Meanwhile, suction tubing, monitor cables, oxygen tubing, and bedsheets remain in the room, ripe with potential use. Nevermind the fact that suicidal patients are directly observed by a staff member, or that rooms upstairs keep their phones in place. Who comes up with these decisions?
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Think for Yourself
Each of our exam rooms used to have telephones mounted on the wall for patient use. They have since been removed out of concerns that suicidal patients might try to hang themselves with the cord. In their place, we were given three or four phones that we can plug into each room's jack. They lasted almost an entire week before being broken, and now every time a patient needs to use a phone (not an unreasonable request), we have to beg, borrow, and steal one of the cordless units.
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2 comments:
Maybe they are hoping the patients will use their own cell phones (even though the cell phones are likely not permitted in the hospital)?
I know I was grateful for the phone in the ER room when the PA and doctor decided to admit my daughter for RSV. It had started with a trip to the doctor, being sent to the ER and then being admitted. Without the phone it would have been hours before we were in her room to call my husband and let him know that our daughter was rapidly becoming more ill and we were not coming home that night.
Scott Adams said that "management is nature's way of removing idiots from productive flow." Just think, if these people weren't deciding to remove phone cords from the rooms, they might be actually treating patients...and that would be bad for everybody concerned.
All the same, it's amazing what kind of stupid policies people think up.
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