, We have people that answer our phones that are aren't certified to do anything. They're glorified secretaries that log specimen's in and then send them to the appropriate areas. When a nurse calls she get's that person, that doesn't really know anything, but tries to help regardless. So the nurse is almost always talking to the uneducated people in the lab, and assumes that person is a medical technologist as well.

How could I have been so dense as to not realize all this before. Maybe now I can take it a little easy on the nurses that I know probably do a good job, like Nurse K. I think her last post was especially poignant. Don't be a lazy slackass that assumes shit if fucked up because that's the way it has to be. I don't imagine I'm getting phone calls from nurses like her.

Who do i get to shit on?

There seems to be a natural progression in a hospital, Patients try to shit on doctors. In turn, they shit on nurses, and nurses shit on the Lab, My question to you, is; who exactly do I get to shit on?

The lab, like everything else in a hospital is starting to have more and more defined customer service roles. And it's starting to piss me off. The lab has started to publicize their desire to become more customer service oriented. We have posters up all over the place about how to perform better customer service. One of our catch phrases is "You're right, we'll do better next time." UMMM, not cool.

I've learned that this phrase can help me, you'll learn how at the end of the post.

I had a situation tonight when I walked into the blood bank. On the previous shift there was some miscommunication about some FFP. The med tech on the second shift wanted to clear it up before he left and called to see if the patient was still going to need the FFP that was ordered 4 hours previous. She stated she never recieved a call saying it was ready, and never got an order from a Doc. This is happening more and more, docs are now ordering their own labs and may not communicate certain orders to the nurses. Anyway, she said she'd call back.

She calls back after shift change for us, and I was expecting a pretty simple, yes he needs it, or a no, he doesn't need it answer. Instead, I got a 10 minute lecture.
Mrs supersleuth had found the problem. She said one of our techs had called down and told the CNA that blood was ready, The Nurse then decided that because the patient's HGB was 13 that it must have been an on hold order, even though there was no type and screen done. She also decided to try and lecture me and tell me that there was a difference between blood and FFP and that we needed to differentiate. Just as a point of reference. I'm going to assume that a Medical technologist with a specialty in blood banking that has worked here 20 plus years, realizes the difference and probably said the right thing. It's pretty reasonable that cna and her six weeks of training was the one that didn't differentiate. Either way, don't call down asking me if I realize there is a difference between blood and FFP. That kind of arrogance pisses me off. She continued on by saying BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH, or something like that.

Evidently she wasn't done bitching. At the end of all of it. She wanted to know why there was an order that was canceled in the computer and why did it say she canceled it? Shit lady, I have zero Idea. point 1. We don't use the same computer system you do. Point 2. We're not the IT department. It's amazing what people think the lab takes care of or more correctly, what is the labs fault. At any rate. I gave her the best possible customer service by only making one remark about the fact I was sure our med tech's no the difference between ffp and blood. and the promptly saying, you're right, we'll do better next time. and hanging up.

Bear with me a bit i'm sending this from my phone. i just wanted to let all the nurses out there know somwthing if you call and loudly proclaim i need this now! i'm not all that motivated to help you also if you lie to me about how long ago you collected something to make it sound more emergent.... i really don't want to help you. one more thing. calling every 5 minutes for results does not help. especially if i've already explained we're having issues. we have shitty equipment too.

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.