The post-it reads ‘choose your vaults, AKA choose who you disclose to carefully’.
This is referring to the people in the department that lives to gossip and the one who loves to trot over to management and tattle. These might be the same people, or they may not be.
The importance is to know which is which.
The information disclosed may be as simple as ‘oops, I accidentally wasted a supply’ to ‘did you know teammate X did this or that’. No detail is too salacious for this group. They may even share their experiences with a similar situation.
With one group you might get commiseration/shock at the situation. And the discussion ends there.
With the other group you might get commiseration/shock at the situation, and someone who b-lines to the management to tell.
The operating room is hard; we work fast and are told to work faster, lives are on the line everyday in the rooms. Sometimes, people just want to bitch. They don’t intend to complain to management, or even to the charge nurse, they just want to get their rant off their chest. Often, they feel better after and can go blithely on their way. In this instance the person who got the information is now the keeper of the information. And the receiver can either simply acknowledge that they now have information and keep it to themselves, like a true vault, or share it with others.
It is vitally important to know who is the proper vault in the department. And who will share confidences with EVERYONE because it is just something to talk about. Or they feel it gets them brownie points with management.
I cannot stress this enough, know which is which. Because even if vault b (the one who cannot keep details to themselves) only discusses your information, no matter how small, with other members of the team and not management, they have proven themselves unworthy of more than basic keeping of information.
You want a true vault, the one in the department who keeps confidences and details to themselves. And does not share with anyone without your express permission.
Except when there is danger to the ranter to the patients, or their family, or the department/hospital. Or except when there is danger from the ranter to the patients, or their family or the department/hospital. All bets are off then.
It’s a fine line.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 