Ya’ll ready for an anecdote?
So today I went to my health post to return the projector I
use for movie nights.* My plan was to
walk in, drop it off, and walk right back out in order to return to my pressing
plans of rearranging my sock drawer.
Alas, I was, almost immediately upon putting my foot in the door, asked
if I could help fill out some forms.
With a silent apology to my sock drawer, I admitted** I was free and
able.
The nurse tech showed me what she wanted to fill
out—tuberculosis test forms. I had to
decipher her chicken scratches from the registry, write down the patient
information in the appropriate boxes, and check out which test was to be
performed. A very straightforward task
and, more importantly, no moral conundrums to be found.***
As I was wrapping up, the tech returned and asked if I could
help her staple the forms. Again, I
could, and so with the last bit of info written up, I gathered up the papers
and followed her to the second floor. Enter the moral conundrum.****
The nurse tech was taking the slides with the dried sputum
on them and wrapping them in paper and then stapling the slides to the
forms. That would be all well and good,
but as I helped her I noticed that the slides didn’t have any identifying
marks, letter, number, or otherwise, to show what patient form they should be
stapled to. Even more troubling was the fact that she didn’t seem to be reading
the patient forms, or picking up the slides in any sort of organized
fashion. And, upon being asked how she knew
which slides belonged to which patient, she began to giggle and say that well
the slides were in alphabetical order, but she didn’t really have time to match
each slide up to the correct patient, and anyways, they were all going to come
back negative so what did it really matter anyway? And she really had to get these done in the
next ten minutes, because they had to be taken to San Marcos in order for the
test to be done.
Well, if they all come back negative, I suppose it wouldn’t
really matter anyway. But on the
off-chance that one does come back positive, (and presumably these samples were
taken because the patients in question presented signs of tuberculosis), there
will be no way of knowing if that person actually has tuberculosis. And if the wrong person gets diagnosed I have
a sneaking suspicion that no one is going to bring up this little
incident. What could very likely happen
is that a tuberculosis-free person gets treated and whoever may have
tuberculosis will continue walk and talk, and very likely will not return to
the health post because they already coughed up some phlegm and no news is good
news, right?
Welcome to Peruvian healthcare. Where it’s more important to get the
paperwork in on time than to get it done right.
Besos!
*(Those readers who remember the whole cord debacle, will be
pleased to know that I bought both
the necessary cords and now manage to sit through movie nights with hardly any
murderous thoughts whatsoever.)
**It literally (and I mean literally in the literal sense)
just took me thirty seconds to remember how to write admit. I got to adi and stalled because somehow
(thanks be to god) I knew that wasn’t quite right.
***Besides that of patient confidentiality, but I’m the only
one who seems to think that patients have any confidentiality.
****Actually, I’m not sure if moral is the right word, but I
think you get the gist.
No comments:
Post a Comment