Perhaps some better examples:
Put up your chart when you are finished with it. Dump your used cups in the trash when you are done and clean up your own messes. If you use coffee, condiments, etc. from the nurses stock (which we bring in, we provide, we pay for ...the hospital does not), pay back by bringing in a pound of coffee, or the french vanilla cream that you sneak from ours.
You get ticked that there are never copies of the tempplates that YOU and the other interns use. These are not official hospital forms, therefore neither we nor the unit secretary stock them. And given current cost cutting measures, it is difficult for us to even acquire paper to copy our official forms that we have to use and we have access to.
Therefore it is really rude, to loudly proclaim at the Nurses' Station, "I don't know WHY they can't have the basic tempplates here...we are ALWAYS out.. I didn't go to MEDICAL SCHOOL to be a secretary. Congratulations, I didn't go to NURSING SCHOOL to be a secretary, either, or to be a psychic and guesss what you want. They are your templates, either politely ask secretary to get copies and keep them stock, or go to Kinko's with one and be a hero to your fellow interns.
Plan ahead. If you know that you are going to possibly cath a patient, tell the nurse the night before. I have at least one MD that has 2 or more "last minute cath fit ins" every single day. He comes in AT SHIFT CHANGE, whines that they were not kept NPO (despite there being nothing on the chart), and wants them to STAT have a shave prep done, prep meds, consent and full teaching done in the next 45 minutes (given that the video is longer - it is an interesting concept). This, despite the fact that there is nothing emergent about their cases. And that he does this every single day. AT SHIFT CHANGE.
Your failure to reasonably plan care, does not equate with it being an EMERGENCY. And most of us get written up for excess overtime, even when you are the one that caused it.
When you have a problem with another MD, YOU handle it with that MD and keep us out of your pissing match. That also includes fights with PharmDs and a radiologists. IF a rad is not reading an xray/CT/MRI fast enough to please you, YOU call the rad and YOU settle it. If the PharmD does not want to dispense a med because it falls out of protocol, YOU call the PharmD on the phone and settle it. Don't call me out of comforting a distressed patient that has received bad news, cleaning up a patient, doing an "emergency" prep for cardiac cath, juggling 18 meds to give a patient that gets easily distracted, and takes 5 minutes to swallow 1 med.....and ask me to call hime....for me to give a message.....to his assistant...who calls me out to give me a message....to tell you what you do not want to hear...whereupon you get ticked and ask me to call him to relay X...to his nurse....etc.
All of which could be settled much more quickly and correctly, by y'all speaking one on one ...with each other. The answers would be clearly, and you won't have wasted large amounts of several people's time, or disrupted the care of the patient.
You do not have to call the nurse away from her patient to find out what insurance the patient has...the secretary, or aide at the desk can read that off the chart just as easily as we can.
We know that you are stressed. We know that you take waaay too much crap in your school and your jobs. I think that the way that many insurance companies treat you are dispicable and have lobbied on your side. Many of us could have chosen and become MDs, but chose not to, because we had other things that were more important to us. Like getting off on time, taking care of our kids. You chose this route. Try to remember that all of us have a valuable role in caring for patients. Please allow us to do ours, by doing yours in an efficient manner, and not disrupting our care for trivial matters and poor planning. And remember we have our bosses (not MDs) to answer to, and that their priorities and our priorities may differ from yours.
