I’ve worked in healthcare most of my life. From taking care of elderly family members as a preteen to working as a CNA and in a hospital lab, as a patient safety sitter, as a patient advocate…all over for the last 15 years. I recently got the opportunity to move behind the scenes more and work for our patient experience department. A lot of the conversations we have center around how we can deliver quality healthcare with the resources we have (cash flow in the red, worker shortage, etc). I try my best to advocate for not only our patients but the WORKERS too. Asking about raises and bonuses and providing for their mental health during all this. My bosses and their bosses are not having it, but I try.
Last week we were invited to a meeting with one of the VPs of the hospital. We came up to the executive suite, sat in the board room. We were offered coffee, tea, water, soda. We sat in expensive leather chairs while people paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year spoke about how patients are staying too long in the hospital and how we need to focus on getting people out as soon as possible. My stomach was just turning the whole time. These chairs are comfortable, ergonomic, and sit unused 90% of the time while the chairs the nurses get for charting are all old and ratty. The office workers in HR and billing are just as bad. The patient safety sitters usually just have some sort of folding chair. Our own chairs are about half broken in the patient experience department. Just the amount of money wasted where it didn’t need to be wasted and the lack of spending where we really need to be spending is mind boggling.