Work incident of the hair curling variety!!!

[sharonmarais]

We were told that our Departmental Matron was asked to take an outlier who was post surgery and undergoing a check angiogram but needed to be moved to make way for a more acute patient. She agreed and the patient duly came to us, we had no idea who to expect or when to expect him and when he arrived no handover on his past history was given

Comments

[lorelei633]

*hugs*

Poor you. I am so sorry you had to go through that. There is NO excuse ever for anyone, regardless of their position, to be abusive to a co-worker or a subordinate. Is there any official body you can go to for relief? You have rights, too, and there's no reason for you to have to endure verbal abuse when all you were trying to do was assist a patient.

[sharonmarais]

probably the union, one good thing is that the incident form is logged and has to be sent to matron and the clinical admin as well as the risk management team so there are lots of copies of it out there.

The guy's name is there for all to see since my ward team were adamant that I should make sure he didn't get off anonymously.

I may think about making a separate complaint about his behaviour too, just need to ask the union about where the complaint should go.

HUGS and thanks

[twigletmoo]

Oh my, you do sound very very busy at work. And am I the only one, but working on a patient that's not even been admitted - seems a bit... um... wrong. Thank goodness it didn't go pear-shaped, the newspapers would have a field-day!

[sharonmarais]

no you're not the only one....we all felt that way when we found out and we made sure we told the patient that there was no way it ought to have happened. We didn't want him to come to any harm and we wanted to make others aware of the potential for harm that could have occured and no one any the wiser...

as you say we were lucky that nothing happened. I know when a patient is taking a turn for the worse or needs a doctor urgently and they are from either of the disciplines our ward caters for exactly who to page....this guy I would have had no clue cos he was from another part of the hospital under a bunch of doctors I had never heard of....it took several hours to get to a point where I knew who we should contact, and then he was a jerk!!!

Hope your hubby has a happy birthday BTW

incident

[asia27]

Had an incident similar to this during my LPN training. It's frightening to see the total disinterest in what could have been fatal to the patient and the lack of response to what you discovered on the part of the staff. This is why when I get caught for jury duty(:{) I refuse to get involved in medical cases. I tell them quite truthfully I cannot be open minded because I know how these people behave when they get caught in a mistake. I'm glad you at least showed someone cared and investigated this patient!

Re: incident

[sharonmarais]

yeah I'd hate to have to do jury duty with medical stuff too.

I know everyone is buy and that most departments are understaffed, but that is one of the reasons for formal procedural processes - it saves time because you don't have to decide for yourself what to do, the process tells you what to do. The fact that none of it was followed shouldn't surprise me I suppose, but it still shocks me that when failures in the system are flagged up no one much seems to care.

Thankfully the patient was fine and went home the next day...though I wouldn't have called him the picture of health....he was so overweight with obvious breathing problems, bloodshot eyes etc..classic heart attack waiting to happen - another reason I was so shocked at the attitude of the doctors

Are you still working in health care? I love it - but there are so many illogical things I wish I could change.

HUGS
S