Ikey's Ideas

Let’s Not Forget

Interns are near the bottom of the rung, I accept it. We carry out scut work, we extract blood, we monitor endlessly. That’s fine, its part of the character building process of med life. But there are some things Interns are not:

1. Manongs. I don’t look down on them in anyway, but pushing 3-wheeled stretchers in the middle of the night is something unbecoming of an Intern. We never had a lecture or a trans on how to maneuver stretchers down the halls of PGH. We didn’t study 5 years to do that. Simple as that.

2. Supply closets. We do it for our patients because they don’t have the means to make up for the deficiencies of PGH. But it’s so frustrating when residents (or whole departments) lean on us to produce supplies out of our own pocket. It’s not part of the syllabus, it’s not part of our tuition, it’s not our job. The insult to this injury is that since it’s expected of us, our efforts are usually met without as much as a “please” or a “thank you”.

3. Secretaries. I don’t mind doing SIC papers. Those are our patients so it’s only natural that we do the paper work. But random clerical tasks, dictation, things of that nature for forms not related to patient care is just an annoyance. I get it. We’re the bottom of the ladder so we do that kind of thing. But I’ll happily say goodbye to that in three weeks.

The rose colored glasses are coming on now that the end is near, but some PGH ‘quirks’ will always look ugly whether up close or from a distance.

Robbing Hood

Yesterday, I was OBAS (OB admitting section) labs master for the second time in my Internship year.  It was my sole purpose to facilitate, deliver and retrieve the lab results of all the consults that came through our doors for the span of our duty.  It sounds straight-forward enough, but like many things in PGH, it wasn’t.  Maybe it’s because I can sense the end is near, but as I was pin-balling back and forth between the ER and the lab, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about the twisted games I was playing with the PGH system to make things run smoothly for the admitting section.

The long-running use of pre-paid labs (those purchased by patients with a little more money, but actually used for other patients who have no means whatsoever) is one of those questionable PGH practices that can either be looked as detestable or indispensable.  Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor and he was made out to be a hero.  What does that make the lab master if they steal from the merely needy to give to those in abject poverty?  I won’t say how many times I had to do it over my last duty, but let’s just say that without it, I’d have failed in facilitating the labs of many of my ER patients.  Was it wrong?  Sure.  Was it necessary?  I guess so.  Does that make it ok?  I don’t know.

I’d like to believe that morals can stand on their own because they have intrinsic value that is greater than monetary measure, but yesterday they got pushed aside in the name of getting work done at whatever cost.  It’s supposed to be that two wrongs do not make a right, but yet somehow all my transgressions last night added up to a successful duty.  The labs got sent.  The patients were cared for.  I did my job.  Life in OBAS goes on. 

I guess that just goes to show how twisted a place PGH can be.