Unfiltered Story #314689

So this story, https://notalwaysright.com/we-need-rubber-glove-balloons-stat/251115/reminded me of one of my experiences when I worked at a hospital. This was some years ago. I think it was about 15 or 16. So to start, I technically worked as a security officer, but I, as well as some others actually worked in a central, closed off, area of the hospital answering phones. Our job was to transfer calls where they needed to go. It’s also important that we had two numbers. Our normal number that had a waiting line so that your call got answered in the order it came in. So you could wait a bit if there were enough people ahead of you. The other line was our emergency line, meant for doctors and nurses to call in emergencies such as codes and stats. They were not supposed to use our main line.

So I walk in to relieve my coworker one day (I think it was about a month or two before I finally left) and she tells me that she just got told off by a doctor who had called a code blue on our regular line and he was mad because she took so long to answer. Now if we get a call on the emergency line, we are supposed to drop our main line, even when in the middle of a call, to answer. But he wanted us to somehow magically do the same thing on our main line and prioritize him on it. Please note at this time that we have no way to know who calls the main line. No names, no numbers, just order called. So no way to know if an emergency comes in via the main line.

It’s probably just as well that my coworker answered that call, because I have a very low tolerance for idiots who should know better. We’re all trained in what number to call in an emergency. Including doctors and nurses. And I have even lower tolerance for idiots who should know better being idiots while endangering lives. So instead of calling the emergency number for the code, he called the main line and went off on the coworker for not getting to him fast enough. And I probably would have told him off so much…