Posts Tagged 'Administration'

Nurse Marge In Charge

Posted by kbuxman on April 20, 2009

Dear Nurse Marge,

I am so angry about this I am still shaking. I work on the orthopedic floor. One patient, who is quite elderly, got a visit from her son. He wasn’t there five minutes before he started shouting that someone had stolen his mother’s jewelry.

I can promise you his mother arrived on the floor without jewelry. She’d been transported over from the nursing home, and of course they have a procedure to keep track of these things, and there was no way this woman arrived in our facility wearing a $45,000 bracelet!!!

Still, all the big wigs got involved. I doubt this woman ever had $45,000 worth of jewelry in her life, much less on one wrist, but it has to be taken seriously. I get that. What’s really got me is that the administrator, IN FRONT OF THE PATIENT AND HER SON, looked me right in the face and said, “So, did you take the bracelet?”

Of course I said no, but why would he even ask that? Now my reputation is shot — if my own administrator can’t believe in me, why should I even stay here anymore?

Signed,

Not a Thief!!!!

Dear Not a Thief

Cool! Now that the heat is off, you can fence that little bit of bling, we can hop a cruise ship to the Caribbean, and go have a whole mess of fun! Or maybe you can use the proceeds to shore up that flagging retirement plan. Or do they pay so well at your facility that an extra $45,000 won’t make a difference?

In that case, I’ll take the money!

Seriously, don’t sweat your administrator’s question. It’s not YOU he’s worried about. It’s THEM.

Them in this case being the patient’s son. I’m not sure what his game is, but he’s up to something. Your administrator knows that, too. There are any number of reasons why he asked you if you took the bracelet, but genuine curiousity is not likely one of them.

Good Luck!

Nurse Marge

Tags: Administration, funny nurses, nurse marge in charge, patient families, patients

Posted in: Enjoying Humor, Jokes

e-Musement Versus A-musement: Sharing High-Tech and High-Touch Humor by Steven M. Sultanoff, Ph.D.

Posted by kbuxman on March 9, 2009

steve-good-shot With email, texting, the Internet, and other electronic modes of communication, humorous materials (such as cartoons, jokes, pictures, anecdotes, sounds bytes, videos, etc.) are being transmitted throughout our reality and virtual reality in astronomical proportions! With the insurgence of high-tech devices creating new communication technology, we have the capacity to electronically transmit large quantities and varieties of “funny” material. Through electronic pathways we can share amusing “tid-bytes” with great speed and efficiency. (more…)

Tags: Administration, bringing humor to work, Humor at work, managment, Steven M. Sultanoff

Posted in: PRN: Experts Examine Humor

Humor in Healthcare by Matt Weinstein

Posted by kbuxman on February 9, 2009

The Healing Power of Laughter and Play

When I work with doctors and nurses, I caution them that while they may be convinced of the healing powers of laughter and play, the concept may not be so easy to communicate to their patients. I tell them that they should go back to the hospital and say to their patients, “You’re going to need to play more in order to hasten your recovery.” And I tell them their patients will probably look at them in disbelief and say, “Play? I can’t play now. Wait until I feel better!”

Healthcare workers, like workers everywhere, are more productive when they have a chance to have some fun at work, and blow off some stress in a productive way. Here are four creative ways healthcare executives have found to help their people have fun at work.

Charleton Memorial Hospital in Fall River, Massachusetts asked its employees to bring in pictures of their pets. Everyone had a lot of laughs trying to guess which pet belonged to which owner, and in some cases it wasn’t that difficult, since the two of them practically looked identical! One of the nurses brought in a picture of his thumb and forefinger squeezed together. He put it up on the bulletin board along with all the other pet pictures, and when puzzled colleagues asked him what the photo was all about, he replied, “That’s a picture of my pet flea!”

Linda Sims, Associate Hospital Director at Ochsner Foundation Hospital in New Orleans, had a gumball machine installed in her office for use by her visitors. She also put a pile of pennies next to the machine, so the treat was free to anyone who wanted one. “Most importantly,” reports Linda, “It gives anybody who needs it a good excuse to drop in on the boss and have a little informal chat.”

Linda Koliber of the Wellness department at Chrysler Motors found “a low tech answer to a high tech stress problem.” Linda put an inflatable punching bag in her office, and soon had a steady stream of visitors who wanted to take out their frustrations on it. “Sometimes the security people will walk into my office,” says Linda, “head right for the punching bag, thump it around wildly, head back for the door, and all they’ll say to me is ‘thanks’ on their way out.”

Ron Hoffman, a pharmacist in Los Angeles, found a unique way to schedule breaks into his everyday work routine. Ron has an “Invisible Goldfish” tank in his store, next to which he posts daily feeding times for his non-existent pets. At “feeding time” he invariably draws a high-spirited crowd of customers and employees from other parts of the store who come to witness the invisible feeding frenzy. It takes a little imagination, but for them it works.

Matt Weinstein is the founding president of Playfair, Inc., an international team building organization that pioneered the study of fun at work. Matt is the author of the international best-seller Managing To Have Fun. His latest book is Gently Down The Stream: Four Unforgettable Keys To Success. He can be contacted at www.Playfair.com.

Ever since the publication of Norman Cousins’ influential book Anatomy Of An Illness As Perceived By The Patient, there has been renewed public interest in the healing powers of laughter and play. In his book, Cousins describes how prolonged laughter helped him recover from a debilitating disease of the nervous system. If stress and negative emotions can make us ill, Cousins reasons, why can’t laughter, love, and positivity help us heal?

Cousins devoted many years to studying laughter and the mind-body connection. Cousins (among others) believed that endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers, are produced during laughter. That endorphin release would account for the pain relief, and the feeling of being naturally “high” that most people experience after a period of prolonged laughter. Although Cousins’ contention— that endorphins are released during laughter— has never been conclusively proved, there is incontrovertible evidence that hearty laughter can affect cellular development. Dr. Lee Berk at Loma Linda University Medical Center in Loma Linda, California has proven that spontaneous lymphocyte blastogenesis occurs during laughter and play, which means that during times of prolonged laughter, t-cells, an important part of your immune system, are produced in much greater numbers.

But that’s not the way it works. You don’t play when you feel better. You feel better when you play!

Having Fun In Healthcare

Tags: Administration, Charge Nurse, corporate culture, Humor in Healthcare, management, Matt Weinstein, Normal Cousins

Posted in: PRN: Experts Examine Humor, Uncategorized