Monday, February 28, 2005

Oh where, oh where have my path slides gone...

I've spent my morning trying to figure out what happened to the pathlogy slides I ordered a month ago, among other things. Did you know that you can get slides of biopsies YEARS after the surgery is actually done? You just have to wonder what all you'd find in those pathology freezers. Or, on second thought, maybe it's best not to know.

Working for a university is like second grade. Some departments work well with others...some want to be the star, and they'll play with you as long as it's THEIR way...some beg you to play, but then lose interest as soon as you show up...some are bullies...some are victims...and some are very, very good at hide and seek.

It doesn't help that departments can be split up across campus. Sure, the Chair and the research faculty are in that building...but the rest of the faculty is over in that other building, where they see patients...oh, and wait, there's a few faculty who are officed in the hospital...

Records? Of course, they're paper...no electronic stuff for THIS cutting edge university! So if the patient needed anesthesia, there's one part of the chart over there...and the surgeon, that's another part of the chart over there...and there's the gastroenterologist, so that's another part of the chart over there...and the cardiologist, another part of the chart over there...and the cancer center, another part of the chart over there...makes me think of the Scarecrow when the flying monkeys got to him...

And never, ever does there seem to be a complete chart which has ALL the patient's records, despite the fact that all the care was done here on campus!

I love it when students complain about how awful it is just to get enrolled. They have NO idea...what they deal with once or twice a semester, I work with every day. To those of us who have been here awhile, it's just another example of The University Way.

5 comments:

Rusty said...

While that won't exactly help me sleep at night, it is very interesting :-)

Wyrfu said...

"We do it this way because we've always done it this way..."

Jodie said...

Trying to change the course of a university is like trying to change the course of a glacier.

Anonymous said...

Aaaaaahhhhh but in a university can you eradicate the problem with a 200 foot hairdryer?

Jodie said...

Now I haven't looked at it from that angle, keefer! Of course, we'd have to have a committee, and then write a protocol, which has to go through the IRB, and then we'd have to see if we could get a grant to build it. :D