I have been struggling SO much with my boss lately, in making her see that I am, indeed, a decent human being. She's a busy lady, I get that, but I think she thinks I'm trying to make her look bad. I'm not. I'm just trying to do my job the best I can. But she's randomly throwing speed bumps in my way lately with little more purpose than slowing me down. I'm always inclined to look at the other side of the coin; maybe it's to make me prove myself and push through inertia.
Maybe not. But regardless, it's taking a lot of energy. What little energy I have left after the time change because my body is STILL jet-lagged!
Anyway, I asked one of my Diabetes dietitians to put on a lunch lecture for my Wound Clinic staff. Many patients overlap and the wound nurses wanted to know more about Diabetes. So they did their thing and a generous, anxious-to-prove-himself rep brought enough food for the country of Ireland to the lunch. As a follow up, I asked the dietitian how the "wound luncheon" went. he wrote back, "You know, that's not a very appetizing way to put that. You're implying that we ate oozing dead skin or scabs for lunch." I wrote back, "Great, now I feel faint." He wrote back, "Touche!"
In other news, my red pumps (as Sister Lourdes calls them my 'ruby shiners') are becoming quite the conversation piece around the hospital. I've started wearing them when I need to put on a little bitchiness in the mornings....usually coinciding when I know I have a nasty termination to do that day. People are catching on- the red shoes accompany a firing. So yesterday, I stopped by two of my departments' staff meetings to give them administrative updates and in BOTH meetings, someone asked if I had a termination that day!
What's funnier is that my friend Mary bought me this ornament:
And yes, I had a bad term this week. One of the gentleman paramedics thought it ethical and safe to fabricate a patient record. Not just falsify, but FABRICATE. Completely pull from thin air. I'm sorry, but if that were your mom, would you want faked vitals and meds on the record? I think not. He left me no choice but to fire him. It wasn't just unethical or against safety, it was illegal.
It did not go well. Granted, I was probably too hard on him (but a neighboring hospital is on the line for $23M for a bad case where a patient died in an ambulance), but I literally thought he was having a heart attack. He went all white and pasty and sweat was pouring off his head. He was shaking too badly to sign the termination notice. I asked the manager to walk the firee out to his car, listening for a Code Blue to be paged overhead the entire time he was gone. Ugh. THAT was a first.
Later in the week, two of my nurses came to me with what they called a "bad feeling in their stomachs." Something wasn't adding up and they asked me to look into it. I've been working with this department a lot lately, helping them look at their own processes and to stop hating each other. So this was big- they were working TOGETHER on something they agreed wasn't right.
Jump to me, swimming through stacks of stuff to better understand the problem. And the legal case is already progressing; we spent hours yesterday, meeting with the lawyers. I can't say anything more but I can't even believe the time that goes into these sorts of things.
So between the investigation needed for the almost-Code-Blue-termination, this new legal situation, and the usual gamut of meetings, I didn't get much work done this week. Except that I am pushing on a thorough reorganization of the patient safety, quality, and ethics departments of the hospital. My ethics mentor, Dr. Nelson, actually offered to help me operationalize some of the ethical theories he published, in regard to preventative ethics. So I guess you find time for what you WANT to do!
Today has been evaluations, evaluations, evaluations. Seven of my managers (and eight front-line staff whose evaluations I have to help the manager complete) have their evaluations due this quarter. Each eval takes me about two hours...so that adds up, too. Oh well, at least I can work on those in front of the tube while watching college football!
Score!
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