Vouchers

There are some things that I for sure don't like about the hospital I'm at now, but I gotta say...on the whole, it's a fairly sweet place to work. They just don't take bullshit from patients. At all. I've seen patients get arrested for threatening staff, get arrested for trespassing after being discharged, thrown out of the waiting room for harassing other patients, and discharged from the triage window by the doc after a medical screening exam. I see patients get discharged scrip-less when they demand more dilaudid. I've watched a doc lay a verbal smackdown on a belligerent family member who had reduced a tech to tears. But the best thing I like? They don't tolerate handing out taxi vouchers to just everyone...you've gotta have a damn good reason for needing one. And for the chronically taxi-needy...well, they only get one a year.

The taxi issue might seem like a minor thing compared to the rest, but trust me - when you're trying to discharge that malingering patient, or the guy who's been here 17 times already this year for the same complaint, it's so nice to be able to emphatically decline the request for a taxi voucher. I had this happen to me last night. A frequent flyer patient was angling hard to get a voucher, and Home Hospital would be all like "well okaaaayyy I guess you can have another one but this is the LAST TIME, mmmkay?" and they'd get one three days later anyway. Not this hospital. Not this time. He asked for one, I looked up his chart history, and was like "Sorry Charlie, you had one ten months ago. See ya!" And he left! No argument!

It's the small victories, folks. Seriously.


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Also, because I'm obsessed with this website...

When my patient thanks me for all that I do
I'm just like

[credit #whatshouldwecallnursing]