Doctor Lies

The new computer system is not just driving the nurses crazy. The doctors hate it as much as we do. They have to enter all of their orders into the system. To avoid doing this, some are calling the nurses and lying about where they are in order to get the nurses to do the work for them.

If the doctor is calling from home or is in the middle of surgery, of course we will enter the orders. But when they are calling from their office inside the hospital and say they are not near a computer, we know they are lying. Perhaps they are not aware that the phone identifies exactly where they are calling from.

I'm too nice to tell the doctor that I know for a fact that a computer is sitting right in front of him. I just do the work for him.

Some of the patients are staying longer because the doctors don't know how to discharge them. One patient walked out without any discharge instructions at all. Others have had to stay an extra day to be properly discharged. This must be costing a fortune. The software alone, cost over a billion dollars. I wonder what the learning curve is going to cost on top of that?

On top of that, the scanners we are using to scan patient's armbands and medications are being a royal pain. We have been told that if we scan closer to the doorway, they will scan better. It is annoying, but we can walk over to the doorway to scan the meds, but what about the patients? Do they think we are going to roll the patient's beds to the doorway every time we want to give them a medication?

I'm counting the years until retirement.