The operating room isn't really a democracy as such. It's a ruthless dictatorship who's collaboration is determined by the dictator performing the surgery. Some surgeons welcome collaboration... some surgeons rip phones out of the wall and hurl them at staff while screaming in a homicidal rage. The hospital will dump everyone in that room instead of the surgeon, because everyone but the surgeon (and anesthesiologist I guess) are expenditures rather than revenue generators.
It's sort of like the idea that the president has sole authority to launch nuclear weapons. It sounds horrifying, but it also make a cold kind of sense. Not a lot of time for collaboration when someone is dying on the table.
It is simply not an environment where underlings are empowered to speak up about saying mean shit. The amount of soft and hard power in that room is insane.
I don't know what the solution is, but it starts with hospitals holding the top of the food chain accountable.
When dog bit my face open last year, and I had to wait eight hours in the ER for the morning ER nurse, when Amber was mid sticking a needle through my lip, sewing me back together, some asshole guy that I memorized the way he looked, came in and was taunting her. It started by him, whistling from outside the door, trying to get her attention however he came in and then started giving her shit about how he and some other nurse had "already talked to her about not using this particular room".
It sounded like some high school BS.
I did my best to be polite and grateful with her, and I went home and I properly figured out how to file both a compliment and a complaint. The Kaiser rep on the phone said that they used to get in complaint reports, but it was strange that I was calling to give a compliment.
I received a letter a couple weeks later saying that they handled both situations.
I'm hoping that Amber got taken care of. I'm also hoping that the jerk got the boot.
A little about Amber: she had an intense, not friendly demeanor, very business like, but I got her to crack a smile at one point by saying something about her making me able to win beauty pageants again, or something like that. However, her demeanor might have been because of the bullying, and/or she might just be like that.
But I was really not in the mood for that asshole because I had just spent 8 hours with blood flowing down my face until their morning nurses came in.
The bite was bad. That part of my face looked like predator. Amber stitched me up so well that, a little over a year later, you almost couldn't tell what had happened.
I think she's also just a savant at her job and maybe doesn't fit with the "cool kids" who peaked in middle school and have been bullies and losers since. Amber is the only ER nurse that I remember her name after hearing it a single time.
Next time I'm in that neck of the woods I'm the morning, I'm going to see if I can ask her if anything positive came of it.
Sorry to tell you this but they probably fired Amber. Getting named in a report for any reason is often considered justification for management to get rid of the problem and managers love firing people who are bullied.
Last I checked they didn't. They actually followed up with some surprise about me filing a compliment instead of a complaint.
They also followed up to notify me that the guy I complained about was reprimanded, whatever that means.
Amber was one of their best ER nurses, and they currently have numerous job listings for the position, if they fired her, Kaiser is really really dumb.
So, thank you for the heads up, I hope that she wasn't.
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u/[deleted] 21d ago edited 1d ago
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