Saddly, medicine is a business and we have to spend much of our time with concerns other than medicine. One thing that we do is monthly review our supplies and how much of what to order. It is amazing how many small suture scissors, pick-ups, guaze, gloves, tongue depressors and thermometers we go through. It is not that we use that many, it is that so many are stolen! We try not to put anything of value in the patient rooms anymore as everything gets stolen. We were losing small suture scissors at a rate of 11/week.
I try not to think about it as having your patient steal from you is not a good thing for a doctor-patient relationship. It is worse though when you catch the patient redhanded. I had patient say, "oh, I though they were disposable" even though they were not used and were not needed for the reason that they were there. From what we can tell, there does not seem to be any demographic difference between who steals from us and who does not.
The latest is that a patient was caught trying to steal the blood pressure machine, the problem was that it was bolted to the wall. She had three of the bolts out when I walked in.
I try not to think about it as having your patient steal from you is not a good thing for a doctor-patient relationship. It is worse though when you catch the patient redhanded. I had patient say, "oh, I though they were disposable" even though they were not used and were not needed for the reason that they were there. From what we can tell, there does not seem to be any demographic difference between who steals from us and who does not.
The latest is that a patient was caught trying to steal the blood pressure machine, the problem was that it was bolted to the wall. She had three of the bolts out when I walked in.
1 comment:
Okay...BP machine lady..was she in her right state of MIND?? GEE!
My aunt was President of a local women's club and when she traveled... she always brought me back a hotel towel for my hair.
Now... I never asked for these but we ended up with quite a collection. I don't know why she thought it was ok to do that because to my knowledge she wasn't the stealing type.
I confess to having a pair of... hmm.. well I don't know what you call them...but they look like little scissors except at the end they separate and clamp. Clamps?
One of the ED staff came to my rescue one night when the labels got stuck down in the printer and it worked perfectly in pulling it out. :) He said I could keep them and funny thing... I just came across them yesterday in a cabinet.
in twenty years of working there...I didn't ever intentionally take anything home that didn't belong to me... not even a rubber band. Ha! Once I even asked my spvsr if I could take a bunch of printer labels home that we just throw out because the printer always printed too many and was set by systems. She laughed and said yes...but I never wanted to give the appearance that I was stealing because if someone sees you take a little thing..well they might assume you take little things. I am careful that way.
Before cell phones, there were people who would call long distance personal calls on phones that had that access and think nothing of it.
But ...then again.. I am not a saint either...because I certainly have printed jokes, recipes,news articles on my printer and last I knew that paper was 5 cents a sheet. :)
Also...before they started locking up meds and supplies in the omni-cell (spelling?)it was great because we could get motrin, the grasshopper cocktail, ice packs, etc., but I'm sure you must've gotten your share of freebies as you were training, etc. But these things were for us while we were on the job not to take home. We even got free pregnancy tests from lab. Ah..the good old days. :)
What the heck do they want with tongue depressors? Well Throckmorton...if you ever go to a craft fair and see one of your patients sitting at a table with decorative jeweled & glitterized or scenic painted boxes made out of tongue depressors & are held closed with a colorfully dyed gauze bows that store thermometers... you could ask her for a discount since you "donated" the supplies! ;)
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