I'm infested with RATS

My wife believes I'm having a midlife crisis, although I believe I'm not.  I'm just to the point I hate going to work because of all the BS procedures we have to do.  I guess you can say I'm infested with RATS.  If even half of what I did that related to my job benefited someone I'd be happy, yet less than 10 percent of what we do is of relevance.

I used to say 20 percent of what we do that pertains to our job is useful, yet thanks to Obamacare I've lowered that number to 10 percent.  Since the passage of Obamacare our hospital has opted to hire 30 more administrative staffers -- instead of more nurses -- to make sure the hospital is adequately reimbursed by the government.

The result here is more work for us respiratory therapists.

Yet I was sure to explain to my wife it's not every day I dread going to work, it's only the days when I know I'm going to have to do fake RT work.  If it's going to be slow I look forward to those days because then I can find my own work to do, such as blogging.  I find this to be much more useful than blowing the white mist of Albuterol past the faces of people with normal lungs, or doing 300 EKGs just because of an order set.

More recently I told a doctor that even though this patient was short of breath he has good air movement, which means his lung muscles are relaxed and his air passages dilated like yours and mine.  That means the Ventolin molecules we're sending down there are bouncing off the beta receptors and coming back out for you and me to inhale.

I know that sounds frivolous, yet that's the kind of humor we RTs have to create to maintain our livelihoods.  As you know from these posts, humor is one of the main therapies of fighting off  RATS.

Facebook
Twitter