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Saturday, August 14, 2010

RT Supermarket

I remember as a kid visiting my aunt who owned a mom and pop grocery store out by the state park. I always thought it was cool that my aunt would cheerfully greet every customer as though they were all her best friends.

When I questioned her about this later she said, "Basically my business comes from the same people. If you're friendly, they just keep coming back for a sucker here and a beer here and a ham there. They're all regulars."

In a way, that's the general feeling I get as I'm working as an RT. Even today we have eight patients on our list, and every single one of them is a regular. I know them all by name, and they know about as much about me as I know about them.

Earlier today I was called to the emergency room, and we were waiting for the ambulance to arrive. "So, I wonder what regular it is this time," one of the nurses said.

"Well, the call was out by Cracker Road," another nurse said, "so maybe it's Mr. Wilcox. He's a wildly old coot. A sick guy, but fun to take care of."

As a matter of fact that's who it was. Since it was relatively slow that night (low patient census) I ended up talking to him for over an hour after giving him his usual concoction of Albuterol and Ventolin.

He ended up going home, the old coot.

What we have here is an RT Supermarket, full of a bunch of regulars. In fact, this might be one of the advantages of working for a smaller hospital like Shoreline.

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