Thanks Ancillary Staff!

Today, I just wanted to briefly discuss the importance of ancillary staff in a hospital system. Sometimes, we forget (yes, even the med students) how important the ancillary staff is within our hospital systems. There are many things about our hospital that surely need some change, improvements, modernization, etc. but one of the really great things about our hospital is the efficiency of our ancillary staff (phlebotomists, respiratory therapists, transport, etc.). I did an away elective in a large, public hospital in NYC (which will go unnamed), and never have I seen such inefficient, and unavailable ancillary services. When I thought our hospital was not great, this made ours look like a gem. Transport was impossible to find (I had to wheel patients down to scans, interventional suites, ultrasound rooms, etc). Blood draws were done every 6 hrs (I believe), and if you needed a blood draw at any other time, a nurse would not do it, it was the MD or student's job to draw the blood. Not that I am opposed to the idea of doing blood draws, but as an intern or a resident, spending an hour or more a day drawing blood is not time well spent. For a medical student, it is a learning experience that I am willing to do, but I also have work that I need to complete in order to complete the requirements of my rotations. At our hospital, the patient's nurse will draw the blood if it is needed at times other than phlebotomy rounds.

Of course, nursing staff can be very varied (from excellent, to awful), but the same can be said about the doctors too. There are also some nurses who will ignore, or even yell at, medical students when we ask them for something. If I ask politely, and it is really something that I cannot do or do not know where to find, would it hurt to be helpful?? I don't think so. That's all I have to say about that really. I think the problem really lies in the type of hospital, institutional funding, and nurse's pay. I can understand how at a private hospital, not only the nurse's but also everyone else, needs to work their hardest in order to make the better pay, and keep their job. At the public hospital, apparently, that's just not the case. So all we (as medical students and residents) can do is just swallow it and deal with it. Either increasing nursing pay, or increasing nursing staff, may help alleviate some of the problems, but quite frankly- I don't know what else can be done in a public hospital where in order to get fired, you'd basically have to intentionally kill someone.

So that's all I have to say about this topic for tonight. I just wanted to remind everyone that next time, you see someone from ancillary staff doing their jobs "behind the scenes"- thank them for a job well done. It makes the hospital run much more like a well oiled machine. And for those poor residents and students in NYC- I feel for you, but then again, I was smart enough to turn down my interview offers for greener pastures :)