#'but what if we did a quick 24 hour fast??? u cant even wait 3 more hours??'

[anacrach-balgair]

the part of my brain that makes schedules and expectations and is super rigid due to potential autism & the part of my brain that is r3strictive are fucking FIGHTING rn and I would just like. peace and quiet thanks

[egobangin-tonight]

gOD okay im doing a rant about work bc i dont know where else to put it and i need to Screm™

(Its v long srry)

For people who are new, I work in a hospital, i work in an ER, and im a secretary. All i do is answer calls, transfer calls to doctors and nurses, and set up transportation for patients when theyre deemed ready to go upstairs (by the doctor and the nurse) after the admitting department has provided a bed for the patient.

I cannot stress that last bit enough; i set up transportation AFTER all steps have been checked off. I am the LAST person in a chain of events that allows a patient to get upstairs. As a secretary I have no actual power; i am physically unable to interact with any part of this process except for the one assigned to me.

SO

Around 12:20, i get a call from a man asking for a status update on their father. Elderly man whos been waiting for a bed for about 2 hours now. Our ER is insanely crowded compared to most hospitals and today our census was around 90-100 (which is average for us). Having a long wait time is to be expected, especially since the floors patients get admitted to are equally booked and crowded.

So i tell the man the typical response i give to people inquiring about relatives waiting to go upstairs, “the patient is going to be staying overnight but there is currently no bed assigned.”

“so do you know when he’ll be going upstairs??”

“No, from my screen it says that they are still currently waiting for the bed to become available on the floor. So until the space is freed up somehow, they will have to stay in the Emergency Room.”

Now this is usually when they say “can i speak to the nurse taking care of so n so; i just want to make sure theyre okay” or “oh thats okay, i just wanted to make sure they were on the board”. But no, this dude couldnt be okay with either of those choices.

“So you cant tell me when theyre going upstairs?”

“No, I cant. Were not the ones who distribute the beds. Thats Admittings responsibility.” (I literally just gave him is answer 30 seconds ago)

“So who can I talk to to get information on my dad?”

“…do you…do you mean his current status? Because then I can transfer you to his nurse-”

“No i mean information on his bed.”

“Admitting.”

“Can u transfer me there?”

So I transfer him. Poof, gone, goodbye, hope he gets his answers.

IMMEDIATELY, he calls back. “Is this the emergency room?”

“Yes, how can i help you?”

*repeats the entire thing again*

“Sir, i CANT help, admitting is the only department that can give you any answers. If theyre transferring you back to me, its because they cannot help you.”

“But there has to be some kind of waiting list. If hes going upstairs, who determines who gets a bed upstairs first?”

So like, the problem is that he 1) does not work here and 2) does not understand what the actual issue is. Because his dad is most certainly next in line. The problem is that the floors are so filled to the brim with sick patients that theres No Space For Him. Its not us trying to withhold beds, its us having more sick patients than we can handle.

And its even more complicated than that: some people are special needs and require an enclosed room. Some people are in isolation, some people are contagious, some people are a fall risk, some people need security, some people need 24/7 surveillance. Because the floors are so packed, we have Hallway Beds which is basically just the ER but with less patients so its calmer and quieter. Some people dont qualify for the hallway placements or ‘Overflow Beds’ because of the aforementioned needs.

Basically, his dad needed a bed on a floor that was at max capacity and unless there were some extreme last minute changes, there wouldnt be any space.

So i tell him “We CANT speed up the process any faster, we have to wait for people to leave the floor and make space for him.” Its like a car on the curb blocked in by two other cars. Yeah, you want the space that car is in, but until those other two cars are dealt with, youre just gonna have to sit there.

He asks if he could get transferred again so I transferred him.

They IMMEDIATELY transfer him back. So i transfer him again. This time, before they transfer him back to me, they tell us to transfer him to our Charge Nurse. So we do that. And for 5 minutes, hes on the phone w our Charge before she tells us to transfer him back to admitting. So we transfer him AGAIN.

and he calls us !! Either they hung up on him or they ignored the call but he calls back asking for the Charge Nurse. And when she refuses to pick up, he asks for admitting.

This went on for over a fucking hour. An hour of ONE fucking ignorant entitled selfish piece of shit calling and harrassing us to page “The Charge Nurse” “Admitting” “The nurse taking care of my dad” “The DOCTOR taking care of my dad”.

And every single time he called it was for one of these people. And the problem was that we all talked to him!! All of us!! I talked to him! My coworkers did! The charge, admitting, the nurse, the doctor !! They all answered and he still kept calling. And it was getting to a point where we started ignoring his number because he was stopping us from answering OTHER calls.

And he would call from other numbers because we werent answering his call.

Just

AN HOUR AND A HALF of nonstop calling for what ?? To expedite your dad upstairs?? To skip everyone else whos been waiting ahead of him? Why do u think your dad deserves special treatment??

No one understands how our paging system works; i just hold the call and it gets set to 1 of 19 speeddial numbers. And i page that specific speeddial number overhead in the loudspeaker. I cannot physically force anyone to pick up that number; if they hear it and choose to ignore it, i can never MAKE them answer it.

At around 1:30, i notice that his dad has received a bed. Which is good! So when he calls, im still fucking irritated but i tell him “is this about your dad? Bc he now has a bed and-”

“Oh I already know that, i already talked to the charge nurse and admitting and made that happen”

What?

“You made that happen?”

“Yes, im just trying to talk to the doctor for something else”

So I transfer him to the doctor and stare at my coworker bewildered bc…this dude is full of shit lmao Theres no way HE did it, this is not any random fast food joint where you can complain to the manager and get shit done your way. Everything is done in order, no amount of yelling or grovelling is gonna make anything go faster. Because its not that we dont FEEL like admitting people, its that we as an entire unit cannot FIT that many people.

So either 1) the patient left. Either AMA (against medical advice) or discharged. And discharge is more likely because if the patient that left was an elderly or bedconfined patient, then an ambulance couldve picked them up to bring them back to a nursing home or something similar

2) the patient in the room was downgraded to a hallway bed WHILE they were on the floor. Which is believable but AWFUL. Hallway beds are just stretchers in the hall, and you can get an Actual room when one opens up: all it does is allow you to be in a floor with a max of 30 people instead of a floor of up to 150+ people. So to get bumped down is terrible

Or 3) someone who had a hallway bed and was waiting for a regular bed got bumped and skipped in favor of this random dudes dad. Which is EQUALLY bad

But also, I really didnt know what this dude wanted. Because now that hes got the bed i would assume thats finished and he could just go to sleep or something. Once the bed is assigned and the last charting is complete, getting them upstairs is SUPER quick compared to everything else. About 20 mins max to pick up the patient and travel across the hospital to get them upstairs.

But hes apparently been bugging the doctors to complete their charts, harrassing the nurses to do the same; the entire 20 or so minutes i was ignoring him was to essentially get them to finish the chart. But like…??? They have other patients?? And they had to stop what they were doing to answer the calls. And even they stopped responding because they knew that if they heard their name over the loudspeaker, it was because of this dude.

So finally, at like 1:50, I pick up the line. And hes asking for the doctor. And i ask him WHY is he calling the doctor, because theyre not gonna pick up for him, and all i can do is page overhead.

And in the most fake, cali girl kind of voice (bc he DID have a cali girl voice only now it was clearly fake chill) “well, i WAS trying to get the doctor to pick up the phone but maybe you can help me instead.”

“Oh, I’ll definitely try my best.”

“So is there anyway I can get my dad upstairs a bit faster?”

And im like u fucking idiot, you fucking dick wasting all this time, all MY TIME “See you called at 1:30”

“Yes.”

“And i asked, i specifically asked 'was this about your dad? Because he has a bed right now’ and you dismissed me because you felt that the doctor could give you answers, not realizing that if you had just told me 'yes, its about my dad’ i wouldve told you that everything was set up and that we were waiting for transportation to bring them upstairs.”

“Well yes but-”

“So because you thought you were cutting out the middle man, you made me page these nurses and doctors overhead to get NOTHING done. When I couldve just answered you from the getgo.”

And im so irritated and HEATED bc this dude called for 30 minutes just to make his dad skip ahead of everyone else and there was NO way i was letting that happen.

“So is he just waiting for transportation to go upstairs?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anyway I can do that myself?”

“??? No?? Only the transporter can bring them upstairs.”

“Why?”

“???????because its their job????????? Thats what they do???? Bring patients from the ER to the floor.”

“So you mean to tell me that I have to wait? Wait like I had to wait for admitting to get off their asses and get my dad a bed?”

“Thats generally what happens when theres a line of people; you go in order”

So i tell him, “Do you work here? Because unless you are a transporter you are physically unable to bring him upstairs” and hes like “well i should be because no one else in this hospital is doing their job. How is it I managed to get my dad a bed in just three minutes?? How is it that if hes being transported from one department to another, why cant I just wheel him up in a wheelchair.” Im answering his stupid questions as simply as possible but hes just refusing to listen. Like why we need to have transporters transport patients (bc the ID is the only thing that unlocks the door, bc the transporters are the only ones with access to the whole building) or like why its going to take longer because we have limited transporters tonight.

And like..i need to leave…bc i just have no tolerance for people anymore. I cant do it, i get so livid, i wanted to break my phone and smash it into the wall. If this fucker was out on the block i wouldve been throwing fists; he WOULD be catching these fucking hands.

I cant remember word for word what he was saying because it was just him yelling and cursing at me about how this entire building is incompetent, how we told him to wait until his dad got a bed and if he had listened, if he hadnt INTERVENED, he would STILL be waiting, that if he was working there things would be going alot more smoother, shit would be getting done, how theres no reason the place should be understaffed because its the holiday weekend and we should be prepared for this (not realizing that the department literally understaffs us BECAUSE its the holiday weekend and the census is always lower than usual)

Just him assuming no one was doing their job, then complaining for almost TWO HOURS and then assuming that his complaining worked when in reality it was just completely coincidental; that if he really 'got a bed in three minutes’ i wouldve seen a bed appear at 12:40, not 1:30.

And they taking it out on the transporters as if they WANT to be understaffed and stuck transporting patients to 7 different locations across the entire building; patients who need to go to the floors, to sono, to CT, to MRI, and then required to be taken back. To be so understaffed that people delegated to cleaning have to stop and pitch in once in a while to help their coworkers. And he had the NERVE to try and skip past people who were patiently waiting, who were waiting longer than his dad had been waiting.

He asked to speak to the “Head of transportation ” and i wanted to laugh so hard, i could not stop myself from mocking him “oh the HEAD of transportation! Let me transfer you.” Straight to the fucking operator lmao kiss my ass have fun trying to find that person at exactly 2:03am on a monday morning and a HOLIDAY no less

The dad eventually went upstairs. He waited like everyone else in this ER and from this point on, if he wants to cause a scene, im sending the son Straight to the floor his dad is sleeping on so he can harass them because i am done™