After much trial and trepidation, anxious moments, a few bruised egos and wind blown out of the sails of many fabulous people who I work with, the State Inspectors have left the building. They spent three days at the facility I have worked at for over 28 years and for the first time in all of those years I have seriously considered quiting and the thought still has not left me totally.
Two out of the three inspectors who poured over charts, files and observed every move the nurses, cenas, Don, administrator, social worker, activity director, dietitian, maintence, laundry, therapy, just about anyone who entered the building.... ahem, that was a run on sentence for sure.
Where was I?
Oh yeah, two of them had a heart but the third one, WHEW!!! She wasn't human.
She expected perfection and had no sense of what working in the real world with real people is really like. My friends she had no people skills what so ever!!! She didn't hesitate to humiliate you in front of families, co-workers or residents, she had the ability to make you feel you were totally in capable of producing the right answer no matter how you answered her.
Oh, she smiled and in between digs she talked about things normal people talk about but that was just a ploy to get you off guard.
Yup I'm convinced she was from another planet, she peered over her glasses and gave you side glances with beady eyes, that you will remember your mom gaving you while she was in the process of waiting an explanation to something that you did that was REALLY, REALLY bad.
She had a few strands of hair that hung in an awkward drape by her cheek that looked like an add on piece, several of us wanted to reach out an clip it off with a pair of scissors, I think it would have made her at least appear a bit more human.
I'm sure you have met the type some of them work in places like the State licence dept. you know the ones,, you stand in line with all your papers for 20 minutes just to renew your license, its finally your turn and the lady looks at the papers and says, in a very dry monotone " you need to go fill out our form over on that table first then get back in line". Now 20 minutes just turned into an hour for a process that in reality should only take about 10 minutes max.
Yeah that's the kind of folks...
This whole process could have been wrapped up in a more timely fashion if SHE wouldn't have continued to search through files of people that aren't even current residents.
But the bottom line is we did pretty darn good after all, no major citations, none that are considered harmful to our residents and most of them have been corrected already, Soooo, even though it was a VERY stressful three days it is now over and we have prevailed and conquered the inhuman treatment of one person (alien) who was on a power kick of some sort.
Now we can take a breath and get back to caring for our wonderful little old people and treat them with kindness, dignity, love and just plain ole' good care.
Next year I'm going to schedule my vacation when they come, I guess that means I won't be quiting just yet, God willing. SIGH
