Please Pretend not to Eat or Drink

Until the survey is over...

Photo by Elias Kauerhof on Unsplash

I came into work a few days ago, coffee in hand, and was told ‘the surveyors are here, put your stuff in the break room.’

This was hardly my first rodeo, so I dutifully took my drinks, my lunch and my brief case (also verboten) and tucked them into the crowded lunch room so that I could access my much desired caffeine without having to walk too far.

Although I did it, I grumbled. Grumbling was the theme and it wasn’t just me.

So let me lay it out for anyone who is interested.

The ER is crazy busy and extraordinarily stressful. People are quite literally dying. Others are crying out in pain. Still others are psychotic, suicidal or under the influence of dangerous drugs.

Patients and their families are stressed, anxious and upset. Nurses are stretched to the breaking point, caring for more patients than they can reasonably, or safely, manage. Physicians are expected to be fast, thorough and mistake free as most of medicine uses the ER as it’s ‘pop-off valve,’ for anything complicated or anything that has even the most remote chance of being complicated. There is precious little primary care for anyone. Patients are often old and alone and the ER is the only place where they can get advocoacy.

Electronic medical records leave us tied to the computer for the majority of our shifts, so that we quickly see patients and then scurry back to our REALLY important job of data entry. We log in and document.

We’re always either holding admitted patients or trying to transfer people who need more than we can offer.

Into this mess comes a surveying body that is absolutely certain that everything is safer and better when we can’t have easy access to our food or drink (even if it’s covered), and that things are also better when we can’t reach into purses or brief-cases for the things we need, or use, to get us through the madness.

I’m sorry, this is ridiculous. Because unlike so many industries and much of the hospital, breaks are just not available. Break time is when you sit down and shove a sandwich in your face while you try to stay ahead of charting and people you’ve paged. Break time isn’t a nice walk down the hall to a cafe for a quiet time with your feet up.

Lunch breaks don’t exist either. Almost no clinical person can actually go and take a full lunch. There’s just too much to do; too much terribly important stuff to do.

The thing is, the food, drinks and bags are hidden and as soon as someone sounds the ‘all clear,’ it all comes right back out. So what was accomplished except a ‘pro-forma’ evaluation that nobody was eating or drinking at their desks?

I understand that various surveying bodies have their roles. But I hope that anyone involved in this will just step back and send a message like this: ‘keep your food and drinks, it’s cool, we don’t care! We know your job is hard, so thank you.’

Otherwise, they need to start surveying the degree of depression and anxiety, and the rate of staff losses, in places where nobody really cares what the clinical team needs or endures.

Every…single…day.

I think in these unprecedented times, it’s time for unprecedented relaxation of the silliness.

Edwin