I sincerely believe that the National Health and Safety fairies are running amok. Their tiny wings are flapping as fast as a hummingbird and creating chaos in every hospital in which I work. How do I know this? Simple. Biros.
Face it, we work in an industry where the staple item of pay is a pharmaceutically enhanced Bic. Reps hand out literally trillions of the ruddy things on a weekly basis. Well, not literally. So how come I can never, ever find a biro when I need one. There is never one in the reporting room, or ultrasound, or CT, or…I could go on, but I expect you get the picture.
Now, you may be asking me, “Sarah, in this pacsologically advanced age, why do you need a biro?” Well get this, it’s for writing things, like signing reports, or jotting down telephone numbers, or writing down latin stuff to bamboozle the patients.
You might argue that there is no point allowing biro access to a doctor, since no-one is going to read the output anyway, but I still need one. My handwriting is, at the same time, beautiful, but totally illegible, but who knows when I might need to perform an emergency tracheotomy?
OK, it’s not happened in 29 years but I live in hope. My husband tried the “Surely a doctor always has a pen” line, but I shot that one down in flames (I didn’t have a pen, but I did have a lighter).
I don’t have a pen because A. I am a big, grown up, consultant, so I don’t have a white coat (try convincing a tabloid reporter trying to take your photo of that - but that’s another story…) and B. because I am a ‘girl,’ my clothes do not contain pen-friendly pockets. Ergo: I. Need. A. Pen.
The nurses and radiographers are allowed them, so I have to go cap-in- hand, begging for brief usage, but they are always snatched back before I can sneak off with them. The reception staff have them too, but they watch every pen stroke with the accuracy of a hawk. If I try to finagle a Front Desk pen, I am confronted with a headmistressy dressing down, and have to promise not to do it again.
I can only conclude that ‘Da Management’ thinks that doctors are so stressed, we may develop biro-rage, and stab a patient, or more importantly, one of them, in the eye. Come to think of it, I can never find a pair of scissors when I want to run with them either.
Strangely, they still let us play with needles…
Tags: Health & safety
