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Monday sure is a terrible way to spend 1/7 of your life. A brief rundown of teh powah of teh Monday:
Fiiiixxxxxx Iiiiiiitttttttt!
I came in this morning to find the computer towers and backup battery that control the PET/CT scanner completely dead. I flipped the power strip, unplugged and replugged, cursed both the Nuc Med gods and the Microsoft demons, and spent a good chunk of my morning trying to figure out who to report it to. First called up tech support for the scanner, they said have someone check the circuit breakers. Called Environmental. They don't do it, call Security to find out who does. Security said call Engineering. No one's answering the phone in Enginieering. Thankfully, one of the Engineering guys stopped by later in the day for a completely different thing and was willing to take a look at the breakers. The breakers are all fine, however there's no power output from the outlets. But those outlets don't power the computers anyway; they get juice from somewhere else. Of course that somewhere else is not his jurisdiction, it's BioMed's. He was nice enough to put in the work order to BioMed for me and hopefully we can get this figured out. At least no patients are scheduled to be on that scanner this week.
Cardiologist Woes
We have a certain cardiology group that supervises all our stress tests. We send a fax to their scheduling person and she sends us a fax back letting us know who the cardiologist is for the next day. I couldn't find the fax for today, so I don't know if it never got sent or accidentally got shredded or what. I figure what the hey, I'll just call and they'll send whomever down. No one answered at the office and I got their answering service. They transfer me to the Echo lab, and the Echo tech tells me <Cardiologist> is in the building and gives me his cell number because he's more likely to answer that than a page. So I called him and thought it was someone else. His last name sounded similar to another doc's first name and I got confused. So he comes down and does the stress test. Just before we stressed the first patient, the second patient showed--and he's a half-hour late. Dunno if that was his fault or Registration's but I can't get to him until after the first guy gets stressed. <Cardiologist> decided he didn't want to wait until the second guy was ready--really, I don't blame him since it was going to be about an hour and a half--and took off to <other hospital system> and told me to call when I was ready.
The second guy had great veins except for the fact they rolled and my needles weren't cooperating. Usually I can still get a roller, but for some reason today wasn't my day. The plastic catheters kept bending when I went to slide them off the needle, the needles would poke back through some part of the plastic catheter, I'd get an initial flashback of blood and then it would stop....you name it. I finally grabbed one of the CT techs and she got it on the second try. Hooray! When I went back to process his pictures, he had a bowel loop right under the heart that for the life of me I could not crop out. When that happens, the computer scales the image to the hotter bowel loop than the heart and makes the heart look faint. So it was either cut off part of the heart and get the intensity right, or get all of the heart and have it look bad. I hate it when that happens because there's nothing I can do about it. This software doesn't even allow for me to see what's going on until the scan is complete and I've already sent the patient home.
And because of the timing between patients, I didn't get lunch.
Which Kind Does he Want?
Tomorrow's schedule has a bone scan. Our scheduling software doesn't always say which of the 3 kinds of bone scans it actually is, so I get to call up the office of the ordering doc and see what it is. What set off alarm bells was the patient has possible loosening of a total knee replacement. Some docs want the 3-phase bone scan on joint replacements, some don't. So, like a good little tech, I call to find out which.
Nurse: *opening spiel*
Me: Hi, this is <Jedi> from <other other location>. I have a question about a bone scan <doctor> ordered for tomorrow. I need to know if he wants a three phase or limited.
Nurse: Well, what does the order say?
Me: *don'tcha think if I knew that I wouldn't be calling?
* Since we have the patients bring the orders with them, I haven't seen it yet. However, it's showing up on my schedule as "bone scan left knee".
Nurse: Then I guess he wants the limited.
Me: Ok, but that's just going to be a shot of the knees and nothing else. And I want to make sure because it's for joint replacement loosening.
Nurse: *sighs* Give me the patient's name again and I'll go pull the chart.
Me: *shouldn't you have done that to begin with? o.0*
Nurse: Ok, it says 3-phase in here.
Me: Alright, thanks!
Individually, none of the above are particularly sucky (except for maybe the camera being down), but altogether really suck. But tomorrow will be better!
...Right?
Fiiiixxxxxx Iiiiiiitttttttt!
I came in this morning to find the computer towers and backup battery that control the PET/CT scanner completely dead. I flipped the power strip, unplugged and replugged, cursed both the Nuc Med gods and the Microsoft demons, and spent a good chunk of my morning trying to figure out who to report it to. First called up tech support for the scanner, they said have someone check the circuit breakers. Called Environmental. They don't do it, call Security to find out who does. Security said call Engineering. No one's answering the phone in Enginieering. Thankfully, one of the Engineering guys stopped by later in the day for a completely different thing and was willing to take a look at the breakers. The breakers are all fine, however there's no power output from the outlets. But those outlets don't power the computers anyway; they get juice from somewhere else. Of course that somewhere else is not his jurisdiction, it's BioMed's. He was nice enough to put in the work order to BioMed for me and hopefully we can get this figured out. At least no patients are scheduled to be on that scanner this week.
Cardiologist Woes
We have a certain cardiology group that supervises all our stress tests. We send a fax to their scheduling person and she sends us a fax back letting us know who the cardiologist is for the next day. I couldn't find the fax for today, so I don't know if it never got sent or accidentally got shredded or what. I figure what the hey, I'll just call and they'll send whomever down. No one answered at the office and I got their answering service. They transfer me to the Echo lab, and the Echo tech tells me <Cardiologist> is in the building and gives me his cell number because he's more likely to answer that than a page. So I called him and thought it was someone else. His last name sounded similar to another doc's first name and I got confused. So he comes down and does the stress test. Just before we stressed the first patient, the second patient showed--and he's a half-hour late. Dunno if that was his fault or Registration's but I can't get to him until after the first guy gets stressed. <Cardiologist> decided he didn't want to wait until the second guy was ready--really, I don't blame him since it was going to be about an hour and a half--and took off to <other hospital system> and told me to call when I was ready.
The second guy had great veins except for the fact they rolled and my needles weren't cooperating. Usually I can still get a roller, but for some reason today wasn't my day. The plastic catheters kept bending when I went to slide them off the needle, the needles would poke back through some part of the plastic catheter, I'd get an initial flashback of blood and then it would stop....you name it. I finally grabbed one of the CT techs and she got it on the second try. Hooray! When I went back to process his pictures, he had a bowel loop right under the heart that for the life of me I could not crop out. When that happens, the computer scales the image to the hotter bowel loop than the heart and makes the heart look faint. So it was either cut off part of the heart and get the intensity right, or get all of the heart and have it look bad. I hate it when that happens because there's nothing I can do about it. This software doesn't even allow for me to see what's going on until the scan is complete and I've already sent the patient home.
And because of the timing between patients, I didn't get lunch.
Which Kind Does he Want?
Tomorrow's schedule has a bone scan. Our scheduling software doesn't always say which of the 3 kinds of bone scans it actually is, so I get to call up the office of the ordering doc and see what it is. What set off alarm bells was the patient has possible loosening of a total knee replacement. Some docs want the 3-phase bone scan on joint replacements, some don't. So, like a good little tech, I call to find out which.
Nurse: *opening spiel*
Me: Hi, this is <Jedi> from <other other location>. I have a question about a bone scan <doctor> ordered for tomorrow. I need to know if he wants a three phase or limited.
Nurse: Well, what does the order say?
Me: *don'tcha think if I knew that I wouldn't be calling?
* Since we have the patients bring the orders with them, I haven't seen it yet. However, it's showing up on my schedule as "bone scan left knee".Nurse: Then I guess he wants the limited.
Me: Ok, but that's just going to be a shot of the knees and nothing else. And I want to make sure because it's for joint replacement loosening.
Nurse: *sighs* Give me the patient's name again and I'll go pull the chart.
Me: *shouldn't you have done that to begin with? o.0*
Nurse: Ok, it says 3-phase in here.
Me: Alright, thanks!
Individually, none of the above are particularly sucky (except for maybe the camera being down), but altogether really suck. But tomorrow will be better!
...Right?
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