Tuesday 24 February 2009

Winning Friends and Influencing People


Patients enter the hospital in all sorts of moods. Most try to be polite even if distracted with fear or concern for their fate. Occasionally a patient is angry but one who was admitted to the hospital today takes the cake for unpleasantness.

It was not the patient's first stay at the Hospital and she was not about to make the best of this latest visit. To start off with she took exception at Admissions when told the room she was allocated and hurled abuse at the Admissions Clerk. Then it was my turn. She wasn't interested in being escorted to her room by a volunteer telling me that she 'doesn't approve of volunteers performing useless work'. That certainly won me over but I escorted her to the ward nonetheless.

Once on the ward she got stuck into the Nurse Unit Manager, criticising her management, the nursing staff and Hospital policy. On and on it went and she was still mouthing off when I left her and her baggage in her room.

I hope whatever her reason for admission that the treatment is totally successful. None of us would want to deal with her again.

3 comments:

  1. She must have been on the way to the psych ward. I tend to be quite submissive when going to the hospital, to which I've been told I need to question the decisions and/or actions of doctors more often than not.

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  2. I was an Admissions Clerk at your hospital in the old A&E back in the late 80s and can I tell you some stories.

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  3. Firehorse - Hospital workers would have lots of stories to tell....if they were allowed.

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