So I have a few short stories from my work behind the scenes of a private hospital in the land Down Under. I absolutely love my job and my manager has one hell of a spine.
My role consists of a mixture of coordinating the "Shit hits the fan," meetings (basically where something went wrong during surgery or after and looking into why - there's more to it, but that's the gist of it), assisting with policy development and also making pretty charts and graphs to sell various concepts to people, among other things. For the meetings, I have assistance from the fellows or registrars with the clinical side of things and I take care of the non-clinical stuff.
Actual safety report filed at work
What happened: I was cleaning my keyboard, lifted it up and found a spider underneath it.
Corrective action: I squished it and threw it in the bin.
(This was a justified report, as it was coming out of the ICU, but was just very random. Most of our safety reports are fairly mundane)
Interesting case #1:
Overheard this one at one of the "shit hits the fan meetings."
Patient comes in for surgery. Surgery in and of itself had no major complications, patient gets discharged. Patient returns about a week later complaining of pain, was jaundiced and anaemic. Patient gets returned to the operating room, they find nothing immediately wrong, so haematology get consulted.
Turns out the patient (who was in his 80's I might add) had a rare condition known as favism, which had never been picked up until now. What triggered it? Well, post-discharge, the patient out of absolutely nowhere, decided to binge on fava beans. Yeah, the patients sudden craving for fava beans actually saved their life, since that is often asymptomatic!
Interesting case #2:
Also overheard at a "shit hits the fan meeting."
Patient had an orthopaedic surgery of some sort (can't remember what). They decided that riding an inflatable horse at the Melbourne Cup sounded like a fantastic idea. While riding said horse, they fell and somehow managed to fracture the cement that was holding their implant in place.
Congratulations, you made yourself look like an asshole
One of the specialties for the meetings I assist with have this tendency to well, engage in dick-measuring contests (for lack of a better term). End result is that they do not like the presence of myself, my manager (who's male) or anyone from higher up that happens to be female. Luckily their meetings go fairly quick.
Recently, one of the OTHER committees I sit in on (solely for minute taking) demanded that the results of hand hygiene audits are tabled at said meetings (the audits are basically how often staff are correctly washing their hands when they enter a room, touch a patient, start a procedure etc.). So I naturally throw something together and present it at said meeting. The chairperson of the committee then starts grilling me on the hand hygiene moments myself, asking what they were, how the audits are done etc. Luckily the head of Intensive Care was there to bail me out (as were the nurses from that ward) and he snidely asked for more information to be presented in future for clarification. Me, being Ms. Polite, opt to take that information away.
It wasn't until two days AFTER that meeting however (and when I was presenting the results at another meeting) when I realised that him asking me those questions made him look like the bigger idiot. Why? Because the stuff about what hand hygiene actually is (at least, I did concede he may not know the audit process), is stuff that he really should have known. If he's questioning me, then it shows his level of incompetence, and if he's not caring, then that's extremely scary. Oh, and did I mention that he's actually a neurosurgeon?!
My role consists of a mixture of coordinating the "Shit hits the fan," meetings (basically where something went wrong during surgery or after and looking into why - there's more to it, but that's the gist of it), assisting with policy development and also making pretty charts and graphs to sell various concepts to people, among other things. For the meetings, I have assistance from the fellows or registrars with the clinical side of things and I take care of the non-clinical stuff.
Actual safety report filed at work
What happened: I was cleaning my keyboard, lifted it up and found a spider underneath it.
Corrective action: I squished it and threw it in the bin.
(This was a justified report, as it was coming out of the ICU, but was just very random. Most of our safety reports are fairly mundane)
Interesting case #1:
Overheard this one at one of the "shit hits the fan meetings."
Patient comes in for surgery. Surgery in and of itself had no major complications, patient gets discharged. Patient returns about a week later complaining of pain, was jaundiced and anaemic. Patient gets returned to the operating room, they find nothing immediately wrong, so haematology get consulted.
Turns out the patient (who was in his 80's I might add) had a rare condition known as favism, which had never been picked up until now. What triggered it? Well, post-discharge, the patient out of absolutely nowhere, decided to binge on fava beans. Yeah, the patients sudden craving for fava beans actually saved their life, since that is often asymptomatic!
Interesting case #2:
Also overheard at a "shit hits the fan meeting."
Patient had an orthopaedic surgery of some sort (can't remember what). They decided that riding an inflatable horse at the Melbourne Cup sounded like a fantastic idea. While riding said horse, they fell and somehow managed to fracture the cement that was holding their implant in place.
Congratulations, you made yourself look like an asshole
One of the specialties for the meetings I assist with have this tendency to well, engage in dick-measuring contests (for lack of a better term). End result is that they do not like the presence of myself, my manager (who's male) or anyone from higher up that happens to be female. Luckily their meetings go fairly quick.
Recently, one of the OTHER committees I sit in on (solely for minute taking) demanded that the results of hand hygiene audits are tabled at said meetings (the audits are basically how often staff are correctly washing their hands when they enter a room, touch a patient, start a procedure etc.). So I naturally throw something together and present it at said meeting. The chairperson of the committee then starts grilling me on the hand hygiene moments myself, asking what they were, how the audits are done etc. Luckily the head of Intensive Care was there to bail me out (as were the nurses from that ward) and he snidely asked for more information to be presented in future for clarification. Me, being Ms. Polite, opt to take that information away.
It wasn't until two days AFTER that meeting however (and when I was presenting the results at another meeting) when I realised that him asking me those questions made him look like the bigger idiot. Why? Because the stuff about what hand hygiene actually is (at least, I did concede he may not know the audit process), is stuff that he really should have known. If he's questioning me, then it shows his level of incompetence, and if he's not caring, then that's extremely scary. Oh, and did I mention that he's actually a neurosurgeon?!
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