An open letter

To the people at work who keep bitching about the lab...

I'm not a phlebotomist, but I do get to curl up with one on the weekends. All the bitching I hear about "I put those labs in hours ago" and "why hasn't lab been here yet" is really starting to wear thin. Yesterday I hear "this is a problem that has gone the whole way to administration." Really? The whole way to administration?

This is why I need to be in power. I already know the solution to your late labs. It's a twofold solution, at least for evenings. For the rest of the shifts, it's a two parter with different parts... Shit, this solution could work everywhere in the hospital, likely boost morale, and improve our patient care scores. Are you ready? Here we go:

Special Sauce's Phlebotomy Bail Out Program:

Step One: Hire Enough Motherfucking Phlebotomists. How do you expect two phlebotomists to handle the entire hospital? Undoubtedly you have 4 scheduled for the floors- which is still not enough, but one is really out on a FMLA, and has been since April- you just haven't taken them off "just in case" they decide to show up, (which is about as likely as a 16 year old OD not having just fought with her boyfriend). And if it's a Friday night? Someone called in sick because they could.

Step 2: Get Rid of the Dead Wood If a new hire works for 3 months before they even get to meet a coworker because that coworker has a spurious FMLA/calls in sick every week, maybe it's time to look at other reasons for firing them. If someone consistently calls in on Fridays/Weekends, maybe they need a new job.

Step 2a, Evenings only: Get Rid of "Elk." (Name changed to protect the guilty). Want to save money on the eventual sexual harassment lawsuit? Fire that asshole. He spends more time working on ways to get out of doing lab sticks than he does actually doing lab sticks. He stalks female employees, will try to fuck anything with tits, and is the most vile, repugnant waste of skin on the planet. The money you save on that lawsuit should pay for at least another phlebotomist or two.

So there you go, borglike employer- that's how you can get labs drawn efficiently. And if you can convince the precious docs that not every damned lab has to be ordered as stat every time, maybe they'd even get processed in a timely manner. Because when EVERYTHING is stat, NOTHING is stat.

You'd probably improve morale elsewhere if you followed this simple staffing solution. Hire enough fucking people. We shouldn't be running with 2 aides when we've got 3 people who need sitters (and no sitters available), we shouldn't have extra nurses on the schedule, but be told there's no money for far cheaper grunt labor. There needs to be a happy medium. I don't need extra people to sit around and read facebook, plan their next trip to europe, and surf ebay**, I need people to wipe asses and make sure that dude thats missing part of his skull doesn't keep climbing out of bed.

Sincerely,

Special Sauce
(Who should really be a consultant, eh?)

**all things witnessed this weekend by nurses while the aides ran around like crazy bitches.