Waiting for Godot

Okay, so more to shock and astound you, the unsuspecting gentlereader, who probably assumes you have competent health care providers who actually give a shit about your wellbeing when you're circling the drain.

Yesterday, about ten minutes before the shit hit the fan, a consult comes by and politely asks if I can call down to lab so that they'll draw STAT labs she put in the computer.

I know this sounds horrifying, or at least it does to me, because no one calls me to remind me to do my job, right? And we do live in the twenty first century, whatever happened to computer systems generating some kind of alert system when a STAT lab or procedure is ordered in the computer? Or what about decentralizing lab and letting nurses do it, so STAT labs can be drawn within minutes of being ordered, rather than the typical hours it takes nowadays.

So I oblige, and call, and politely ask if you know, lab could come up and please, please, pretty please, do their fucking job and draw STAT labs. I even mention the patient is rapidly decompensating, which I believe is an actual medical term which means "fucking get your lazy asses up here NOW."

Ten minutes later we're practically one step away from coding the patient. I see someone with a butterfly needle, so I figure she must be from lab, thank God, and is drawing the bloodwork.

Silly, naiive Jamie!! Didn't they ever tell you in nursing school that ASSUME makes an ASS out of "U" and "Me"? And didn't they ever tell you at orientation to [community hospital] that STAT means "whenever we get around to it, bitch, now stop fucking calling us already!"?

Two and a half hours later, we've just barely stablized the patient, and I finally get to a computer screen and to my utter, jaw-dropping horror, realize they haven't drawn the labs.

I try to be nice over the phone, saying "Gee, you know, I believe I did see the phlebotomist in the room, but according to the computer she didn't collect the labs, so maybe..."

You know, which is my way of giving some asshole the benefit of the doubt that I would never been given (and wasn't, in this situation).

So then I'm told, in a manner suggesting that I am an ungrateful consumer complaining about a free McDonald's hamburger, that "Yeah, she was there, but she couldn't find the nurse and it looked like a code was going on so she left."

No seriously. The bitch on the phone actually was stupid enough to admit the girl was there, noticed twenty other people in the room stabilizing a patient, but left because a) there were way too many people in the room and b) she couldn't find the nurse.

Indicating, I'm assuming, that I was at fault for not being more available to the lab tech, because I was busy assisting in coding my patient and therefore couldn't be her personal hand-holding guide in the situation.

I just want to let you know, in advance, never get sick enough to need emergency intervention in an inner city hospital, because you might as well stay home, drink a fifth of vodka, and snort another line of coke, because if we can't get lab to come up and draw labs, then we certainly aren't about to be able to help you, sweetcakes.