MDOD

Houston, We Have A… (N) Opportunity!

Remember the good old days? Coke in a bottle, no charges for airline baggage, problems were acknowledged and then addressed.

Dare I say it?? There is a problem in our Emergency Room. There was such a serious lack of nurses last night that 4 ambulances had paramedics waiting in the hallway for ANY ER room to open. You see, the big brains in administration had decided earlier in the day that there simply weren’t enough patients at 9:02 am 5 seconds to justify having a full staff, so they sent home a unit clerk, 2 nurses, and a tech. As ERs tend to do, the bus came in 30 minutes later. They literally had to shut down half of the ER because they didn’t have nurses to staff it.

This is old hat for us here in the Shiny New Hospital. I’ve begged, pleaded, cajoled, offered solutions for this shortage, all to no avail. Most recently, I was instructed by my director that the CEO “doesn’t need us complaining and carrying on about it”. In accordance with this ostrich-in-the-sand approach (they are, after all, attractive hospital lawn decorations!), we don’t have problems at our facility. We have “opportunities for improvement” and these can be submitted to the Core Measures Quality Improvement JC-endorsed Leadership for Non-Disruptive Physicians newsletter.

Can you imagine the astronauts on Apollo 13 having to deal with ABC administration?

Astronauts: “Umm, Houston, we have, ahem…an opportunity for improvement…”

ABC CEO: “Why are you bothering me? How dare you tell me that we have an opportunity! I see that you’ve blatantly disregarded the chain of command and have ignored the CMQIJCNDP newsletter. You’d better believe that I’ll have your butt in my office Monday morning with your director.” **

Astronauts: “But sir, we have a life-threatening situation on our hands…”

CEO: “The numbers show that you only need 0.0001 fuel cells, we have the graphs and analysis charts right here. By the way, Astronaut Q, you’d better get your fuel energy numbers up! ABC is very disappointed with your energy production.”

Astronauts: “Umm, just wondering how we’re supposed to do that? I mean, you took down our board that showed where the fuel cells were and you took away the equipment to repair broken fuel cells…”

CEO: “That board violated HIPPA regulations** and was completely unnecessary for fuel cell flow, not to mention distracting from our beautiful non-functioning unit.”

Astronauts: “But there’s a fire…”

CEO: “I don’t know of any fires. No one’s died yet, have they?”**

**These represent scary but true real-life quotes from high-level suits of ABC administration to our ER “astronauts”!**

Allrighty then! So what are the odds of ABC actually fixing this debacle? In the words of another famous astronaut…

“To infinity, and beyond!”

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