BHTS is not the only one suffering from economic strife. It's happening all over the country, and most likely, the world.
It's not pretty. And, as so many of us had feared, the first place it is showing up is in patient care. Staff cutbacks are on the rise; some shifts have lost unit clerks, with the expectation that the nurses can pick up the slack with no problem. Expectations are that the unit clerks who do have a shift will be willing to work overtime (and get paid time and a half) to keep things caught up, when in many cases the time and a half that's being paid to them would have supported the other unit clerks for at least some of their shift. It's management at its finest once again.
There's no problem for me and my job at this point; in fact, I'm pushed to my limits almost every day. I'm dragging my ass home every day, trying to maintain all the things I always do, then shower and head out the door to teach twice a week, then start it all over again the next day.
Every department has rearranged things and budgets have been gone over with that proverbial fine-toothed comb, which is, if you don't know, undoubtedly one of those combs used to remove nits from lice-infested hair. It's really too bad that that comb doesn't sweep away some of the management who have salaries well and above $100K, isn't it? And, while the budget cutters have slashed Kleenex from the PLC, stating that the cost of Kleenex is prohibitive, it was announced in the local university paper that two consultants were hired for a project at a cost of $165K.
That would buy an awful lot of Kleenex, from my rough estimation...
They've also put the lid on hiring, even though the "official" word is that any job that deals with direct patient care is to be opened up immediately. The reality, is, though, that job requests are made, it works up the chain of command to the CEO who makes a decision whether the job can be posted.
We were stuck for awhile because NICU, Critical Care, Outpatient Clinics, Adult Phlebotomy Team, and Mail-outs were all lumped into a Point of Service area. While everything, with the exception of Mail-Outs was well under budget, Mail-Out was running such a high figure that it seemed that our whole department was running in the red, so...no new hires. Someone needs to sit the doctors down and tell them that they don't always need to order every obscure test they can think of.
At any rate, things finally loosened up enough that we were able to hire two half-time people in my area.
The first one was a dream come true. I had her doing sticks by the end of the first day, and her actual training was completed in less than two weeks, so her last two weeks were basically unsupervised training time to dot all "i's" and cross all "t's". If only they could all be that easy!!!
The second one began two weeks ago. My department has been informed they need to pay me combat pay for this one, and the training supervisor owes me big time!
I wish I would have had time to blog during the last two weeks to tell you about all of this as it came about. The training supervisor had warned me that she would most likely ask "a lot of questions, many of which would be ahead of what I was actually trying to teach her..."
That doesn't begin to cover it. This trainee, who I'll call "S", would make the devil himself run. S is one of those employees who, sadly, has already passed her 6 month orientation period, so we have no chance of letting her go. The good part is, finally, mid-week, she started smoothing out on how she did her draws - no doubt due to the excellent instructor she has *grin* - so I'm no longer as concerned from that aspect.
But, she's driving all of us nuts. And, as I introduce her to other departments in which she'll work, the response will be, "Yes...we used to work together as (pick a job)." This phrase will invariably be said with either a grimace, or through gritted teeth. Not good.
Not only does she ask questions that are totally inappropriate, she doesn't fit in easily, due to her own idiosyncrasies.
Don't laugh...but she's a complete and total germophobe. Yes, we work in the lab. Yes, we work with various bits of humanity that are not always pleasant. Yes, we wear gloves 95% of the time, but occasionally, you just have to grab something or do something without gloves on.
Most lab people carry a pocketful of gloves in their lab coats. It's far easier than looking around the rooms trying to figure out what brainiac had the smart idea to put the glove box holders on the far wall of the room.
But not S. S is of the strong opinion that she must get her gloves from each room as she needs them because gloves are not sterile and she doesn't know where they've been (duh...in the BOX) and if she puts them IN HER POCKETS, then her pockets will not be sterile any longer and she'll not be able to put her bare hands into her pockets!!!! First of all, our lab coats are not sterile. Our gloves are not sterile. Our trays and the resulting items in the trays are not sterile. Some of the items may be contained with in a package with a sterile item inside, but none of the outside packaging could be considered sterile. EVER.
She can't touch anything in the lab that might have been near a blood product. She won't touch the tube system with bare hands. She won't touch the keyboard with bare hands, even though it's a "clean" keyboard, meaning none of us are supposed to wear gloves with that particular keyboard.
But...in spite of her phobias, she doesn't find it odd at all to do stretches to get the kinks out of her back - we're talking about stretches in a room that sometimes seven people are crowded into; makes no difference to her... if she wants to stretch, she folds her arms across the laser printer and sticks her ass out into the middle of the room or in the face of someone who might be sitting at the computer by the laser printer, and stretches away.
When we have a break in the action, we sometimes check our email. I was having a quick peek at mine a couple of days ago. The particular letter I opened had that bad ole "F" word in it...she was horrified that I, her instructor, knew what it meant, and not only that, that someone would write it to me. Thing is, when I opened my email she was across the room, but as soon as she saw my email was open she scrambled right over to read my screen. Needless to say, I don't check my email with her around any longer. Don't need the lecture!
She can't take "medical humor", which most times is disgusting and gross, but it certainly relieves stress. She wants immediate gratification when asking a question and accused me of not knowing the answer when I told her to "look it up". Excuse me...? Just WHO is the instructor? I must have only *thought* it was me!
Anyway, the next two weeks will be trying for me, and I'll be more than happy to see her finished and put on her shift to torture people I seldom have to work with. At least I'm fairly confident she will be okay with the babies, and I know the Bay 1 nurses will go after her tooth and nail if she so much as screws up. So, there is a measure of comfort there someplace.
We lost a little one two weeks ago who had been with us for five months. She fought the good fight, but it was time. Everything that could possibly be done for her was done, and then some. She just didn't have anything left to fight with and before decision day came for her parents, she decided for herself.
I couldn't even cry for her. She is in a far better place now. If there's hell on earth, that Warrior Baby certainly lived it. Be at peace, Allysa. You put all of us to shame with the spirit and bravery you showed in those five months.
Part of my job is to help fill in drawing adults again. I was down in the overflow Mother-Baby unit getting a crit on a mom. As I tied the tourniquet on the mom, palpated and found the vein, then loosened the tourniquet, the mother began to cry.
I apologized to her, asking her if she was afraid of needles. She said she wasn't, and began to sob even harder. Her husband said, "We lost our baby yesterday." He began to cry, too. She said, "I carried the baby for nine months and she died in spite of everything."
I patted her, gave them my sympathy, and got out of the room as fast as I could. I yelled at the nurses for sending me into a room like that without giving me a heads up. (The baby had died on a different shift - they assumed I knew.)
And, I'm really afraid that we may lose another one this weekend. I'm going to be afraid to look at the roster on Monday morning. I hope his situation is looking better than it did when I left on Friday.
I'm going to wrap this up for now. But, I do want to mention that I was surprised and delighted in January over this:
Making a Difference Award
Kate Cheyney, Clinical Laboratory Scientist
Pathology Core Lab
While performing a morning lab draw on a patient, Kathleen noticed that the previous lab draw on an 800 gram patient was incorrectly done - the slant of the draw was horizontal and not vertical to the heel of the patient. I had reported to Kathleen that when I did my first assessment for my shift that the heel was bleeding profusely. Kathleen took a digital picture of the heel and is going to use it to educate the staff so the method of lab draw will not occur again. I believe that Kathleen is a strong patient advocate in protecting out little preemies in the NICU. Kathleen is not only an
excellent lab technologist, but she is always friendly. Thank you, Kate!
~ Diane Murray, Staff Member
2 comments:
Congrats on the award!!!
You deserve that and more for all you do for these babies. Congratulation Kate!
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