One of my favorite scrub techs has a saying she got from her dad, “Chores are very loyal, they wait.”
One of the things about evening shift is if we are not doing cases, we are working on chores. Chores that happen every day are bringing up the cases for the next day, picking instruments for the next day, stocking rooms and carts in the core, and preparing rooms for the next day after they have been terminally cleaned for the day.
Evenings can break down at any point in the night.
Some nights we can get the cases up and everything else on the chore list is completed.
Some nights we do the bare minimum.
Some nights I don’t get to eat lunch before everyone leaves for the night.
Some nights I get to do my paperwork and my e-mail.
It just is up to the luck of the draw.
But I would like to know how to motivate people to do any of the chore list before they leave for the night, say at 1700 or 1900. This is harder than it seems.
Recently, I heard someone say to leave the chores for evening shift, they’ve not much to do anyway.
Really?
It just so happened that after they left a doozy of a case came in and NOTHING on the chore list got done except for instruments. Any they complained that they didn’t have everything they needed. When they complained to me when I got in at 1430, I shrugged and said, “Maybe you should’ve done that before you left, instead of pawning it on us.” They weren’t very happy with that response.
I don’t care. My first responsibility is to the patient, not to day shift.
Who’s looking like the chore bitch now?
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 