My Sin: the domino effect

Here is what happened at work. First, you need to know a little bit about how hospital nursing works. On our floor we have an Accudose machine out of which we can retrieve certain medications, among these are controlled substances. When a retrieved controlled substance is partially used or returned to the Accudose machine it requires the username and password of another Registered Nurse. The other tidbit you need to know is that when the shift changes the out-going nurse gives “report” to the on-coming nurse about a patient. At shift change you may have to give report to more than one nurse.

I had to give report to one more nurse the other night. When found I her she appeared to be free to take report. When asked she said that no she was in the middle of report with Betty (not real names), but Betty was helping Nancy witness at the Accudose. I made some gesture in a joking way like “like com’on, hurry up I am ready to go.”

Betty saw this and suggested that I witness in the Accudose so that she could finish report, which was fine with me. I helped Nancy. However, it upset Nancy that Betty would not take the time to help her for a couple of minutes. About a half hour later Nancy expressed to Betty how she was offended. Betty said that she saw me and the night shift nurse rolling our eyes at her and that she was trying to save time. She said this while I was in earshot.

When Nancy left the room, Betty said how that situation wanted to make her cry because she would not do something intentionally to frustrate Nancy. I then apologized to Betty for my behavior, which she physically demonstrated for me and said she realized I was kidding. I thought I must have looked stupid and unprofessional. I was convicted realized that behavior needs to change.

The moral of the story is that, even though Nancy was already having a bad day and Betty has issues with pleasing everyone, had I contained my seemingly innocuous behavior Betty would have helped Nancy and there would never have been a crisis. Lord give us the insight to see how selfish we really are!

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