Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Chronicles of Nonsense

It is pretty well documented, in this space, the trials I have had with a certain parent of a client. Well, the hits just keep on coming.

The latest is this: the client just underwent surgery to remove a granuloma from his plantar fascia. Man, that hurts just saying it. The guy was in pain, and the only one who could sign off on the surgery was a legal guardian (his mother or father). That idiocy is a topic for a whole other post: it makes no sense that we provide primary care and cannot opt for surgery when needed. In this case, they parents waited two years. That's two years with a growth inside his foot the size of an egg. Everytime he aggrivated it he had trouble walking.

But surgery DID happen, and then shit DID hit the fan. The idea was he would miss two weeks of work, which is no big deal because he makes so little anyway, and he would split time between our home and his parents'. Well, the Mother decided to keep him the whole time. That's cool, it's her right. But then we had a med problem.

Our nurse comes once a week to fill medicine and insulin. We have very strict orders that she is the ONLY one who can do this. Our lincencing and hers depends on this. The previous staff supervisor was lax in enforcing this with the mother from hell, because she diodn't want to be bitched at, so they would get insulin supplies and fill the syringes themselves.

Now, that's not such a big deal. Once you know how to properly fill a needle, not a lot can go wrong. But we have to keep track of all our supplies, and account for all of them. It's simple, we HAVE to do this. What the Mother was doing was going to the pharmacy and picking up her own supplies, but under her son's name. Which meant they were our supplies. And when we would run short, they would not refill, because they already had.

So I put the kabosh on that one. I told all staff that the parents were not allowed to take ANYTHING from our site. Of course, they took issue with this. And then they blew it up. I explained exactly what I just wrote. I was even very nice and polite, and calm, even when they were screaming in my face. It should be a non-issue. It is just something we have to do, and it saves them having to do it: instead of drawing needles, they just have to use the ones we already drew, that are already marked for his possible levels. So you just match the number on the chart with the number on the needle. It could not be easier. It could not be safer.

But they gave me all these rediculous reasons why this system wouldn't work.
1) the needle bins take up too much space in the refrigerator
They are tupperware containers roughly the size of half a sandwich, and
there are three of them.
2) When they leave for Florida (are they gone yet?) their daugther will not understand the "new" system.
Her daughter is a math teacher, and is married to a doctor.
3) it wastes insulin, because we fill more needles than he needs, to cover all possible levels.
Insulin can be stored in a needle for a month, we refill every week,and rotate old needles to the front. Further, we have to fill for a week anyway, and sending more supplies with her does not reduce what we fill, it adds to it.

So basically, she is full of shit. And we cannot figure ou twhy this is sucha big deal. But the problem doesn't stop there. She has brought this issue up three consecutive times, each time, even after multiple explanations by me, the owners of the company, and the nurse, she reverts to her old above arguments. She just won't listen to reason. And she has no reason (we have all asked) for taking a negative stand on this "issue".

And that's the problem. I have billed 6 hours dealing with this. That's six hours of tax payers money billed to this little pety thing. That's six hours of care I could be giving the other clients. And there is no end in sight.

She made the last supervisor cry, and eventually have a clinical breakdown and quit. She must think I will do the same. I won't. I will continue to do what is in the best interest of my clients and the company. Even if that means going against the wishes of the parent. Especially if the parent is a nutjob.

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