Cover your workers, don't set them up for failure.

My wife as I have said before is a ER nurse at another hospital and she came home the other night just a little bit distraught about something that happened at work where a couple good points or we can say lessons came out that can come into play for all medical professions.

I was night shift and she had a patient who was a child and a very overbearing mother to go along with the child. An I.V. was placed in the patient and it took about 6 nurses and tech's to hold this 8 year old child down who was biting and kicking to get the I.V. done. I.V was finished and blood was drawn.

My wife grabbed the labels off the chart the tech had put on there and labeled the blood tubes and send then to lab. 1o minutes later the lab calls and said they were the wrong labels they were for another patient.

Not good but can be fixed, the patient has a I.V. so we can just draw more. Now lab comes down to draw more blood from the patient and is told to wait a moment so we can get the labels together. Lab does not hold on and goes ahead and throws her fellow workers in front of a truck. This young lab tech goes into the patients room and proceeds to tell the patients mother that the Nurse screwed up the blood and didn't put the correct labels on the tubes.

Good job young lab tech, not mom is irate and comes out of the room into another patients room and starts yelling and dropping the F bomb all over the place to my wife right in front of another patient. Calling her the worst nurse ever, this hospital sucks, I'm taking my child outta here (go ahead), among other colorful things.

Now how could this of been avoided? Of course double checking the labels, yes that is a lesson learned. Also though this lab tech could of easily told the mother that they needed more blood for another test, or that the blood in a tube clotted, anything but YOUR NURSE SCREWED UP, and this could of all be avoided. The patient had a I.V. so there would not be another needle stick at all. Easy fix.

The security was called for a irate parent, the nurse supervisor called the young lab tech and chewed her out and the doctor said nothing was wrong with the patient anyways, plus my wife was upset and said some things to the parent.

What did we learn from this besides checking your labels:

1. Cover the integrity of your fellow employers and the reputation of the hospital if it is possible.
2. Do not set people up for failure, help each other out and things run smoother for everyone.


It's easy, just use you brain and common sense.

Thanks for reading, Drive on RT's.

The PediaRTritian is born

Pediatrics are an interesting bunch, sometimes they receive treatments like adults and others times they are treated totally differently. Either way we all know pediatric patients do cause some nervousness with certain people.

I like to think that I have quite a bit of experience with pediatric patients. Lets see I worked in a level 3 NICU which I was also on the neonatal transport team where a RN and RT would fly or drive babies born with problems, normally respiratory problems. I have also worked in a Pediatric ICU along with different peds units. On top of all of that I also have 4, yes I said 4 kids at home. I've been around the peds population a bit.

So you ask where am I going with this? Well it has to do with the small town hospital I work at currently. Now this is a small town hospital that really doesn't get a lot of pediatric patients at all.

It is that time of the year for evaluations and I was called into the supervisor's office to do a little evaluating of me for the past year which I had just started working at this hospital. So I'm going through the Blah Blah Blah, your doing fine, Blah Blah Blah, what can you improve on, etc etc and this comes out.

Supervisor - "A RN wrote you up some months ago about not feeling comfortable with you as the RT of a peds patient, but was comfortable with your other night shift cohort."

Look on my face: WTF? I do remember this patient.

Me - "How so, I took great care of this patient."

Super - "Well this was a new nurse and she said that you didn't help her very much."

Me - "Help her with what, I did my RT stuff and the patient was in no distress."

Super - "She was just new and nervous and wished that your were more around to help her be comfortable with a respiratory peds patient."

Me - "Really? But isn't she a nurse who went through school? I'm not sure I understand what she was getting at, but I guess where I come from there are nurses who are pediatric nurses."


OK so after chatting a little while it basically came down to the supervisor, who is also the floor's supervisor, letting me know she want's us more involved in the care of peds patients with respiratory problems. Just help our more because the RN's don't get a lot of peds patients and get a little nervous around them.

Correct me if I'm wrong but do we not get the same amount of respiratory peds patients as the RN's do as inpatients? Granted I probably have more experience that most of the nurses on that floor with peds but still, what more can I do besides educate those RN's who are not comfortable with respiratory issues, I will not sit there and hold their hand. I guess I just don't quite get it.

Once again another added responsibility of what the RT can do is added to the list, the PediaRTritian is born. Tonight it also just so happens that there is a peds patient on the floor for us to see and besides just doing my nebs and RT stuff, I am stopping down about every 2 hours to check with the RN to see how she thinks the baby is doing, what else can I do. This just frustrated me a bit that I was told that a nurse wasn't comfortable with me and now we are wanted to be MORE involved with peds patients, but I am not going out of my scope of practice.

Now that RN who wrote me up, well she quit soon after that because that peds patient stressed her out to much and took a job at a clinic where she doesn't deal with peds patient. Now was it me or just a new RN freaking out a little to much and not being comfortable with her own training. I've also been informed that there are RN's here who flat our refuse to take peds patients even to the point of calling off work if there is that possiblity. Amazing.


Pretty soon RT's will run the hospitals.

Keep it up RT's and drive on.

Compassion, Real or Fake?

I've came across a observation that I have finally seemed to put my finger on and it deals with compassion towards our patients and with all health care workers that I have dealt with.

First off how about a definition which I took off of Wikipedia:

Compassion is an understanding of the emotional state of another or oneself. Not to be confused with empathy, compassion is often combined with a desire to alleviate or reduce the suffering of another or to show special kindness to those who suffer. However, compassion may lead an individual to feel empathy with another person.

Now that that is out of the way I will continue.

As health care workers we need to be able to show compassion and empathy towards people who are not feeling well or even dying. This is something we are told in school that we need to use is compassion towards our patients.

Understand that not everyone in health care is able to show compassion and those are the one try entirely to hard to fake showing compassion. This is what my observation is about. I have noticed that it is really easy to spot a person who really doesn't have a whole lot of compassion and is just doing this as a good paying job, but they are not necessarily suited for this type of job.

Some jobs take more than just understanding and knowing the position and knowing how to do that particular job. Need more than just schooling and getting a good GPA in their degree.

Let me try some examples:
A photographer can know all the settings, but they also have to know how to see the world, how to work with their subjects.

A bartender can know how to make every drink in the book but still needs to be able to listen and talk with people, who wants to sit a bar and have a unsociable bartender.

A teacher could of graduated with perfect grades from college, but still has to be able to communicate to the class, and be able to be a mentor.

A Psychologist can know everything there is to know about Freud but they also need to know how to listen and get a person to trust them.

A waitress/waiter needs to know what is on the menu but also needs to be able to be personable with the customers, who wants a unfriendly waitress...sorry no tip.

OK by now I'm sure you get the idea. We, RT's, nurses, doctors, xray techs, lab techs, hell anyone who works with sick or injured people has to be able to show compassion to these people, let them know we do care that they are ill and wish for them to get better and that we will do what we can to help them.

I've come to notice that there are some people out there who do not possess this skill, but do know their job. These people try to disguise this by being overly compassionate, looking to eager to do their job, almost forcefully doing their job. Just plain faking it. It's it totally obvious if you look, you can see it in their faces, hear it in the tone of voice and especially notice it as they walk out of the room.

The people who are compassionate do not try to force their way through the job, they just do their job. Just watch the nurses you can tell, the ones who are good are the ones who don't get overly rattled, the ones who look more relaxed and not rushed. When they talk to the patient their words and expressions don't look like they are acting, they look comfortable and not trying to hard to be overly nice.

Oh yes just look around and watch, you can definitely tell.

I feel like I'm compassionate with my patients and I don't force it, I just be myself and I usually get along with my patients. I don't fake anything, I just am who I am.

Don't fake it, people can always tell ... Yes ladies even your boyfriends and husbands can to.
;)