Lesson #1:Trust no one
Today, I have learned a very horrible and valuable lesson about trust.
When I say "yes", I mean "yes". When I say "no", I mean "no". When I give advice, I only say what I know and nothing else. If I don't know how to answer, I say that I don't know. It is unacceptable to equivocate and confabulate information in my line of work. My word is a promise.
This is not the case, however, with Other Folk.
I have learned now that everything must now be written down, recorded, duplicated and kept safe for all eternity because one day I'll need it. The world is not a safe place. Don't throw anything away and never delete any emails! Everything must be collected for evidence! It's all evidence!
Evidence for what?
Evidence so that when the situation goes awry and Other Folk deny all knowledge of any verbal agreements made or bad advice given, then one can prove that one's actions were justified.
As it stands, it is my word vs. their word, and I have no names, dates or phone numbers or any written documents.
In short, I am currently knee deep in Hospital Policy guano, having been royally screwed over by the bats working at Hospital Management (and the night crawlers who work for Hospital Management who gave me false advice about Hospital Policy).
I do not want to deal with hospital management, hospital policy or bat guano. Leave me alone please, so I can do my job. Please! I want to do my job, and I cannot do it properly if I have to carry all this manure. It's unhygenic!
All I want to do is look after my patients. I tried to make sure that they were being looked after, but the people I trusted to help me achieve this goal...well, they didn't honour their word. Trust means nothing! And now the witch hunt is on, and guess who's gonna get thrown into the duck pond? Me me me me!!
The worst thing is, if I didn't give a care about my patients, I probably wouldn't be in this situation.
Maybe I should just frigging quit.
(But if I did...who would look after my patients?)
*derisive cackling*
When I say "yes", I mean "yes". When I say "no", I mean "no". When I give advice, I only say what I know and nothing else. If I don't know how to answer, I say that I don't know. It is unacceptable to equivocate and confabulate information in my line of work. My word is a promise.
This is not the case, however, with Other Folk.
I have learned now that everything must now be written down, recorded, duplicated and kept safe for all eternity because one day I'll need it. The world is not a safe place. Don't throw anything away and never delete any emails! Everything must be collected for evidence! It's all evidence!
Evidence for what?
Evidence so that when the situation goes awry and Other Folk deny all knowledge of any verbal agreements made or bad advice given, then one can prove that one's actions were justified.
As it stands, it is my word vs. their word, and I have no names, dates or phone numbers or any written documents.
In short, I am currently knee deep in Hospital Policy guano, having been royally screwed over by the bats working at Hospital Management (and the night crawlers who work for Hospital Management who gave me false advice about Hospital Policy).
I do not want to deal with hospital management, hospital policy or bat guano. Leave me alone please, so I can do my job. Please! I want to do my job, and I cannot do it properly if I have to carry all this manure. It's unhygenic!
All I want to do is look after my patients. I tried to make sure that they were being looked after, but the people I trusted to help me achieve this goal...well, they didn't honour their word. Trust means nothing! And now the witch hunt is on, and guess who's gonna get thrown into the duck pond? Me me me me!!
The worst thing is, if I didn't give a care about my patients, I probably wouldn't be in this situation.
Maybe I should just frigging quit.
(But if I did...who would look after my patients?)
*derisive cackling*
posted by tscd at 1:22 am
7 Comments:
It is a horrible lesson to have to learn. I know exactly what you're going through. I pride myself on keeping my word, and I've had to learn that not everybody holds themselves to these same standards. I used to work in a place where it was standard procedure, even verbal agreements were made, for the same agreement to be repeated in an email so that both parties would have a non-retractable record of the exact agreement. It was a sort of Mutually Assured Destructon of trust - and it worked. Not pleasant, but it worked to keep things on the level and clear.
oh dear!! good luck and may you get out of this mess soon.
*pat pat*
Most of us guys learn this early in the SAF. CYA, CYA, always CYA (CYA = Cover Your Arse). While I was a medic, an incredible amount of time was spent on the paperwork of patient management.
And since our "performance" is based on our paperwork (because obviously records cannot lie), guess what happens?
That's right. We have a massive patient queue in the mornings, and dear Boss calls us all in because a manual MC was written wrongly, proceeds to give us a 1-hour lecture on why the signature must be on the dotted line, and then lets us go. Then five minutes later, dear Boss comes out of her den, sees the massive patient backlog and blames us for being lazy NSFs.
Don't you worry. When the NSF almost loses a finger, who does he thank for helping him stitch it up? You. When the suspected SARS patient shows up, who brings him to Tan Tock Seng? You. You are better than hospital management.
So don't forget to CYA! =)
If "yes" and "no" are all you need, then perhaps you should have become a computer programmer. Ones and Zeroes are just labels, and yes and no will do as well.
Over the years, however, i've found computers lie too.
For example (from the 1800's):
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?'
--Charles Babbage
In every job, medical setting or not, CYA is the name of the game.
I cannot begin to imagine how much it costs our company in paper and ink just for me to keep a silly CYA file going, and it DOES hinder your work when you feel you're under a microscope.
Bite your tongus, keep your file and look after your patients. DON'T QUIT - we NEED people like you.
urgh. the world is made a less enjoyable place because of all these #@$^&* people. i shall refrain from using foul language here.. LOL
best of luck!!!
wahj: I'm putting everything into writing now.
emelia: Thanks! I hope so too!
ray: Yeah, I'm very careful about patient-related documentation. This was, however, related to myself and had really nothing to do with patient care.
stephen: Thank you for your insightful comment.
surgeon: I did feel alot better when I just got on with my work and chose not to dwell too much on the subject. It put things in perspective.
little odd forest: Yeah! £*$&£^, I say, ££*$&(* to them all.
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