Trainee update

In the continuing saga of my trainee, T...

She's been with Dean the last couple of days, so I've been busy with other things at work. I was off work on Monday, since I have this weekend off, and today I was assigned to one of the most difficult floors in the hospital. (It's the one that we always feel like we're being punished for something when we're assigned to it! )

Anyway, it's such a tough floor that everyone automatically goes there to help finish it up when they're done with their own assignments for the day. I was helping Anne finish up a blood culture and she told me she had been back to the lab before coming to my floor and had seen T go into Kathy's office and shut the door. Hmmmmm...

So, when we got back to the lab, I headed over to Dean's work area in the lab to see what was up since T will be with me tomorrow.

"Hi Dean...bet you know why I'm over here."

Dean grimaces and rolls his eyes. "Yeah."

"Uh, does that look mean I should get about four hours extra sleep so my patience factor will be very high tomorrow?"

"No, rest won't do it. You need to be heavily medicated!"

Gods.

Anyway, we discussed his last two days with her training. It's not improving...if anything, in many areas it seems to be getting worse. Everything that is not precise and expected throws T it seems - Dean said that today they had a patient whose draw had to be from his hand...and the arm attached to the hand had an IV in it.

In our lab, we can draw from the side that an IV is on as long as we draw "below" the IV site. But, you have to get the nurse to shut the IV off for a few minutes prior to doing the draw. So, Dean called for the nurse and they waited for her to come to the room. He told T that while they were waiting, they might as well get things set up for the draw, so he pulled out a hub and adapter to hook the butterfly needle to and he put them together in the proper manner, and took the packaged butterfly needle off the tray. T was pulling the necessary tubes and other required items off the tray.

Dean told her to go ahead and put the rest of the needle together. She picked up the hub/adapter and picked up another adapter and could not understand that Dean had already put the adapter on the hub. He had to explain it to her several times. When she finally understood, he told her to go ahead and attach the butterfly needle to it so all would be ready. She picked up the package, took out the butterfly, and could not figure out how to take off the little cap covering on the end that attaches to the adapter. She kept trying to figure out how to put it on the hub without taking the cap off. Since we use on the average of 15-25 butterfly needles per day, after 5 weeks of training, she should know this without any hesitation. But, she couldn't handle it....by needing to figure out what she should do if she had to draw blood from the side an IV was on, it apparently made everything else she knew go right out of her head.

She can't think on her feet. It's totally necessary to become so routine in this job on many things that someone can bark an order at you and you respond without hesitation. And she can't.

And that's only one problem. There were others. I won't go into them now.

But, beginning tomorrow both Dean and I have to begin documenting everything...which, if you've ever been in any kind of management position, you know that it's the beginning of the "firing" process, especially in a state job. Due process and all that stuff.

But, what we're doing is requiring her to "get" three things in three days. We have to report to "upstairs" on Friday concerning her work.

I'll let you know what happens after I work with her tomorrow.

Kate