And I'm tired and more than a little pissed. Pissed at the hospital, for their parsimonious ways.
The main digital imaging machine in our department is ten years old... we bought it second-hand about three years ago.
It does not get regular maintenance that I'm aware of. And it's been on the fritz for over two weeks, being completely unusable for the last week.
So the radiography department has been thrown back into the mid-seventies... using the backup film technology, machines called multiloaders.
We used to be really redundant... we had five multiloaders. Now we have one... and it's 20 years old. That's our backup.
When I got to work last night our multiloader was down, too... films were being run in the very inconvenient darkroom.
Luckily, it was not really busy, which was a damned good thing, since it takes about four times as long to do an exam under the abovementioned constraints.
Most of the time is spent running between the emergency department and the main department with either films or cassettes. That, and the fact that the digital technology is much more forgiving... films need to be repeated much more frequently. So there goes more time.
And this is only part of it. Some genius figgered that he could get a bonus if everyone used smaller tissues... the ones that come in the 5X8 inch size instead of the standard. So I used to be able to blow my nose with one tissue, but now it takes two. Some way to save, heh... but I'll bet that he got that bonus anyway.
And the hospital is no longer supplying pens. Nope... you have to bring your own. And they're going to quit supplying scrubs, too... you gotta buy those yourself.
And what makes this even worse... we just built a lobby that would look great in a 1,000 bed hotel. Fountain and everything. Doing some fancy remodeling everywhere. Bought and installed a new PET scanner.
And then they cut the stupidest corners. And they expect the help to go along with all of this, while working them to death because they can't afford to hire more people. Can't afford to keep the floors clean.
It's really hard for me to not be sarcastic about this, isn't it? I'm biting my tongue. And I'm bitter, because I want to be proud of the place that I work, but I feel like a fool by doing so.
Ah, enough of this already... I'm gonna take my pills and go to bed.