The hospital is a great place. Today one of my colleagues was moaning that a patient frustrated her by asking questions all the time, even while she was trying to do the exposure.
"That's just curiosity," I said. :-P
The most frustrating problems originate in the waiting room. These two happened to me on the same day:
In the morning...I got an X-ray request form for a young girl, 12 years of age, for a sore knee. (The form comes through via a receptionist and after it is verified as being legal and appropriate, the radiographer goes out to the waiting room and reads the patient's name out and then takes them to the X-ray room.) On the form was written this name: Deborah Smith (not the real surname: concentrate on the first name. At this point you could help me a lot by saying that name out loud, just for the record)
So, I went out to the waiting room and I saw two girls there who looked about 12: one was sitting with a woman who must have been her mother and the other was sitting with an older boy who could have been a brother. I said the name 'Deborah Smith'. Nobody got up but the woman who was sitting with the girl tossed her hair impatiently. I noted on the form what time I had called the patient and that there had been no response. Sometimes they've gone to the loo or gone for a bag of crisps or something. So anyway I X-rayed a few other people for half an hour and the girl and her brother were called by another radiographer. By now there was just the mother and the girl and an old man sitting there. So I got the form again and I went to the waiting room and said 'Deborah Smith, please'.
But nobody responded. This time I saw the woman give me a foul look and the little girl was scowling. I thought maybe they were annoyed that I asked twice, or that they were annoyed at waiting for their turn. But that form was the only one I had (besides the one for the old man). So I went to the receptionist (other side of the department) and asked them if they had any forms they had forgotten to bring around, because I had patients there who were getting tired of waiting. No, there were no missing forms. So I got the old man and X-rayed him and off he went. By now it was almost an hour since I had first gone out to call Deborah Smith. So I went out one last time and the girl and her mother were still there. I said 'Is there nobody here by the name of Deborah Smith?'
At that point the woman stood up, put her hands on her hips and said angrily: 'No, there is nobody here called Debra (pronouncing it how I had been pronouncing it)...there is only Deborah (pronouncing it Deborer).' And she sat down in a huff and the kid just turned her nose up at me.
I thought I'd seen it all, but these two were willing to wait an hour because they didn't like how I pronounced the name
:-o
By the way, when you said it, did you say 'Debra' or 'Deborer'
?
Then, in the afternoon...I had finished doing a woman's X-ray and I was explaining something that she needed to tell her GP. She had a little five-year-old boy with her who was licking one of those huge red suckers: you know, the big round one that is flat and has a white smiley face on it. All the time while I was speaking to the mother, this kid was hiding behind her skirt and only poking his head out so he could pull faces at me and then lick that sucker on both sides, long and slow. He would peek first from one side then the other, and he had a decidedly naughty look on his face. He licked that sucker thoroughly, let me tell you.
Anyway I was getting into a long conversation with the mother becuase she wanted to know why she couldn't have the result straight away. After a while I noticed that the kid was nowhere to be seen. I immediately started looking around, but it was too late...
Thwaaaack!!!!!
The little tyke had licked both sides of the sucker again and wacked it against my arse so that it stuck there. He then ran and hid behind his mother, who didn't say anything even though she saw it happen. When I tried to pull the sucker off, I couldn't because it was ripping my back pocket. The kid must have licked it and then worked out exactly how long to leave the sucker in the air before applying it to my trousers for maximum adhesiveness!
And to make things worse, he then pulled faces at me again from behind his mother's skirt. There wasn't anything I could do. I had to retreat to the X-ray room, the big red sucker stuck to my arse in plain view of all the other patients in the waiting room. One of the girls had to prise it off with an X-ray film.
